f you missed it, we posted our first look and hands-on with Skate 2 yesterday (which you can find here.) Today the coverage continues with our interview with gameplay producer for the Skate franchise, Jay Balmer. He gives us the lowdown on the new game, working wthin EA on a skateboarding title and more. We also find out what has been changed or improved from the previous title.

Game Informer: Can you just give us a quick nitty gritty overview of the new stuff in Skate 2?
Jay Balmer: The big picture with Skate 2 is double the tricks. But I also kind of feel like we’ve doubled the gameplay when it comes to getting off the board and moving the objects around. And there’s more stuff that we’ll be sharing in the future. Right now it’s double the tricks. And that’s using your feet, hippy jump, boneless, no complies, one foots while you’re in the air and footplants. And your world grab button lets you grab things while you’re off board to move things around. Really almost anything you can move in the world you just grab on and move it. Plus, doing handplants. So it’s just a way of grabbing on to the world. There will be more stuff you can grab on to in the world later. And there’s one more piece as far as today and its new San Vanelona. Yeah it’s San Vanelona and some of the characters are returning, but as far as the story, it’s five years later and the city has been entirely rebuilt. It’s really unfamiliar for those who played the original Skate. There’s new districts like the Waterfront, there’s Cougar Mountain—a huge mountain up in the hills. The suburbs are totally gone and there’s a new district called the Projects. Even the downtown has been entirely rebuilt.

GI: When you guys shipped Skate and then sat down at the table, what was the first thing that you looked at from the first game that you wanted to change in the second game?
Balmer: It’s an interesting challenge. Ok, we did it. As it turned out, people liked it, which we were stoked on. You never know. You think you’re on to something good but you never know. And there were a lot of great games last year. But sitting down and saying we’re a skateboarding game and there’s way more tricks we haven’t done yet and even after Skate 2 there’s way more tricks we wont have done yet. So there’s still more for us to do. And with Skate 2, it’s a scary thing to be like we’re a sequel now. We can’t just take it easy. We’ve got to come out hard. We’ve got to show that this is a franchise now and its going to keep going hard. And with Skate 2, we should double it. So doubling the tricks, doubling the amount of things you can do. Even like getting off the board and moving objects. Everything. We’ve got to double this thing. And, new places to skate. You don’t want to skate the same places even if you’ve got new tricks. You need new places to skate.

GI: With Skate, it had been a while since EA was involved with skateboarding. What was the difference with the research and the development cycle is Skate 2 versus the first?
Balmer: There was a long journey inside EA to sell that there really was an opportunity, that we were on to something in terms of the gameplay and the controls innovation. We were really hoping that it would redefine the genre and how these types of games were played. Even just with the controls mechanic and putting those controls into an open-world environment we can really change how these games are played, without a license. Yeah we work with Danny Way and a bunch of people but its not names after them. This is just Skate. From a pure gameplay [perspective], convincing EA that we could do something that great that EA would own, yeah it was a long battle. EA was very supportive as are always looking for new thing. But you have to prove yourself every step of the way. And we did. Now we’ve proved ourselves and that question mark has really disappeared. We’re on to something great. Tony Hawk’s [Pro Skater] has decided to take a year off as a franchise which is great, they could come back really awesome next year. I’m looking forward to it. But the question mark is gone. Truly we’re onto something great, so they’ve allowed us to keep going.

GI: One of the things with Skate after it came out with the nitpicking was around just little things because the core gameplay was so solid. There was some nitpicking at things like curbs or pedestrians. Have you guys been paying attention to that?
Balmer: We could have spent the entire last year fixing things and making this we wished were better, better. Skate 2 could have been Skate 1.5. So we took on some of that. A living world being in the way. They’re much smarter now. They know where you’re sessioning. They’ll get out of the way. They wont just linger and hangout. “Oh hey, someone’s skating here. I’m going to stand in the way.” They’re also able to jump out of the way and get out of the way. So we’ve improved the living world and they’re not a detriment to the skating experience. But they also don’t like you running into that much, so if you run into them they might get mad. It’s kind of a give and take. So we did want to address some thing like the living world, but we also wanted to so say lets not just tune what we’ve got, because we’re pretty happy with it. We’re really focused on quality. We worked really hard all the way through to deliver something solid and now lets get on to some new stuff. Lets deliver something different. I think a lot of franchised do just try and fix what they’ve got instead of trying to push themselves into new territory. So we’re pushing ourselves.

GI: Was the movable objects design something that you tried to get into the first Skate or is that a new concept for Skate 2?
Balmer: It was something we’ve always wanted to do. It was also the biggest challenge of Skate 2. Getting off the board, walking up to an object and grabbing onto it with different sides, different heights and different weights and moving them in a believable way around the world. And then you have so much potential to cause chaos. Pushing a picnic table out into the street or hanging onto a bunch and using that as a block against security guards. The whole game has to be smarter to be aware of those objects. So it was a very big challenge and we knew we wanted to do it. We want to keep people in the game world. We want people to setup a launch ramp as the bottom of the hill and just get crazy air. We want you to drag a few benches together. Drag them a few blocks, drag them as far as you want. You want to go to the top of the mountain because you really like the bench that’s up there and drag it all the way down to the water front? It will take you like a half hour, but if you want to do it, go ahead. So its really something we wanted to be in the game world. Lots of stuff you can play with, its sort of part of the big sandbox mechanic. It was a big challenge to have that work, but he end result was so much to play with.