As we spent a few hours at Neversoft's new offices near Los Angeles, we discovered just how back-to-basics Project 8 really is. We learned of persistent online leaderboards that track everything you do in the single-player game; goals you've completed, gaps you've found, points you've scored in challenges -- and then ranks you. Automatically. We learned this was going to only happen on the Xbox 360. In fact, we learned that, shockingly, the PlayStation 3 version of the game (which looks nearly identical to the 360 version already, and it's a few weeks behind) will not have online play. At all. To think that the series that more or less championed the PlayStation 2's online play wouldn't be continuing with that online experience with the PlayStation 3 was more than a little disappointing. There was a tease that the PS3 would have some exclusive modes, but no more was said.

We also saw exactly what went into the development of the new game. Neversoft used the expanded space of the new office to build their own motion capture studio and then spent a staggering 63 days capturing hundreds of pro skaters' movements at 120 frames a second down to millimeter scale. Everything in the game that involves a human being was motion captured; pedestrians, skaters, reporters... everything. Even the parts that weren't human like each skater's board and trucks were mocapped to ensure the flex and movement were replicated for tricks.

At the height of the capture sessions (which included breaking everything down and heading to Tony Hawk's warehouse to capture vert tricks on his massive 16 foot ramp), 50 of the 10-15 thousand dollar motion capture cameras were employed. For the moments when anyone actually talked in a cutscenes, faces were motion captured to aid in the lip synching process.

With all that raw data captured, the developers then moved to the next big visual improvement: they scanned the hell out of everything. Using two different 3D scans, one for the body and another ultra-hi-res version for just the face, they went about adding an incredibly high detail normal map (made of 500,000 polygons for the body and a mind-boggling 600,000 just for the face) to skaters that are more than twice the number of polygons of the previous game (about 7000 for those curious).

They photographed skaters with 22 megapixel cameras and then wrapped these textures around the model and then, finally, they put the two parts together, the motion captured data and the new models, with some minor tweaks to the animations so the skaters would actually respond to the players' actions smoothly, and the upgrade was complete. Just to show off all the raw data, a Pro Trick Mode will allow you to watch the pure motion capture sessions with a controllable camera and variable speed controls, just so you can see why these guys make the big bucks.

Apparently not satisfied with cramming as much as they did into the game, Neversoft also managed to bring back an absolutely massive number of full-motion video. There are sponsorship clips from actual vendors (we unlocked a lengthy one from Element), highlight reels of pros, a few bail videos and even a couple of short shots of pros getting mobbed by kids for autographs. Nothing like screaming kids to make you dream of fame and fortune.

The finished product looks leaps and bounds better than any previous Tony Hawk game, and it plays better too. It's slower, smoother, the animations -- thanks to the motion capture -- now feel like they have nuance and weight to them. You'll see particular skater flairs in their tricks, you'll watch them shift balance in ways that was never possible before, and now, thanks to the Nail the Trick mode, you'll see just how insane it all is to try to pull off. In fact, signature tricks in the game are now actually performed by the pros, which is a nice touch.

We're not sure yet now the fans of the more recent cinematic story-driven efforts will respond to this new approach, but it's obvious that in abandoning some of the bigger moments of flair and taking on a newer high-tech approach to modeling the skaters and their moves that the bridge between gamer and skater is growing more and more sturdy. And if we've pegged the goal of Neversoft right, this has been the idea all along.