FIFA 22: more PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Stadia-exclusive features revealed
Cheerio!
EA Sports has announced a number of new FIFA 22 features exclusive to the game on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S and Stadia.
In fully revealing FIFA 22's Career Mode yesterday, EA Sports confirmed more features you won't get on PlayStation 4, Xbox One or PC (yep, the PC version is still the last-gen version).
In Career Mode across all platforms, there are news items focused on your stats and accomplishments that trigger when certain milestone events happen (for example, when you or one of your player's goal projection is to break a competition's goal record and when you or they finally succeed in doing so).
But on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S and Stadia, these accomplishments aren't just celebrated in the news. These versions of FIFA 22 also have pre-match intro sequences in which the commentator team picks up on what you have achieved.
New cinematics include new team warm up sequences, dressing room "moments", teams inspecting the pitch as well as the groundskeeper making last minute preparations.
If your team is underperforming in an important match, you might even see the crowd leaving early, EA said.
There's a new reveal cinematic when you get a new managerial job, and updated transfer announcement news takes place at the stadium, not just the press room.
Your Player Career journey is picked up by the commentator team with "banter" around transfer or loan moves, your debut, or when you're solidifying your place in the starting 11.
EA Sports said it's improved the quality of screenshots taken from the match in the news you receive when you return to the hub, "in order to make the stories more specific to your match experience."
We've also got more information on Alex Scott's commentary. It comes via the 'Goal News from Elsewhere' commentary in English, with Scott providing minute-by-minute updates to matches played simultaneously. "We're using the latest technology to make sure that the transitions between the commentary team and Alex Scott sound as natural as possible," EA Sports said, with interruptions possible.
These next-gen only features join what EA calls "HyperMotion" gameplay, which combines machine learning with 11v11 motion capture to improve how players move during a match, in being exclusive to FIFA 22 on PS5, Xbox Series X and S, and Stadia.
That leaves out PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One (and Switch, but I don't think anyone was expecting anything other than a by-the-numbers legacy edition for Nintendo's console this year).
Meanwhile, in other Career Mode news, in this year's game you can create your club - a feature that was in the FIFA games last decade but has been absent since.
You start by picking your club's name and the nickname which will be used by the commentary team. Then you choose the league you want to play in, after which you choose the team you want to replace. The number of teams participating in a league stays the same, while the team you replaced goes into the Rest of World teams.
You can choose any league in the game, so you can start from the bottom tier of a country's league system, or play in the top leagues.
You then choose a rival club from within your league. Matches against your rival are treated with higher importance via the broadcast and get additional news coverage and stories.
You can also customise your team's home and away kits, the club's crest as well as your home stadium. Kits, crests, and your base stadium can be changed at the beginning of every new season.
The stadium customisation in Career Mode lets you pick from any of the base generic stadiums in the game, and lets you change its base colour, seat colour, pitch pattern and even the net shape.
The atmosphere around your club can be changed as well, with a selection of goal songs, crowd chants and walkout anthems to choose from.
Stadium customisation is also available for existing clubs that don't have a licensed stadium assigned in the game.
Create your club has a squad builder, as you'd expect. When generating these new players, you have control over your squad's star rating and the average age of players. The nationality of the generated players in your squad is based on the nationality makeup of the players in the league of your choice. So, for example, assuming seven percent of the players in the English Premier League have French nationality, each time a player is generated for your squad in the English Premier League, there's a seven percent chance they could be French. This keeps squads feeling authentic no matter what league you choose to play in, EA said.
You then choose your starting budget (your transfer budget can start as high as 1bn of your chosen currency). You then use your budget to sign new players.
You can also change your club board's priorities to dictate the objectives you receive (domestic and regional priorities are influenced by your team's star rating as well).
Elsewhere in Career Mode, there are changes to Player Career (you can now come on as a sub, there are new match objectives, and an overhauled player growth system), and new dressing room cinematic cutscenes that play at the end of each match in Player Career.
The video below shows off a trophy celebration:
And finally, Career Mode has dynamic tifos. "We previously had to rely on existing player art in fan tifos, but that is now a thing of the past," EA Sports said.
"In FIFA 22 if a player becomes one of the top rated players in the team or if they have a long tenure at a club, they can be used in player tifos displayed by fans ahead of an important match. And that means any player, including all of the generated ones."
FIFA 22 comes out 1st October. Check out our hands-on impressions of FIFA 22 on PS5 for more.