EA Sports FC 24 Gameplay Deep Dive Impressions

It’s that time of the year where the FIFA 24, check that, EA Sports FC 24 news comes thick and fast. We’ve seen the livestream and teaser trailers, now it’s time to dissect the gameplay trailer starting with HyperMotion V and the components that play their part behind the scenes before getting to the career mode news later this week.

What I Like

Volumetric Capture & The Strive For Realism

By now EA is a master of selling us on realism. Through Volumetric Capture (The “V” in HyperMotion V) EA is telling us how they can use real world data and basically add animations on the fly. That’s good for both being capable of recreating a recent moment and translating it into an animation and being able to add animations to the game throughout the post-game release cycle.

That’s a strong commitment by EA and one that can potentially help add more the individual player styles. According to the Pitch Notes, Volumetric Capture also extends to the entire 11v11. That said, they sold us this line last year and yet it did not impact the midfield issue that has plagued offline players for a few years now. If they have the data through the cameras, they should be able to see the ebb and flow of match so why don’t they extend it to how midfielders are supposed to react to the ball and other issues to make it realistic? My opinion has always been that the majority of FIFA/EA FC players don’t want that but that’s better left for its own article.

Movement Looks Improved

The good majority of this trailer showcases CGI’d clips with up-close camera shots. This is par for the course from EA and most sports developers to be honest so we should be used to it, but when EA starts diving deeper into the Play Styles we see more clips of actual 11v11 gameplay, and I must say player movement looks better. There seems to be more foot-planting and the animations flow together at a much nicer clip than what we’ve seen in the past. Of course, these are isolated clips, but if that’s all we can go off of we must give EA their props.

On The Fence

Player Styles

I have no issues with the concept of Player Styles in general. As expressed before, any element that brings authenticity to the game is more than welcome, but when they rebrand Player Traits as Player Styles I have an issue with it. In the trailer, EA showcases Trent’s whipped cross and Vini Jr’s flair dribble, which is good but the true test will be if the AI actually utilizes it in offline modes and plays to their player’s strengths.

We saw the introduction of dynamic difficulty last year when certain AI players would aimlessly do tricks just for the sake of doing tricks. In fairness to EA, they have expanded the Player Styles and made a point to highlight the defensive side of the game while also adding tiers to PlayStyles+ that’s essentially another boost to players who have signature PlayStules. The partnership with OPTA should see an enhancement of this feature as well as provide EA FC fans more individuality as it rolls out to lesser known players…eventually.

Frostbite Engine

Graphically the game looks beautiful but we already knew that. Crowds and player faces look spot on with kit and hair physics flowing and full of texture. There’s still a little hint of “shiny” to the players but that’s just down to EA’s art style. Emotionally players look more natural when reacting to a big moment as evidenced in Alison’s save. I put the Frosbite Engine in this category because we know its track history so there’s plenty of reasons to be cautious. Hopefully the Presentation Deep Dive we’ll soon get will help ease my concerns.

What I Don’t Like

Power Shots & Power Headers

It’s not that I dislike the concept of powershots, it’s more how EA describes this particular trait:

“You get faster to the ball and you shoot like a rocket”

Cue Erling Haaland hitting an absolute rocket that finds the back of the net. If you’re keeping track at home, we now have the driven shot command and the powershot trait. So what happens when you combine both of these? Will the player knock the stitching from the ball? It just seems like overkill at this point so hopefully these new animations captured by Match Learning will see this only play out when the attacker is running freely onto the ball and on their preferred foot.

When it comes to heading the ball, I’ve long been dubious of EA’s approach. Again, the example they show just isn’t true-to-life:

You simply cannot generate that amount of power on a cross of that velocity from the distance at which the attacker is standing. I don’t care how strong your neck is, being able to have a “power header” from that far while standing still and in traffic isn’t possible. Instead, power headers need to be tied to timing and whipped crosses along with physical traits as evidenced later in the clip here:

The Trailer Audio

Am I nitpicking here? Absolutely, but the voiceovers during this video and in the live stream are just…cringe. The forced awkward laughs mixed in with the terrible lines just makes for bad video. In a day and age where seemingly everyone is doing YouTube videos, you wonder why EA couldn’t just hire a professional voice actor/actress to get some smoother, more believable commentary.

Bottom Line

HyperMotion has been EA’s marquee feature for the past two years, making it abundantly clear what EA’s intentions are as they strive for realism. Unfortunately, like a prime Gervinho we’ve been let down some by the final product. Early signs do look promising as the community really appreciates these more in-depth dives. As we get closer to the full release, let’s hope that EA’s vision turns into a reality.