We’re finally getting details on Skate 4 — including custom socks and Tim Robinson

polygon.com:

The fourth game in EA’s cult skateboarding series — formerly known as Skate 4, now simply called Skate — is finally starting to come into focus, four years after it was announced… in a manner of speaking. Fittingly for a game which took an unusual route to becoming a reality, and which is quite a departure from its predecessors, EA is also tackling the marketing for the game a little bit differently.

Instead of a flashy trailer highlighting the new game’s features, EA confused and delighted everyone by dropping a live-action sketch starring I Think You Should Leave’s Tim Robinson into Friday’s Sumer Game Fest stream. In the skit, Robinson plays Richie Dandle, an executive at M-Corp, the fictional corporation that previously owned and ran the city of San Vansterdam in which Skate is set. Robinson denies that M-Corp is leaving San Vansterdam while employees flee, cry, and shred documents behind him. (M-Corp is probably the new iteration of the tyrannical Mongocorp, which ran the city of San Vanelona in Skate 2. Yes, these skating games have lore.) Anyway, the video’s pretty funny, you should watch it.

This is all great fun, and backed up by an official story so far blog post as well as a gloriously dated M-Corp website. But what about the, you know, game?

Fortunately, the developers at Full Circle, a remote-only game studio formed by EA specifically to make Skate, followed up the Robinson sketch by lifting the lid on the current state of the game in a blog post and accompanying development update video. Skate, as previously announced, will be a free-to-play, live-service skating MMO for PC and console. It doesn’t have a release date yet.

There’s quite a lot of detail in the post and video, none of it all that surprising; Full Circle is iterating on the Skate series’ signature “flick-it” control scheme using new physics and animation technologies, and going big on player customization. One of the most exciting tidbits is a “quick drop” system that gives players the