“Last year he would have kept running forward for a while he wouldn’t have recognised the situation quite so quickly,” says Channon. However, when the Croatian midfielder loses possession our defender immediately starts running back into position. In one example he shows us, Real Madrid is just building an attack with Modric on the ball, so the right back is looking to run up the field. This apparently stops the player from over-running and creating gaps for the opponent to accelerate through.Ĭhannon says the AI defenders have also been tweaked so they work more as a unit. One result is the new “swing step” move where defenders are able to quickly switch direction while running back toward their own goal in front of an attacking player. Everyone loved how dribbling worked last year but it was quite difficult to keep up.”Ĭonsequently, the Fifa team has sought to make players feel more responsive while defending. We didn’t feel the defence was as tight as it could be. It’s quite difficult to keep up with skilled wingers like Bale and Ronaldo so a lot of people ended up just playing as Real Madrid. “A lot of the player feedback was, ‘we want to have more confidence in defence’. We literally looked at the whole game, we looked at how to improve shooting, passing, everything.” We felt we had really good technology and lots of good systems, but we wanted to improve them all. “We got to a stage with Fifa 15 where things were a little bit unbalanced. “We took a step back this year,” says Channon. This time, though, they’re not centred on one or two targeted areas of the simulation.

Nick wants to show off the changes to this latest iteration in EA’s annual footie sim.

Generously, Channon has let me play as the former.īut we’re not just having a kickabout.

Naturally, the game’s demo mode features the two teams of the moment – Barcelona and Real Madrid. W e’re on the show floor at E3 and somewhere within the hulking Electronic Arts stand, as music and gunfire blares out all around us, EA Sports senior producer Nick Channon and I are preparing to play Fifa 16.

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