Perhaps the most important thing we could say about the shift from Ignite to the Frostbite engine for FIFA 17 is that it doesn’t feel too much different. That might sound like we’re damning it or saying that not enough progress has been made, but actually we consider that to be the first major victory for this year’s edition. A change in engine can scupper many franchises (Assassin’s Creed Unity springs to mind) so getting it right before doing it better is the smart move.
And yet with Frostbite behind it there are a lot of improvements already. Player models have improved, lighting is superior and we now have a full RPG-style campaign mode called The Journey. We sat down with EA Canada senior producer Nick Channon to learn more.
What does the Frostbite engine give you the opportunity to do that Ignite didn’t?
The number one things is The Journey, the story mode. We just couldn’t do narrative. We didn’t have the toolset to be able to do it without Frostbite. That’s allowed us to very much do that. It also allowed us to really look at visuals and take a step back and look at how we’re doing things. Obviously we’ve rewritten and reworked all of those elements to move to Frostbite. It’s allowed us also to work with other teams like Battlefield and the BioWare teams so that we can actually, while we always talked a lot, we can compare notes on the tech that we’re in. We can ask, ‘how do you do that?’ and they can say ‘there you go [and show us]’. If you look at the game we’ve added more atmospherics. The lighting’s a lot different at night. A lot of those elements came from learning from the Battlefield team how they created more atmosphere in their levels. I think that’s one of the great things not only for this year, but for the future is that this collaboration sets us up very well.
And how long have you been working with Frostbite?
Two years, around two years
Is that about the normal amount of time it takes to implement a big new change to FIFA?
Yeah, what we do is that we look at a yearly cycle of doing new features. Listen to feedback what the players like, what they don’t like. But obviously at the same time, we’re looking at technology changes, at features that maybe take longer than a year. All the physical overhaul we’ve been working on for nearly three years. All different elements come in at different times.
The game did feel a little more physical to us and perhaps a little slower?
A few people have said that. We’ haven’t slowed the game down. I think that as you add elements to it, the game feels different. We’re not done, so there’s still tuning and balancing to be done. We’re in that stage right now where all the elements are there and now it’s fine tuning and looking for exploits, people giving us feedback. ‘I scored too many X goals’, and so on. That’s kind of the phase we’re in, so, you know, it can still change.
Is there anything you have learnt from other EA studios that you have been able to implement in FIFA 17?
I don’t think there’s anything unexpected, but we’ve certainly learnt a lot lighting wise for the game this year and again, looking especially at how the Battlefield team create their atmospherics are amazing. How can we bring some of those elements to our game? Very early on when we started on making The Journey, we spoke to BioWare to understand, really get a deep understanding, at how they do story. They’re pretty damn good at making story and narrative. What do they do? What are the processes they use? What are the dos and don’ts? So, those are the kind of things that we’ve done. I wouldn’t say there are any surprises there, but certainly being on the same technology has huge advantages.
Has any new trend in the sport come up that you’ve had to react to quickly this year? We’re always looking at celebrations and the next kind of cool little thing like that. We look at what people are doing in that sense. We try and bring a fresh flavour to some of those things each year. We’re based in Vancouver, the game is actually made out of EA Vancouver, but we’re very fortunate that we get every Premier League game. We’re always watching games, trying to get inspiration.
When FIFA 17 players pick up the controller and start playing, what can they expect that is unique to this game? I think the first thing they’ll notice when they’re playing the game is the active intelligence, the attacking movement. It feels very different. It feels like you’ve got a lot more options. It’s pretty cool in the fact that you feel that you can change the way you attack. And then the physical play I think gives a real element using left trigger to really hold people off and stuff.
With the attacking intelligence, is that dictated by player vision, attacking position, or some other internal stats?
We try and make sure there’s variety in different teams and this give us more opportunity to give a little more personality to the players themselves too. I think we want the game to be fun and have those attacking elements, but you should see some differentiation in the game this year.
The post FIFA 17 – We find out why EA Canada is so excited about The Journey appeared first on Gamers Unite!.
from
http://www.accessibilityforum.org/fifa-17-find-ea-canada-excited-journey/
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