Soccer is easily the most global sport of all, with people around the world watching the recent UEFA EURO 2020 where Italy was crowned the winner after countless exciting matches. It is hard to capture that level of excitement in video game form, but EA Sports has done a solid job over the years with the presentation. The upcoming FIFA 22 looks to improve on that even further with new elements of the presentation that look to elevate this year’s game to be even more true to life than ever before.
FIFA 22 will feature new pre-match anticipation, which includes things you wouldn’t even think about like sprinklers, lineman laying out chalk, and even new mascots. These aren’t major inclusions, but just add a bit of flair to the game. Fab Muoio, Senior Art Director for the Broadcast Experience in FIFA 22, went into greater details about these and showed some of them off in a recent preview. The introduction with the bubbles for West Ham was easily one of the standouts that looked absolutely amazing, which will make you not want to skip the intros.
The power of next-gen has also allowed for an upgrade to the vibrancy of the colors throughout the entire match, which can be seen from the very start. There are also upgraded crowd props, flags, and banners in the game, with the dev team trying to make the crowds seem more integral to the experience like a real soccer match. In fact, they mentioned how the crowds can get energized or even leave early when the home team is losing badly. This is something that happens in real life all the time, but you never really think about it in game form, so it’s great to see something like that be added into the game. It’s not just the crowd that will be reacting throughout either, as they have also gotten managers into the mix as well with them being able to react to celebrations and such in the game.
There will be an Enhanced Match Atmosphere as well thanks to new commentary by Stewart Robson, who will be joined by Alex Scott in this year’s game. Not only will there be entirely new commentary in the game, but an interrupt system has been implemented where either commentator can interrupt the other when talking if something happens in the game. It’ll be interesting to see how well this works in the game, but the idea of it is really neat. For PS5 owners, they also mentioned that the system’s 3D audio would be utilized with the atmosphere as well.
FIFA 22 will release for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One, PC, and Stadia. Just remember that not all features will be available in the last-gen versions of the game, including the PC version, as the definitive experience for this year’s release will be on the next-gen consoles exclusively. This includes the Flowmotion Technology we talked about in our other preview as well, which you can check out right here.
