Madden NFL 21 revises gameplay with real data, but only on PS5 and Xbox Series X

For the past five years, every NFL player has had an RFID chip in their jersey, recording their whereabouts and movements on the field for every part of every game. You may have seen half-time ads showing how partner league companies are using this data to form advanced analytics and stunning prediction models.

Well, now those numbers are going into the league video game. Madden NFL 21, which releases December 4 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, will incorporate this tracking of player movement, acceleration, deceleration, and direction change to deliver what the developers swear to be an American football game. more realistic, noticeable from the first shot.

“You’re going to see it on day one, game one,” executive producer Seann Graddy told Polygon. “There is no doubt in my mind. It’s just different.

“On defense it’s more fun,” Graddy added, “but I think even like running the ball it feels like there’s half a second longer to read the hole and line up your back. to hit that hole. “

Over the years, Madden has been continually hampered by movement and AI which can appear supernaturally conscious (linebackers in pass coverage, for example), stupefyingly oblivious (blockers on the court), or superhumanly fast (a carrier of ball changes direction, or a receiver on a) road) sequence. Next Generation Stats, as the NFL and Amazon Web Services are calling it, seem to provide a solution to all of this, supporting in-game animations and player AI with actual behavioral patterns.

Connor Dougan, the game’s creative director, helped lead a roundtable with the game’s media on Monday, and he used Kansas City wide receiver Tyreek Hill, carrying the ball on a sweep, as a versatile example. “[Ball carriers’] acceleration rates, speeds and rates of turn are now determined by next-generation statistical data, with all new animations, ”said Dougan. “You can see [in the PS4/Xbox One version] the way Tyreek Hill inhumanely changes direction and pivots, without momentum or momentum, as he runs. [On the new consoles] there is proper momentum and momentum when it goes up on the pitch.

As a receiver, Hill can be expected to perform routes with more realistic acceleration and deceleration. His cuts will be slower and the depth he runs before cutting will not be as even, meaning quarterbacks will need to be more careful about where he and other receivers are in their path before throwing. And Hill and the other receivers will more naturally follow the end of a course, returning to play if they end their course with play still live, rather than stopping where they are.

“Since we updated the player movement of every player on the pitch, it obviously has an impact on our blockers,” said producer Clint Oldenburg (himself an offensive lineman in college and in the NFL). “We have worked on our logic of blocking leads to improve it, to allow them to be aware.”

Graddy, at Polygon, said that overall the actual motion effect is slowing down Madden NFL 21 down, but in a way that the players have more time to make decisions, such as finding a hole in the line with a running back. Oldenburg said it works on defense as well. “The pace of the passing game is going to give user defenders a little more time to complete their passing moves and get back to the quarterback,” he said.

Using all of this player data means EA Sports is a firm claim that a flagship title will play much better on new consoles, not just better. Graddy said the developers at EA Tiburon have been working with NFL data for about two years, believing that an overhaul of the technique would require the additional processing of a new generation of machines to put it into practice. These features, however, will only be available in the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X versions of Madden NFL 21, not the Windows PC version.

Player movement isn’t the only gameplay advancement with Madden NFL 21 on PS5 and Xbox Series X. Playcalling – that is, organizing and browsing the game’s spellbook of offensive and defensive designs – is going to see its biggest revamp since Madden NFL 15, according to EA. Players will be able to bookmark games – a long-requested feature – with a double press of a button that instantly stores favorites in a new tab in the play calls window. The games will also be broken down by the player they are designed for, another community request that has finally been met.

Monday’s demonstration also showed that there was still plenty of treatment available to do Madden NFL 21 looks great too. “Delayed lighting,” a rendering technique made possible by hardware in newer consoles, will help make players’ faces more recognizable, and less flat or low-contrast. “In football we have more blazing conditions than almost any other sport because of the times of day and the weather we play in,” Graddy said. “Delayed lighting really allows us to bring our characters and our environments closer to reality than ever before.”

Image: EA Tiburon / Electronic Arts

Support visuals will also be boosted, to give the overall game a more realistic feel. The sideline, a long history of doom during inter-game animations, will feature real players, not just generic substitutes. Players who are short of limits will collide with sideline photographers, or even obstacles. And Oldenburg said celebrations for players in stadiums that have walls around end areas will include things like the Lambeau Leap for the first time.

Above all, however, Madden NFL 21The makers are confident that their game will receive as much more than a coat of polish on the game of the current year. Madden NFL 21 on PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One, despite record sales, was a largely stand-pat iteration that frustrated many sports gamers with incremental changes. And there’s still a slew of issues that the game’s longtime player base wants to address.

Next-gen stats, or actual player movements, or whatever they shorten, at least theoretically have the potential to solve many problems at once. “That’s when we realized, ‘A-ha’,” Graddy said. “We can take real world data; no more debating over notes and things like that. But we can actually say that a player is going to run at their legitimate top speed, or go their legitimate routes and get in motion, as close to the real world as we’ve ever had.

“I think the most important thing is that we are giving you the greatest football simulation experience we can imagine right now,” Graddy added, “because it is based on real world data.”