the error list near the start mentions slappies, better pinches, more lip tricks, and staying in switch. thats enough to get me excited, animations near the end looked good as well.
skater XL is fun and satisfying to play, but the animations are too odd for me to fully enjoy, will be interesting to see if skate 4 mixes up the controls or just sticks with how it was
I think they will have both control options. I think it would be so short sighted to limit themselves to the old Skate controls. Its worth noting that the dev studio had a job listing for a veteran gameplay control designer a few months ago. It COULD be for the parkour and such, etc... but man I'm really hoping they don't rest on their laurels with the previous control scheme.
The whole thing that made Skate 1 stand out is that it broke tradition and let you have more control than THPS... if they were to come along and just go "Yeah, we are playing it safe and sticking with the controls from 10 years ago ONLY" it would be going against what made the franchise successful. SkaterXL has shown how much more control you can give a player, and how much more a player can express themselves with that extra level of control.
I think SkaterXL has amazing controls (definitely better than Session), but obviously there is room for improvement and growth that Skate 4 could bring to the table.
I'm going to play Skate 4 regardless, but if they stick to the old controls, I don't see myself obsessing over it as much as I would want to.
Its sad that SkaterXL got bought-out and abandoned, and then Session got bought-out and the lead developer left... I don't have a ton of faith in EA at this point. Hopefully they can surprise me though.