Skateboarding game OlliOlli World will feature a diverse character creator
OlliOlli World will have a diverse character creator that will allow players to create a character that they can relate to thanks to over 1000 different cosmetic items.
OlliOlli World is quite the departure from the previous game from developer Roll7. Not only is the game bigger, but there’s a new, vibrant, and bold style and a focus on storytelling. What makes this particularly exciting is that now, with a hopefully strong narrative behind it, players will be able to design a character that looks like them and feel like a part of the story.
In an interview with Eurogamer, creative director John Ribbins spoke about the excitement that the character creator of OlliOlli World has inspired in players. “I did an interview recently and the person who’s doing the interview was so hyped and they were like, ‘one of the characters actually looks like me! There’s just no skateboarding games where the characters look like me!’ They were so excited about it.”
In the previous games, players could only play as a singular white man. There isn’t anything necessarily hostile about that, but it doesn’t exactly challenge the view that skateboarding is a sport that’s just for straight, white dudes. That’s why the inclusion of character creation in this game feels so welcoming to players: you can be true to your authentic self.
Ribbins explains that one of the “key pillars of OlliOlli World is being welcoming.” They tell Eurogamer that “we want the game to feel welcoming to a larger number of players – and the reality is, in the previous two games you just played a white dude with no face whatsoever. We thought it would be cool if you can make you, whoever you are.”
The team at Roll7 has played around with a character creator for the original OlliOlli games before, but ultimately it had to be scrapped. Since the original game though, more and more people have got into skateboarding – particularly people from the LGBTQ+ community. Hell, we’ve got a whole article about the inclusion of non-binary skater, Leo Baker. Ribbins even mentions Baker, and their important work at their own company, Glue. No matter which way you look at it, skateboarding is queer.
OlliOlli World will release sometime in 2021 for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
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