FIFA 17 Cutscenes will add depth to the narrative throughout, again much like FIFA 17. One we saw during the presentation showed a particularly dark time in Hunter’s career, where a series of particularly poor performances led to him being sent out on loan. In the FIFA 17 scene, he chats with his (abrasively cockney) grandad about the loan move. Hunter then receives a call from his agent to turn on “Sports News”
His parent club have just signed a big name player in his position, Harry Kane, who talks about his excitement at the transfer. FIFA 17 Frostbite is a game engine developed by EA Dice, the studio behind the graphically impressive Battlefield series of first-person shooters. It’s the technology used to build many of EA’s recent and forthcoming releases including Battlefield 1, Mirror’s Edge: FIFA 17 Catalyst and Mass Effect: Andromeda – and now it’s powering Fifa 17. This isn’t Be A Pro recycled, either.
You do play matches locked to that one player (Alex Hunter, a promising striker who breaks into the first team squad at the same time as his mate, Gareth Walker). But it’s as much about what happens off the pitch as on it. Cut-scenes take place in the dressing room, at your house, on aircraft to and from games, and so on. Cut-scenes, I should add, EA Canada has been working on with Bioware. As in, Mass Effect creators BioWare. It's Commander Shepherd does the EPL. Again, this is based on the new performance capture of these players.
You are then presented with three dialogue options of how to react: defeatist, determined or angry. My favourite improvement is AI players’ off-the-ball runs. In FIFA 17, team-mates, regardless of their position, tended to run in straight lines – either directly up the wing or diagonally towards goal. There was little true bending of runs or attacking space, and that’s been fixed – and is so much better – this time around.
McHardy calls this “the biggest new Fifa 17 mode since Ultimate Team”, and it’s certainly the most intriguing. The Journey is basically a role-playing adventure, set within Fifa, with the player taking on the role of rookie signing Alex Hunter as he starts his career with a club of your choosing. Between matches there are scenes from Fifa 17 Hunter’s life, as he fights his way into the first team alongside friend and rival Gareth Walker.
At key decision points, you have to guide what Alex does and says – is he going to be a modest team player or a cocky upstart? How will he react when he’s sent out on loan? These choices shape the narrative and affect Turner’s relationships with his manager and squad mates. One example, of the many I could've chosen: as United (don’t boo), against Chelsea, I’m able to work my way up the pitch by recycling possession and patiently waiting for pockets of space to appear.
