Ahead of today’s reveal of EA Sports FC 25, we were able to check a remote showcase of all of the game’s new features and improvements. I’ve talked about the 5v5 Rush experience in a separate article, so I’ll focus on everything else here.
It all starts with FC IQ, a comprehensive overhaul of the game’s tactics implementation. The developers claim they want players to channel their inner club manager, dictating exactly how their team plays. FC IQ was designed to complement and benefit from previously introduced technologies like HyperMotion V and Play Styles.
It consists of three foundations: Player Roles, the big one which guides how players behave off the ball thanks to over 50 new roles; Team Tactics, which replicates a team’s real-world playstyle more closely and provides more variety from match to match; and Smart Tactics, which allows for real-time suggestions based on the current match and even provides commentary on your tactical changes.
EA Sports used real world data provided by Opta and a proprietary AI model to power Player Roles. This model analyzed the Opta data from the last two seasons of each player: all games, stats, and plays. Jude Bellingham’s predominant style turned out to be Half-Winger (75%), with 14% as Shadow Striker and 11% as Playmaker. Kai Havertz, on the other hand, has a more balanced style, with 40% as Playmaker, 39% as Shadow Striker, and 21% as Half-Winger.
According to the studio, the result is a more authentic and intelligent movement of your team. At launch, you can expect three to five Player Roles per position (except the goalkeeper). For example, a Wide Midfielder (RM/LM) can be a Winger, a Wide Playmaker, or an Inside Forward. A Full Back (RB/LB) may be a Falseback, a Wingback, or an Attacking Wingback. A Centre-Back (CB) can be a Stopper, Defender, or Ball-Playing Defender. A Defensive Midfielder (CDM) could be a Holding midfielder, a Centre-Half, or a Deep-Lying Playmaker. Striker Player Roles include Advanced Forward, Poacher, Target Forward, and False 9. Lastly, the Centre-Midfielder (CM) has the most options: Box-to-Box, Holding, Deep-Lying Playmaker, Playmaker, or Half-Winger.
On top of Roles, players will be able to select one to three Focuses per Role. For example, when a Playmaker is set to Roaming, it will move around more freely to find spaces. This greatly increases the amount of possible tactic combinations in EA Sports FC 25. By the way, each combination of Player Role and Focus will provide pros and cons. Moreover, EA Sports added Familiarity, which tells you whether a specific player is fit to perform well in any given Player Role.
There’s the base role, and then every player has a Role+, which means they are specifically accomplished in something. World-class players also have Role++, which will be a rarity at launch. Finally, a player can also be put out of position, translating into a simplified version of the Role. An example could be placing Vinicius Jr. as a Defensive Midfielder. Familiarity is essentially the new and improved version of the old work rates (which have been removed in EA Sports FC 25).
Since the community is fond of sharing tactics, the developers have created a new code-based system. It is generated automatically when you save your own tactics. Since it’s a universal system, it can be shared across any mode and platform. By the way, the bench size has also been increased to 9 players on Gen 9 platforms (PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X) in the Kick Off, Career, Seasons, and Tournaments modes. Lastly, they added three assignments for corner kicks: target player (when attacking) and near post/back post players (when defending).
EA Sports FC 25 is also getting improvements to HyperMotion V. Whereas last year they only mapped the upper body motions of players, this year the team was able to do full-body mapping on around 1800 players, including 200 women. Goalkeeper playstyles have been massively expanded: the new game includes everything from Deflector to Cross Claimer, Rush Out, Footwork, Far Throw, and Far Reach.
This year, a new core gameplay mechanic called Positional Foul is being introduced. Regular football watchers are very used to it: it’s when a player essentially grabs another rugby-style without any chance of getting the ball, with the sole purpose of stopping a dangerous counter-attack. The Positional Foul can be triggered with the right bumper and A or X, depending on whether you play with an Xbox or PlayStation controller. Like in real football, this is an automatic yellow card, but the developers said persisting with this tactic could even result in a red card.
Dribbling has been refined to look more responsive, and the animation database has also been ‘cleaned up’ to make dribbling feel better than ever. Passing accuracy has been reduced a bit when doing blind passes compared to last year in an attempt to improve realism. Players will also find five new skill moves: toe drag stepover, big feints, stepover ball, heel nutmeg, and drag turn.
Those who plan to play EA Sports FC 25 in single player, offline mode will also get to select the brand new Simulation mode. This is meant to be a slower and more authentic way to play the game. In this mode, weather also affects the pitch, making players slip when it’s raining a lot, and the AI opponent will feel more dynamic.
There’s been an effort to make stadiums feel more alive through the introduction of authentic mascots, active sideline moments featuring managers, officials, and substitutes, authentic crowd reactions to what’s happening on the pitch, and dynamic elements like photographers and cameras following the action.
On consoles, the game will allow users to pick between two graphics modes: Enhanced Visuals or Favor Resolution. The former mode upscales to 4K resolution while adding ray-traced ambient occlusion, cloth simulation on the shirt and shorts, self-shadowing at all times, rim lighting, 3D pitch divots and puddles, and local exposure, while the latter delivers a native 4K presentation as well as cloth simulation on shorts and default exposure. Both still target 60 frames per second to keep optimal responsiveness. Additionally, there’s a dynamic time-of-day progression for the first time in the franchise, so you might start a match before sunset and then begin the second half at nighttime.
The accuracy of player likeness has been further improved with EA Sports Cranium, a new machine learning-based system that will be rolled out to other sports games in the future. While a lot of players have accurate scans, those who don’t used to look very generic in past games. After feeding EA Sports Cranium enough photos, though, the results in EA Sports FC 25 definitely improve the likeness of thousands of less famous players.
Career mode also got a significant revamp. The first key feature the team talked about is Live Start Points, which will take up the unfolding seasonal stories from real-life football competitions such as the Premier League, Serie A, La Liga, Bundesliga, Ligue 1, and Champions League. An example from last year’s season might be Girona being on top of La Liga last Christmas. You’d begin from a Snapshot, a specific moment in time grabbed from the real season, and continue in the game. Inevitably, Live Start Points will be added post-launch.
Career mode has fully integrated FC IQ. Something you could do here is, for example, bring in a coach to ensure Haaland can learn how to play in the False 9 Player Role, which he doesn’t have by default in the game. Of course, another option is to recruit a brand new player who’s already familiar with that playstyle from the Youth Academy, which has been expanded to include over 90 new countries to scout in. Youths will also be playable throughout the newly added 5v5 Rush tournaments, and managers will have the opportunity to play either with their current or potential stats. Winning these Youth tournaments, which happen every two months in Career mode, will give those players a big stat boost.
Women’s football is also fully implemented now in Career mode as part of EA Sports’ effort to bring parity with men’s football. While most of it works identically, selecting women’s football also means adapting to a different financial model with tighter budgets, shorter contracts, different salary structures, and so on. Career mode also optionally offers a more casual experience, stripped of things like transfers and scouting.
On the other hand, those who enjoy the transfer market game will be happy to know that EA signed Italian journalist Fabrizio Romano to be in EA Sports FC 25’s in-game social media system. Whenever a club signs a major player, you’ll get his classic ‘Here we go, confirmed’ message.
EA Sports FC 25 even features the option to go through a Player Career with icons like Pirlo, Van Nistelrooy, Henry, and Kelly Smith (pre-order icons add Ronaldo, Zidane, and Beckham to the mix), the twist clearly being that these legends would have their careers unfolding much later than they did in real football, against and with current players.
Lastly, the developers discussed the changes coming to Ultimate Team. First of all, the mode fully supports Rush, allowing users to bring their own players and even enter matchmaking if they do not have three friends to complete the team. Ultimate Team’s Rush is based on Events, which may introduce certain limitations, like club requirements, to which players you can bring in.
Outside of Rush, Ultimate Team in general will enjoy live updates that tie into FC IQ. For example, if a player performs well in a slightly different role than usual for him or her, their Player Role in Ultimate Team will be updated as a result. If you don’t want to get too involved in the tactics, you can now just hire real-world manager who will apply their favorite styles to the squad.
Everything can be managed via the Web and the companion app, allowing EA Sports FC 25 players to continue theory-crafting out of the game. Moreover, EA listened to three main community requests for Ultimate Team: players will now be allowed to send up to a hundred items to a squad building challenge storage, which is especially useful for duplicates; Evolutions have been expanded to dramatically increase (around seven times) the number of eligible players; the competitive space will see friendlies and rivals matchmaking decoupled, draws awarding one point for rivals, and relegations are being introduced to the top tier.
For Clubs, the developers created a personalized social space called Clubhouse that connects all players. It’s essentially a dynamic, customizable locker room that will show up to 11 players at once. The Club manager can also allocate some budget towards Facilities cards, which provide unique attribute boosts that help define your Club’s playstyle. There will be 20 to 30 Facilities cards at launch, each coming with one, two, or three-star variant. Moreover, league relegation is back to reintroduce greater stakes. Losing enough matches triggers a one-off relegation match where players will need to avoid losing to stay in their current league.
Crucially, the season pass in EA Sports FC 25 has been unified so that completing matches across all modes will go towards the same goals. Lastly, the player customization tool is deeper than ever before.
We’ll need to wait until we get more time with the game, but on paper, it sounds like a bigger evolution than last year. EA Sports FC 25 is out on September 27 (although early access through the Ultimate Edition starts a week in advance) for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X, and Nintendo Switch.
