The Birdman himself, legendary skateboarder Tony Hawk has confirmed that Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3+4 was originally planned as a sequel to the well-received Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1+2 before the developer of the game was absorbed by Blizzard when they acquired Activision. Hawk is well-known for his 20-year-long critically acclaimed skateboarding series, and the return of the series in 2020 was an interesting one, with the reboot being a surprising success.
A sequel to the reboot would have been very positively received, but due to Activision merging Vicarious Visions (the developer of the rebooted series) into Blizzard, it never had the chance to come to fruition. The studio was renamed Blizzard Albany and was reappointed as a support studio for the Diablo franchise, as well as many other Blizzard titles.
It was only last night that Tony Hawk addressed the scrapped game in detail when he was a guest on a fan Twitch Livestream, with his disappointment there for all to see.
“That was the plan,” Hawk said, referring to a potential THPS 3+4. “Even up until the release date of [1+2]. We’re going 3+4 and then Vicarious got kind of absorbed and they were looking for other developers, and then it was over.
They [Activision] were actually… the truth of it was they were trying to find someone to do 3 and 4 but they just didn’t trust anyone the way they did Vicarious. So they took other pitches from other studios like ‘what would you do with the THPS titles?’ And they didn’t like anything they heard, and that was it.
I wish there was some way to bring it back. I mean who knows – when all the dust settles maybe we’ll sort it out. You never know. I never imagined we’d do 1 and 2 20 years later, so…”
It does seem a shame that this had to happen, just as the series was making a superb comeback as well. That’s business though, isn’t it?
