FIFA 22 is almost here, and EA Sports has seen fit to release a brand new gameplay trailer showcasing some of the game’s biggest changes over its predecessors. Chief among those being the brand new Hypermotion technology, as well as a litany of other gameplay features.
According to the trailer (below) Hypermotion represents “the biggest animation refresh in FIFA history,” and it looks like there’s some truth to that. EA Sports used real professional players to capture animations in full 11v11 matches. The results are roughly 4,000 new animations with 8.7 million frames of real match capture.
EA Sports also published a new Pitch Notes article, offering a gameplay deep dive on a wealth of new features and changes over previous years’ games. Other notable improvements include an overhaul to Tactical AI, improvements to goalkeeping and ‘player humanization,’ which aims to flesh out individual players’ personalities through new reactions and animations.
Due to be released on October 1, 2021 (or September 27 if you pre-order the Ultimate Edition), EA Sports revealed FIFA 22 earlier in July, giving us a brief glimpse at the concept of Hypermotion technology, which is only available on current-gen systems like PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Google Stadia.
Analysis: Is this the year?
The FIFA franchise has arguably become fairly stale over the past few years. In our FIFA 21 review, we called the title “a good football simulator in a dated package,” noting the general lack of updates to gameplay, alongside the over reliance on the controversial Ultimate Team online game mode as negatives.
FIFA 22 looks like it could finally break that mold, though. EA Sports has clearly gone out of its way to make a big deal out of its new features. And Hypermotion technology genuinely looks to be a huge improvement over the franchise’s aging animations.
We’re also happy to see other much-needed changes to defensive AI and goalkeeping, which should hopefully result in less AI-based blunders on your end, and more challenging opponents on the other.
Plus, with thoughts of a greatly improved career mode in mind, EA Sports could finally be keeping the solo player in its thoughts, a boon for anyone uninterested in the chance-heavy Ultimate Team mode.
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