Hey, how are ya?
Join me on this nice comfortable bear skin rug in front of the fire...grab some hot chocolate and get comfortable as i seduce you all with this enticing idea of a sequel that i've been going on and on about since like July.

Im so excited to share this with you all, I'm just...............bursting....with anticipation.
are you comfortable? shall I begin? you're so sexy (unless you're under 18).

rawr tiger...rawr.



A while back during the summer I had gotten really deep into SSX fanart, that was inspired mostly by creating characters and writing fanfics with Amanda (Sick One), Sarah (NA), and a few other friends over on tumblr. If you follow our blogs then you know everything there is to know and how crazy that gets.

Anyways I had decided that since everyone (at the time) was posting threads like “What do we want in the next SSX” I thought to take it a step further and actually propose a solid game idea using a lot of the things that people requested. Some ideas, of course, were better then others and more plausible.

Around August I sent out a PM to my favorite Merq peoples who all had strong opinions on what they wanted in the next game. By doing this I proposed my own idea and allowed them to dissect and add to it.

Citylights, Tunes, Yeti, Kav and Charm were the most opinionated so I focused a lot on their ideas while adding bits and pieces of everyone elses.

This is in no way official, but a well organized giant pitch for the next game, to get the gears of the dev team and EA going.

I've dubbed this pitch 'SSX TWO' for obvious reasons.
First of all the be an obvious sequel to SSX (2012)
Secondly 'Two' represents Teams and the idea of bringing back the partner and rivalry system found in SSX and (faintly) in SSX 3

Also Two kinda fits inbetween Tricky and 3, in some odd way.

GAME THEME
Colorful and bright, like one would go to a rave, concert or party.
Pushing towards a colorful artistic interface, graffiti but tech styled. Something clean but abstract, similar to SSX (2012)
EVERYTHING FUCKING GLOWS. IT MUST GLOW. BOARDS, SUITS, GOGGLES, LIGHTS!

GAME MODES

• World Tour – Story Mode.
• Explore - Acts as a Timetrials/Scores mode
• Global Events - H2H multiplayer
• Freeride - Online or Offline freeride
• Offline & online modes include friend invite system so you can muck about with just your mates. (~Yeti)

Tunes mentioned an idea similar to Skate: “I've been calling this 'Skate mode' for a while now, because as you have probably guessed, it's very reminiscent of how Skate gameplay works. I've heard many times there exists a desire for a snowboarding game that is similar to Skate. I think what people want when they say this is a snowboarding game that allows you to have a bit more technical control of your rider. More of a 'street' snowboarding rather than the 'big mountain' snowboarding that is not only really popular presently, but is also what the new SSX is very much based on. I think that SSX could very well be the only video game in the market to incorporate a Skate type of mode or physics or gameplay or whatever for snowboarding successfully.”

THE STORY
After conquering the 9 Deadly Descents and beating Team Griff, SSX knew they couldn't stop there. Months later, the team got together to discuss taking on more descents and even bigger challenges. A couple of old friends (and enemies) appear and propose taking SSX back to it's roots but still moving it forward, conquering the new descents in smaller teams instead of one big team. With their partners in tow and sponsors ready to throw out the money, Team SSX starts on a new adventure with a few new friends and old enemies ready to get in on the action.

Stadiums have been rebuilt, tracks from the past have been remade, with the danger and thrill amp'd tenfold. Not only will the teams be conquering new descents, but man-made descents to please the thirsty crowds. Live Circuits are back and better then ever!

Imagine the X-Games gone more extreme then before.
(This could be fixed to sound better)

STORY MODE

• World Tour returns but a bit differently this time.
• Characters are set in Teams, duos.
• In the beginning of World Tour you choose a duo, one of the 4 unlockable teams.
• Each Team has a Race and a Trick Specialist
• DDs can be done with either character, depending on their stats.

But in all honesty, I'm fighting back and forth on SSX Two taking place after SSX (2012) or being some sort of sequel to SSX 3. Similar to how Street Fighter 4 fits in between 2 and 3.

SETTINGS
Let's see the return of some of the most famous tracks from the past games, more updated and stylized! (ESPECIALLY METRO/MERQ CITY. THIS BETTER BE THE -FIRST- TRACK YOU GUYS CREATE. DAMMIT, I MEAN IT)

While most of SSX 2012 was back country, it would be nice to get some man made tracks back into the mix.

CHARACTERS
NO TUNES WE ARE NOT GETTING RID OF THE OLD CHARACTERS FOR NEW. STOP IT.

However, I do agree that they need to be reinvented to fleshed out more. Maybe go into hobbies outside of snowboarding or dive into their personal lives. Did Kaori date Sid? Did Mac and Kaori ever date? Didn't Elise and Nate get married at the end of On Tour??? Who hangs out with who when it's not snow season. How many twitter followers does Tane have? Did Psymon ever get his cooking show? What exactly lead to character A and character B hating eachother?

While I did have a list of characters paired in teams, I decided not to post them because of the simple argument of quality over quantity.

We all want to customize these characters as we did in SSX 3, but if you add...let's say 20 characters, then customization for them would be very slim because of the quantity of characters. Let's not mention we'd like for these characters to retain their personality with intros, voices, uber tricks.

Originally I did have 20 characters, that was 10 teams. Too much? It's negotiable.

• You unlock characters/teams by playing through World Tour.
• Every character has full voice acting.
• Characters will have some lines in their native languages as well as in English.
• The characters will interact back and forth with each other and the helicopter pilots.
• Return of the three helicopter pilots in the game are: Red, Dragonfly and Wizard. Maybe add a couple more depending on the number of characters/teams.
• The pilots are predetermined by mountain range and as such you cannot manually choose your pilot.
• Cutscenes show the partners interacting with one another.

But if you're interested in wondering what characters I had chose, here ya go:


TEAMS

• Each character has a partner.
• Each character has a rival. Rivals are not subjected to teams as a whole. This a personal 'grudge'
• Each team has a specialty (similar to how each character had a certain DD to tackle)
• Biographies and interviews (like in SSX Tricky and 3 unless EA wants to be overachievers and do them in cutscene form)
• All characters can be mixed and matched to work together, even rivals, but by default Partners and Rivals stay the same in their biographies.
• Partners get special animations if they win or lose an event.
• Two rivals on the same team get special animations if they win or lose an event.

GEAR/STATS

• Alternate outfits or customization a la SSX 3 is still debatable. But no endless onslaught of tacky recolors, please.
• Aside from that, the gear was pretty much good. Just some tweaks here and there.
• FIX THE ENTIRE STORE SYSTEM, GEEZUS. DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG I SPENT TRYING TO FIND A RECOLOR TO MY LIKING? AND DON'T GET ME STARTED ON NOT SEEING MY FAVORITE BOARDS BUT ONCE.

TRICK SYSTEM
[I'm inexperienced in this category so have fun with this]
I will say tho the idea of Team Ubers and Team Tricks is a cute idea if it can be executed in some way.
Example: Combine Eddie and Elise's signature Uber tricks to where Elise twirls her board to Eddie and he break dances on it while Elise rolls with Eddies and then they toss each other back their boards. (This is rough, I just came up with this on the top of my head so whatever)
No uber trick setup a la SSX 3 (it took the personality out of the tricks when any character would use them)
Signature Uber Grinds

MUSIC
It was pretty much perfect in 2012, maybe just the ability to mix songs from the official soundtrack and your own would be nice, and the looping? (I think that was another thing people were asking about, but wasn't that fixed?)

That's pretty much it. The rest seems more technical and things that people who care about graphics, speed, competitive online features, and stuff of that nature. It's not my forte, so I'll leave that up to the rest of you.

Heres some scrap artwork that I did a while back for the idea but now I don't like them and thus working with another artist friend and SSX fan Shannon to get an entire cast design done.

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I'm just going to go out on a limb here and say that survive it shouldn't be in the next one.
Shocking, I know, but it will be stale.
Oh, and great ideas Boogie, i'm not like, totally ignoring you.

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Every other one of my Aliases: some variation on the word "Mahogany"

I.... I approve. That art is so good. You have no idea.

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Nobody does a better job at this sort of stuff than you, Boogie. Marvelous.

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Well if it's continuing from SSX (2012) then it can't be a sequel to 3, right? I know the devs meant well with 2012, but I still strongly believe that if they were gonna reboot the series, they should have rebooted the characters' ages as well. They sorta reboot their personalities in order to branch out new players but I don't think it was very effective. I personally feel like they should just continue from either On Tour, or SSX (2012) and just tweak the ages this time. Might sound shallow but I don't want to play as old ass characters in the future because I doesn't relate to me. They should have a mix like before so the characters can appeal to all sorts of players, young or older.

As for 20 characters? I don't know. I personally don't think we need new ones either. Instead they should bring back older characters who didn't really get a chance to shine and explore with them around. I'll love to see characters like Seeiah or Luther make a comeback I know it's traditional to have about 3-4 new characters but meh, they gotta be originals and stand out.

The story plot sounds pretty awesome, but I'll like to explore the subject a bit more since I'm a little lost on it. lol

Boogie, the artwork is amazing as always., I think Alex, Psymon, and Elise hands down have the best designs! Overall these ideas sound spot on. The Psymon and Tane friendship(?) would be verrrrry interesting to watch play out. haha

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supporter since '03.

Yes I have a masters degree on ssxology, doc.

Great artwork Boogie, I'm coming around to the Zoe head shave in a kinda Eva Simons style.

Nice ideas going on here. And might I add the artwork is amazing.

Stadium tracks, a new team based World Tour, and new glowey suits could definitely be DLC, but yeah I'd prefer it as a sequel too.

Grumpy gondola worker for the stadium tracks as comic relief? Or maybe bring that one bitch on SSX3's peak 1 that Atomika always whined about.

Oh yeah, you didn't mention him. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that you want him in and like he was in 3?

Atomika is kind of a given unless you're NA who hates pretty much almost everything about 3 (n b4 she comments ♥)

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Damn Boogie, that's a freakin amazing pitch idea, just the one idea i have for online is that they match players based on rank/skill level (sorta what Playground Games did with Forza Horizon, but unique at the same time)

Only saying this is because in most online games i play, i end up being destroyed by someone who's a higher level (which makes it less fun for someone like me who keeps losing), but skill levels can stay the same for party play with friends (because it's all just for fun, right?)
anyways that's just my input/opinion, but overall love everything that you've described there Boogie

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"OK, the only way to get you to shut up is to let you talk, so go ahead. Enlighten me Dr. Phil."

I've been away for a long while, but I actually like this

This sounds incredibly awesome! I would LOVE to ride on redesigned tracks from past games. Or riding in an "abandoned" track, that could serve as a deadly descent or something.

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Funkmammoth: https://soundcloud.com/funkmammoth

Nice work Boogie!

Definately something I'd like to see make it's way into future (hopefully) SSX titles. Also would like to see SSX maybe take the same art direction as WipeOut (future spin-off), that'd be pretty sweet considering the atmosphere of both games is very similar

<3 Love you so much.

I totally love the idea, but you knew this already because of tumblr. I totally can't wait to see the art you've done with Shannon for everyone too.

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Midian: Real authentic stuff is the pizza the Teenage mutant Ninja Turtles eat. Fast, cheap and sloppy
Midian: Like NA
CurryKing: I wanted the title to be: This image is in no way grooming you for Thor's mighty hammer

Awesome artwork, I like almost all of the pitch too.

In a sequel I would like to see man made tracks AS WELL as completely natural back-country tracks. I think a mixture of both would work well. These are the main things I would like to see in a new SSX,

Expanded SSX3 style customization
'real' multiplayer with dynamic global and friend leaderboards
Bright, colorful, firework and audience filled man-made tracks
Raw, all natural back-country tracks
Atomika

...and Allegra

Amazingly compiled thoughts, I support this pitch!

I like both ideas regarding the story, either continue after 3 or 2012. As much as I like 3 and want to continue on the characters' relationships at that point, it somehow feels like a later project. 2012 was the first game since 2007 (or 2005 according to some ), it was a "reboot" of the franchise and whatnot, introduced a few new characters and concluded the DD/Team SSX era, so I definitely think it should continue forward from there.

I like the comparison with X Games. Something that bugged me about 2012 was that it felt like a chillaxed backcountry setting, but still weren't. Atomika more or less advertised the Griff vs Team SSX run for the 9 deadly descents as the biggest thing since laser pens, but still no people seemed to care about it. Sure, it would have been weird to have crowds, fireworks and hot dog stands at the summit of Everest or Patagonia, but even at the bottom of Mt. Eddie the setting was post-apocalyptic, to say the least. And it wasn't until we got Freeride mode and I imported the Johnny Morgan/Powerplant soundtrack from 3 it truly felt like a backcountry experience. This bugged me a lot, and still do. The sequel should definitely focus more on including a 'realistic crowd' on the man-made slopes; not too much but not like the party-crashed Mt. Eddie.

Another thing, sort of story but more gameplay wise, was my biggest gripe with 2012. At first I couldn't understand why it stopped being so much fun as quickly as it did. I really tried to get back many times, testing freeriding on non-comfortable slopes, doing 3-2-1-GO races, chasing Batty's mad wingsuit scores and whatnot. It didn't work. The game has soooo much content and game modes, not to mention how gorgeous looking it is, but yet it became un-interesting in a few months. In my personal holy taste and opinion it has to do with game progression. As soon as the (too short) story mode was finished, everything was available. Literally, every thing. Sure, I could grind levels, hunt board designs (I'm not even going down the yellow shop mess road) and chase snow flakes, not that boring actually. But every slope/course/race was available (some to be unlocked, but I never lacked the credits), every rider and every board/recolour, if you could find it. I lost the feeling of game progression, when everything suddenly was thrown in my face. My time and efforts to get gold in every event felt worthless, as I wasn't enjoying the game. I was more or less grinding for completion, not enjoying my trip through a well-written adventure. Don't confuse this with me wanting a narrow-pathed, scripted experience, but perhaps I'm more looking for a open-worldish experience (examples at the top of my head would be SSX3, Freelancer and Skyrim. Three very different games, but with that feeling of "everything is available, but you have to go explore it yourself).

Wow, I probably went a bit overboard with my rant there. I was going to write a separate topic about all of this, but I think it was better to take it in this discussion. But yeah, what I really want to see in the sequel is a level of progression where you "unlock" or go forward as you play, be that like Skyrim's open world, SSX3's divided peaks or Burnout 3's style of focusing on a few events at a time.

Love the idea of teams being pairs! I like the thought of getting some dynamics going, see how they interact. And because of that, I feel like the sequel perhaps should break the tradition of introducing new characters, just to go deeper in the personalities we already know. Or....perhaps it could be like a team with two new characters and the dynamics between them and all of the other vet teams? Interesting...

Yes to customisations a la SSX3, lots and lots of apparel! I want a personal connection to my characters (read "Allegra), let me customise them!

Team Ubers sounds really cool. Somehow I feel like teams should have a few, perhaps 6/3 each Ubers that are special to them, but not necessarily all of them equipped, and only 2/1 each being signature Uber. I like the SSX3 way of switching out your Uber tricks, but not from a pool that is the same for all characters/teams. Maybe a pool with standard Ubers, and then 3 only available for that character? Not sure, but something along those lines.

About the music I think every SSX game has managed this very good, bring me the surprises. Maybe a tad more like SSX3 though with more genres, and please, an original soundtrack by John Morgan. The man deserves it, we deserve it!

Delicious artwork, Boogie! Love Elise's pants, Kaori's color scheme and Zoe's overall style.

Thanks for getting the discussion going!

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I think an SSX sequel should take place some time between OT and 2012, preferably closer to OT. I think 2012 is the closest the series will ever get to being "modern" in terms of realism, and honestly I'd rather see a sequel to SSX that incorporates more of the SSX we love.

I love the ideas of duos. When I PMed you I spoke about the duos being sort of like a mentor/student relationship, where the veteran would teach the newb whatever their specialty is. But honestly I think I like the sound of different teams (maybe groups of four, each having their own "expert" in a certain aspect of the game for story mode).

I don't think 16-20 characters is a stretch, aside from character interactions. I just think that if they do that many characters, there's no room for DLC and they need to pour their heart and soul into character interaction and personality. I'd rather have a character I can relate to and have fun with rather than a realistic face, or whatever. I don't play SSX for the realism of it. I don't care about boarding down Everest, I care about doing it with style, and I care about Mac yelling at the top of his lungs while he's got big air.

The different "styles" I proposed were:
- Race
- Slopestyle (SSX 3/Tricky style trick events)
- Wingsuit (modified trick tracks, adds plenty of gaps and hoops that you must navigate)
- Survival (modified race tracks, adds many obstacles to the track, no time limit)

Wingsuit mode will be trick tracks that you race down, and survive mode will be race tracks that you trick down. It gives a twist to existing tracks in such a way that they're not repetitive at all.

And then each member of a team of four would be an expert.

And then in terms of game modes you'd have World Tour (story mode), Explore (time trials, except this time this ISN'T the focus of the game), Single Events (where you can either go online and compete with people similar to 321, or play against AI offline like with SSX 3), and Freeride.

Sorry if all that's confusing, I just kind of threw what I had thought up onto this post. There's more too that I'll let out as we continue discussing this

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First of all, I'm offended you didn't ask for my opinion, lol. Awesome job. I really love a lot of what has been presented here. Especially the circuit races on man-made tracks with cheering spectators and smack talking opponents. This needs to have character interaction with cut scenes before and after the race as well (like Tricky). And with COLOR! LOTS OF COLOR!

Great job on the character designs. I think they all SCREAM ATTITUDE, which is what SSX lost many years ago and never has gained back yet.

I also love the idea of teams, but agree that 4 to a team is a better number and that way each team could have a "boss" to unlock. Also, I agree we should backtrack BEFORE SSX 2012. I don't like playing with old characters.

How can I follow you guys on tumblr? I'm on there too.

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When I die, I want to go peacefully like my Grandfather did, in his sleep -- not screaming, like the passengers in his car.

Our holy tastes are in agreement. I've never seen a game with worse progression than this one, and the fun diminishes quickly because of it.

Some kind of peak unlock like 3 would have gone a long way. Earn all golds, complete some specific challenge, find some kind of collectable in a level, just ANYTHING to bring a connection to each track.

I could imagine it going like this: You start with JT2. Get a medal on it and unlock Curnoe's Moustache. Find some kind of ticket up on top of the power lines and unlock Vapor Trail. Get medals on JT2 and Curnoe's and after a bit you'll get a challenge from Zoe on The Hammer. Beat her and unlock the Rockies warmup peak. Etc.

Iiiiiiiii just went for the people off the top of my head, sorry boo ♥ lol

and we all have different tumblrs and everyones tumblr is pretty NSFW, especially mines, soooooooo yeah, mines is helloboogie.tumblr.com

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IF EA still wants to go the Real World Realism type thing that 2012 went through......what if they took the SSX 3 Mountain and basically made it look all "nature taken over". like billboards falling over, snow covered all of the starting gates and trees fallen.

Imagine Peak 3 with its already collapsing look with a more aged, chaotic look. if you understand where im getting at

That was the concept of Blur and that sucked. come on

really....i wasnt aware of that.

and Blur had one problem. Wii

OHHOHH SNAP!!!!

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"OK, the only way to get you to shut up is to let you talk, so go ahead. Enlighten me Dr. Phil."

Batty...hire Boogie. Right now.

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