SSX: Deadly Descents Drops The Subtitle

Now named "SSX", EA's keen to win back the fans it lost with last year's action oriented debut trailer.

"I've always thought racing was the core of SSX," creative director Todd Batty told Game Informer, "and we didn't want to go away from that, so we're going to have Speed Descent events and of course we'll have tricks in our Tricky Descent events."

Deadly Descents makes up the third pillar of SSX's gameplay, pushing players into survival situations such as outrunning avalanches.

"We wanted to make sure we hit the over-the-top arcadey gameplay in all of these different gameplay modes.

"We decided to lead with the new Deadly Descent gameplay in that trailer, but all of the classic SSX style will be there, too."

Batty did state that changes to the traditional SSX gameplay will be made however. One area EA's looking at overhauling is the trick system, which Batty describes as "two dimensional" in old versions of the series.

"We want players to be able to ride off anywhere, at any time, and vault into the air at ridiculous speeds and heights," Batty said. "And we want players to be able to flip and spin and roll on any axis to create an infinite amount of tricks. Then we layer in all the grabs, kick flips, and all the other over-the-top tricks that SSX is famous for."

The addition of new mechanics such as wing suits and pickaxes will add more gameplay mechanics too. For example, the former will allow you to "jump into the air, do a bunch of tricks, pop open your wing suit and then coast across a 500-foot gap to safe landing". Pretty cool.

Batty added that SSX will have "a very strong multiplayer component" but stopped short of adding more details.

"I wish I could talk about multiplayer because we have some awesome designs to share," he said, "but we're not talking about it now."

Well he's won us over. The game sounds fantastic on paper. We suppose its the legions of angry SSX traditionalists that needed convincing though, not us.