作者彙整: Matt Bertz

From its scattershot launch to its unpredictable (and content starved) post-launch strategy and lackluster sales, Battlefield V has had a shaky debut. However, the turbulence hasn’t deterred DICE from trying to get the game on the right trajectory. Before E3, the studio announced an aggressive plan to add six maps to the game in the coming months, and as teased the return of some fan-favorite maps like Operation Metro (reimagined as Operation Underground) and Iwo Jima. 

We recently sat down with creative director Las Gustavsson and senior development director Ryan McArthur to discuss where Battlefield V goes from here, touching on topics like the underdeveloped storefront, the still-missing hardcore mode, the heavy emphasis on infantry maps, and Battlefield’s esports future.

You heard the resounding feedback from the community regarding the dearth of maps, announcing six new maps that will roll out over the course of the next several months. Moving beyond that, is this a cadence we’re going to see more consistently now that you have a lot of the general pieces in place for the game? 
Lars Gustavsson: It’s too early to tell where we’re going when we move into next year, but we wanted to do a big push since that’s what the community has been screaming for. In the future, it might be something else we focus on. That’s the beautiful thing with the live service – we can listen in on our players and see what they want. Of course, there are turnaround times on everything, but for now, this was one of the biggest demands, and we also upped the max rank and announced private games, things really high up on the list from the community. That’s really what we want to address.

Ryan McArthur: What makes these maps slightly different is we put a lot of effort into making them have their own unique experience. What we see with our players is, the new maps create a lot of excitement. It’s the maps that we created that offer different gameplay experiences that they didn’t previously have are the ones that keep them warm, keep them sticky. I think that is what we’re trying to do with these maps, over the next while, is create those new gameplay experiences that as we go throughout the services, adding new maps that will create new gameplay experiences as the team comes up and creates these new ideas. 

Looking at the new maps, two of them have a more traditional Battlefield scope with vehicles and large spaces. Then you have four maps focused more on close quarters infantry. Explain what the balance is between that. Do you feel like the community’s asking for more infantry maps?
RM: Before launch, we didn’t have a plan on the first few maps outside of trying to give each one of them a distinct field that we didn’t have in the game initially. When you look at the first map that came out, Panzerstorm, the goal with that was to create a map that’s awesome to play with the tank and make that the centerpiece of it. That’s what we did. We got some interesting feedback from that map, but I think it nails that feeling. Then with Crete, you’ve got that classic battlefield conquest experience, going a bit more wide open and lots of different opportunities for different play styles. And we were missing head-on infantry clashes, which comes with the Marita map. It was interesting to kind of work our way through that. And then Al Sudan, I don’t want to say it just sort of came out of nowhere, but it was one of those ones where the guys just thought it’d be really fun to make, and they thought they could really make it into something special. 

LG: It reminds me of El Alamein. What I like about it, is it’s a big map with a lot of land, but also a lot of air, and they get quite tightly connected. For an old man like me, it gives you room to think, which is classic Battlefield. It gives room to think, and it gives room to feel that you’re doing smart things. I’m gonna try this since this didn’t work. I really like this. And it’s on a different scale than Marita where it’s tighter. But that one is more of a BF3/Bad Company feel – it’s more of a journey. But I think it’s big enough to not be something you can lock down. It gives the perception you can lock it down. They deliver on very different experiences. And then we have the two uniquely tailored for infantry.

RM: Lofoten islands and Provence. That one is interesting. The introduction of Squad Conquest in Chapter Two, we were expecting it to do okay, but it became something that a group of players really liked. It kind of gives us the opportunity to look at creating some more maps around that tactical experience, that smaller type of gameplay experience. Those two maps are shaped into a way that really fits that kind of gameplay. What we’ve seen from the players is the maps that are designed to fit a certain experience, as opposed to trying to build something that kind of works for everything, are the ones that players like the most. The ones that we’ve tried to make, I guess for lack of better term the “most generic,” are the ones that players don’t really enjoy because they don’t really have something that they can attach to. In the last few months, we’ve tried to figure out what that formula is. Again, there’s still tons for us to learn. But where we’re at today, I think everybody, especially in the studio, is super happy about this kind of nice pace. We’ve got them every month, we’ve got something different to see what players will jump into, and they can come back to that classic Battlefield experience if they really want.

You threw a curveball with the Operation Metro redesign, is it taking place in Vienna?
RM: I don’t think it’s set particularly anywhere, I think it’s been inspired by Berlin, specifically, and then the guys just took a bunch of different pieces and kind of put it together and sort of just homaged it to the subway.

LG: The map is a passion project from the group. They’ve taken inspiration from right to left, everything from how there seem to have their factories underground during the war to influences from cities and so on to create something that feels unique. It’s interesting to see how it kind of clings to the crew when we playtest at home. People are starting to learn to master the universe with new flanking routes and ways of getting around. As you say, it’s not a remaster, it’s reimagined, which kind of liberated the team to take what they like from Operation Metro and see if they can take it one step further.

RM: It’s the first one we did where we didn’t pick a place, we just took a thing and said, “let’s make this experience.” They just kind of pulled together what they wanted to make, and it’s just come out this way. You can see it when we play it in the studio, just how excited they are that they get to make this thing. I think this one’s going to be really special.

I figured the first BFV map throwback you teased would be one of the beloved maps from 1942 like Iwa Jima, Stalingrad, or Wake Island.
LG: We did hint at Iwa Jima on the EA Play stage.

RM: The formula we have looked at is trying to find that right balance between new, never-been-seen before maps, those elements of nostalgia as you said with Iwo Jima and Operation Metro, and then also making sure we respect and honor some of the more classic elements of World War II – the locations we have in Provence, and Arras, and these places that people know. Those are the three levers we want to constantly try to pull. Bring players into the world of history that we’ve created, give them something they don’t expect, but also take them back to a place when they played Battlefield before, that thing that they love.

One of the elements you need to think about when reimaging classic maps is adding fortifications. You chose not to add it to Firestorm. Will all the new maps moving forward support it?
RM: We find it a really powerful feature. From a multiplayer perspective, the goal is to have it in as many places as they possibly can. It also adds a very different dynamic to the way that maps play. It’s never a mandatory, but it’s up to us as a team to find ways to use it to make it interesting. Because it’s one of the things we talked about even back when we revealed the game back in London, one of the most important features of this game is to give players more choice and control over how they can impact the battlefield. The fortification system is one of those tools. For every map we create, we want to try and maximize the use of that as best we can.

Are you happy with like how that system works right now? Are there any planned tweaks?
RM: As a producer, I want as much out of that thing as I can get, and I think there are so many opportunities for that type of stuff that we can do. Lars and I talk about this constantly. But obviously it comes down to what do we do first and when, but I think overall as of today, we’re really happy with the way the feature turned out. Because it turned out so well, you can see the sky’s the limit.

LG: It has a huge potential. I love the fact that with Battlefield, we’ve gone from the static 1942 maps where the dynamic action came from the interplay between the vehicles and soldiers to Frostbite and destruction, weather, and then the fortifications. The battlefield becomes so much more interactive and dynamic.

Is cloud technology going to be the thing that allows you to preserve the same fidelity of destruction but increase the number of fighters in the war? Battlefield has been sitting at 64 for a long time. 
LG: I have the old design documents from 1942 back in the cupboard, and I think it even says 128. Then we settled for 64, and then after that, we introduced the squads, squad spawning, and the different spawn systems. I think the density per meter of soldiers appearing is probably 10 times higher these days than in 1942. We all have dreams of where we want Battlefield to go, whether it’s higher player numbers, bigger worlds, or all of that.

MR: It’s natural to sit there, even for us in the studio, to go “128 is exactly what we need.” I think the most important thing is, does 128 make it more fun? That’s one of the big questions. Sixty-four players in Battlefield today, it’s fun, it’s chaos,  128 – ah it all must be more fun and more chaos. But from a gameplay perspective, I think there are some some challenges there. Naturally we want to constantly push those boundaries, but I don’t think, I don’t know if it’s the technology holding us back in that regard as opposed to making sure that when we make something like that it’s not just a number on the box. Someone needs to play it and say this game is actually better because we have 128 players as opposed to us going, “Look at us, we made a number go up.”

LG: What does it enable you to do? What can I do or experience that I couldn’t before? 128 players in the underground doesn’t necessarily sound like fun.

No, but what about storming the beaches of Normandy?
RM: From a gameplay experience, you look at something like that saying, “For underground, 30 players might be right, but Normandy can you do hundreds,” whatever that would be. What you want to do is create new experiences for players. For us, is it 128 players or 60 tanks? Because that would be crazy as well. We need to figure out the gameplay experience we want to deliver.

How happy are you with the game performance right now and what do you think are the most pressing issues facing the game still?
LG: We’re in a constant hunt for improvements and quality of life. We’re constantly looking into the pacing, since it’s always hard to see the wider community. In certain forums you get the very hardcore community, and then how do you balance it for a wider group? Those are definitely communication discussions. We have in the studio looking at what are the next steps forward. When you launch a game, people adapt to the new world, and they start to learn it for what it is. We’re looking at what are the best ways of trying new things. We sometimes try things and will move away from it if it doesn’t fly. I think we owe it to our players to always listen and dare to try things, not be paralyzed.

RM: We’re happy with where the game is, but we’re never happy enough. The game can always get better. I think the team has really adapted to this new way of thinking where we can always push for better, we can always push for different, we can always try new things. They’re never sitting down and going, “We’re done.” We’re never done. There are some really nice learnings from Firestorm as an example. A lot of Firestorm was trying new things. You’ve got the slower pace of play, you’ve got the tractor and the helicopter, and really interesting surprises. Then we start to look at how do we get that same level of enjoyment and fun and that sandbox experience and those elements into the game we have in the core multiplayer experience. Those learnings have pushed the guys in other areas of the game as well. You see that with Al Sundan, which I think is a good one. Those long travel distances and the different experiences around the map are really going to create some of those lulls in the pace that it’s going to allow players to do things that we didn’t expect. 

Battlefield 2 had a lot of that.
LG: But you still have the village, for example, so if you’re an infantry player, you can still be there. I think it has something for everyone. I always get really happy when the team manages to get kind of that interplay between air and ground so they’re not disconnected. 

Let’s talk about Firestorm. What’s the player split? When you look at the data, are more people playing conventional Battlefield or are more people playing Firestorm?
RM: Firestorm’s built up its own group of players. The great thing for Firestorm is it brought a bunch of players back into the game, giving them something new to try out. It gave us a lot of a lot of opportunities to try things that we wouldn’t have been able to try before with those core multiplayer modes. Firestorm has been really good for us to use as a place to try out new things, to push the boundaries, and to see what the players like. You’ve got a core group of community really dedicated to things like Conquest. Conquest is always king in Battlefield at the moment, but Firestorm is a healthy place for us to try things out, as well as shift players into an experience they haven’t had before.

Looking back, do you feel like it was the right call to launch a battle royale game within a $60 experience when every other competitor in that space is free-to-play and can draw in so many more players from the get-go? 
LG: For us, it’s been a huge learning experience and given us as developers new perspectives on Battlefield. We’ve done conquest 64 players for so many years, and this was something people really wanted to do. We’ve learned a lot from it, which as Ryan mentioned will trickle into everything we do. For me and for many who have been building Battlefield for a long time, it’s about challenging ourselves with new perspectives constantly and getting those new learnings so that we can mix and match and come up with new combinations. As Ryan says, we have players who play nothing but Firestorm, and then we have those to do some Firestorm, some traditional modes. So there’s all types of players.

Speaking of traditional modes, what’s the status of hardcore mode?
RM: Right now, we don’t have anything. We’ve not committed yet to the roadmap of where we’re going to go. But the big thing with the launch of private matches is giving players those tools to sort of create those experiences. We’re always trying to find and pursue those types of things that the players want. As we go into private matches and start to frame out what that initial packaging is, if that’s the way the players want to go, we’ll look at going that way. The great thing with private matches is we set this up as our first community development initiative. We really want to build that feature with the community. If that’s the direction they want to take those features and make sure that the settings are in there, we want to work with them to create that, because the feature really is for them.

LG: To me, that is important, and I think it’s been all through the years. It gives more grassroots building to our community, where people are liberated to do what they want instead of us telling them where to go. It’s important, and I wish we could have done it earlier. But I’m really happy that we do it now. There is no shortage of the things we want to do. 

RM: Yeah, we learned a lot with Battlefield 1. We discussed a lot of this after BF1 around private matches and RSP. The big piece of feedback we got from the community after BF1 was, “When you’re going to build that service for us, it needs to be right.” We took that to heart and decided that if we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it with the features that the community wants, so we’re going to have to take the time to do it properly. We all wish we could have announced it sooner for the community. They’re happy that it’s coming, but also they’re going to be really happy with the result in the end because they’re going to get the service that they wish they’d had since BF1.

Battlefield is a long-running series that has developed several useful features like playtest servers or the rent-a-server programs. But whenever you launch a new game, they’re not there at the beginning. Are you investing in an infrastructure that can be carried over to future experiences so you don’t have to start over with this functionality every game? That way you could avoid the problems you had the first couple months of BFV with over-corrections and recalibrations?
RM: If you look now at how BFV is different from every other game we’ve created from a live service perspective, it’s the investment in the live services. We see a lot more value in those types of experiences – in the CTEs and things like customer private matches. It’s becoming so much more important for us to do these things. Everything we do now is designed in a way that we don’t have to build it, we can keep evolving it. My goal in life is to never make another Battlefield as an example [laughs], to keep Battlefield V rolling and just keep evolving and keep tuning it and building on top of it so players are constantly getting better versions. Keep building so that it lasts forever. That’s the mentality we want [the developers] to take because it’s so easy for people to just decide to move on. With the feature sets we build, with the systems we build, and the services we build, we’ve really got to treat it like it’s the last time you’re ever going to build it. That’s the direction we’ve gone with Battlefield.

One of the areas that seems really underdeveloped in BF V right now is the storefront – you have a lot of things to spend currency on in the company menu, but not the actual store. Are you looking to redesign the storefront to make more items more visible?
RM: The big initial push for the store was to create a place where it’s constantly fresh, constantly rotating, and then players use their company to find deeper dive stuff. We’re constantly trying to figure out what’s the right amount of stuff. There’s a lot of learning in that particular part of the game that we can do, and the team is spending a lot of time figuring out what’s that right experience. The great thing we’re happy to see is the community has a desire to customize themselves more so than we thought initially. It’s become one of those things where we’re starting to invest a lot more time and effort into figuring out what’s the right amount of stuff, because there is demand from the community.

One of the things you teased at the London reveal event was the company system allowing you to create multiple loadouts for roles. For instance, you could save an outfit so you blend in better in the Hamada and equip a bolt action rifle for the medic class to deal with the longer distance skirmishes, and when the map rotates to Twisted Steel I could choose a custom loadout with green camo and a different gun. Are you still working on that technology to allow us to save multiple loadouts?
RM: We can’t commit to when stuff like that’s going to come, but I can say the inventory management and company management are a big part of the game and a big part of the future of Battlefield. We’re going to constantly continue to invest in that. 

Let’s talk about esports. You developed Incursions for BF 1, and it clearly didn’t resonate. Are you looking at any other sort of esports initiative for Battlefield?
LG: We did that one and learned a lot. We’re taking those thoughts and seeing where we go next. It’s not anything we have here today to talk about. But it’s something we’ve followed with sincere interest. 

The 5v5 format seems like a weird fit for Battlefield. Have you ever prototyped a larger-scale mode? Instead of trying to be the basketball esport, go for the football-inspired design where you pit large teams of specialists against each other. One team may have better tank players, but another has air supremacy because of quality of its pilots. Have you thought about opening it up like that so it’s more faithful to the large-scale Battlefield experience?
LG: It’s feedback we get every now and then when the topic comes up. You know, it’s always the difference between the ease of doing tournaments, for example, and traveling with the team compared to being true to the Battlefield experience. So these are questions and conversations we have with people constantly.

Let’s talk about a hot topic in the industry right now – cross-platform play. Fortnite has it. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare plans to add it. Will it come to Battlefield as well?
RM: Crossplay is a game-changer for the industry. Right now we don’t have anything to announce for Battlefield. But again, we’re constantly looking at how we can make the best product we possibly can and looking at every possible opportunity. 

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Since its debut back in 2001, the Ghost Recon series has focused on fictitious geopolitical skirmishes around the globe. Russia, East Africa, North Korea, Columbia, Bolivia – it doesn’t matter where the job is, when U.S. interests need protecting, the clandestine operators who call themselves Ghosts slip behind enemy lines and do the dirty work. 

Not every country hosting the fictitious wet work of this U.S. Special Forces division has been happy about its portrayal. Chagrined by Ghost Recon Wildlands’ depiction of Bolivia as a corrupt country overrun by drug cartels, the nation filed an official complaint with the French embassy in La Paz. The blowback could be seen as the reason Ubisoft set Ghost Recon Breakpoint on a fictional island in the Pacific Ocean, but the developers say they have other justifications for the change as well.

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This time around, the Ghosts drop onto the island of Auroa, a diverse, expansive open world featuring sandy beaches, dense jungles, snowy mountain peaks, and volcanos. This New Zealand facsimile serves as the headquarters of Skell Technology. Free from governmental oversight, innovator Jace Skell has rapidly advanced machine learning and drone technology in the hopes of making the world a better place. But when a group of rogue former special operatives takes over the island and assumed control of the cutting edge technology, the stakes reach the highs we typically expect from a Ghost Recon game. 

When I ask why Ubisoft chose to set this plausible near-future scenario in a fictitious place instead of a real-world location, Breakpoint writer Emil Daubon says the decision was born more out of embracing possibility than any other external factor.

“Creating a fictional setting gives us unmeasurable license to expand on the world,” Daubon says. “We can create a variety of terrain with a variety of physical and social landscapes that you have to navigate, and we can expand on it as we choose. That’s a really exciting aspect.”

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While the location may not play into Ghost Recon conventions, the overarching story should still have that Tom Clancy feel. “While the setting is fictional and the characters are fictional, the question behind the story is still sort of palpably real,” Daubon says. “The freedom to create within the fictional setting was the most appealing aspect, both from a narrative standpoint and from a gameplay mechanics standpoint. The expandability of the world is what’s most exciting narratively because we’re unlimited; we can create anything, and that in order to support the overarching desire to give our players the feeling of being a Ghost. The potential is unlimited there.” 

Ghost Recon Breakpoint releases October 4 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. To learn more, read our in-depth dive into the narrative, game mechanics, and more.

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Two years after debuting Longshot, a single-player story mode heavy on cinematics but light on player agency and true Madden gameplay, EA Tiburon went back to the drawing board with its career mode. It was the right call. While well-acted and well-directed, the Longshot story curiously veered too far from the superstar storylines that captivate football fans to instead focus on the trials and tribulations of simply cracking an NFL roster. While it makes for some interesting, honest moments about how hard it is to realize the dream of suiting up on Sunday, this isn’t the power fantasy most people want to experience in a career mode. With Madden NFL 20’s new career mode, Face of the Franchise: QB1, the focus shifts to a football dream fans can better relate with – becoming a dominant starting quarterback.

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Face of the Franchise essentially plays out like the stories in NBA 2K’s popular career mode. Early on, the mode delivers story beats via cinematics in-between actual on-field games where your stick skills define the direction of your career. After the prologue of your NFL career plays out, the narrative focus shifts from a reliance on cinematics to a more dynamic story delivered mostly via branching dialogue. During this phase, the mode looks at your accomplishments (or failures) and builds a story around them. “Choice is so important, and that’s probably the key differentiator between a Longshot and this,” says Madden NFL 20 creative director Mike Young. “This is about personalization.”

Here’s a breakdown of how Face of the Franchise: QB1 plays out: 

Write Your College Legend

Unlike Longshot hero Devin Wade, your journey doesn’t start under the Friday Night Lights. Instead, you are the unheralded backup quarterback of a college powerhouse who gets thrust into a starting role during the College Football Playoff, a similar situation to the one Cardale Jones found himself in with Ohio State during the 2014 season. 

After customizing your face and choosing one of the three voices available for your character, you can pick one of 10 colleges in the game – Clemson, Florida, Florida St., LSU, Miami, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Texas Tech, or USC. Then the hard work of building up your draft grade begins.  

Before your high-pressure debut, reporters pepper you with questions. When they ask which NFL legend you look up to, your choice will lay the foundation for your quarterback archetype. When they ask you how your high-school teammates would describe you, it helps define your personality type.

If you flame out in the first playoff game, you can kiss your dreams of being a first-round pick behind. Lead your program to the national championship with a commanding performance, however, and your draft stock naturally rises. 

Participate In The Underwear Olympics

Once the playoff run is complete, your gunslinger heads to the NFL Combine, where you must perform a series of drills and answer some tough questions from NFL GMs. Combined with your on-field performance, your numbers in the Underwear Olympics and how you conduct yourself with league decision-makers will determine where in the draft you are likely to land. “It’s about immersing you in the 2019 draft class, so we want to make it feel like you are competing right now next to Kyler Murray and Drew Lock,” Young says. “You’ll get cameos from them throughout the story.” 

Your performance in college and the combine will land you anywhere from a high first-rounder, low first-rounder, mid-rounder, or late-round pick. Sorry Kurt Warner fans, you can’t go undrafted. Even if you chuck enough pick-sixes to set the college single-game record and post a Jared Lorenzen-esque 40-time, some wayward team will still see you as a diamond in the rough. Maybe John Elway has you circled on his cheat sheet…

Draft Day Drama

After the combine whirlwind wraps up, it’s time for the NFL draft. If you’re projected to be a high first-round pick, you don your most stylish outfit and head to the NFL Draft. Sorry, fashion aficionados, EA opted against giving you control over your off-field wardrobe à la FIFA’s Alex Hunter, but the good news is you have more gear options than previous years. Sadly, tattoos are still noticeably absent.

During the draft, you will rub shoulders with other highly touted prospects like Joey Bosa on the red carpet. If you aren’t a highly touted pick, you miss the pageantry and watch the draft on TV with your agent by your side.

However your draft day experience plays out, don’t expect to end up on a team that already has an established young star on the roster – you won’t be unseating Patrick Mahomes in Kansas City. “We tried to make it really realistic and reflective of the teams that actually need quarterbacks that might draft you,” Young says.

If you don’t like the team that drafted you, EA said there’s a way to strongarm your way to your ideal team. 

Crack The Starting Lineup

Once you crack an NFL roster, then the journey transitions from a heavy dose of cutscenes to a branching dialogue system similar to NBA Live 19’s The One mode. “Unlike a Longshot, this is meant to be about you getting into the league, and then handing it off to our new Scenario Engine where the story doesn’t stop,” Young says.

Once you’re in the league, the Scenario Engine (which also powers connected franchise mode in Madden 20) takes over to deliver storylines that may be new each week or extend into the season. You interact with a wide assortment of people, from coaches and teammates to trainers and reporters. Not all of your conversations are peachy. If a stud receiver is being starved for touches, he’ll tell you to get him the damn ball next week. You get to decide the number of touches you promise for the next week, and if you don’t meet that threshold, his morale will take a hit. If it drops enough, depending on his personality he may request a trade. This is just one example of the types of storylines that can play out. 

“During the whole first season, it’s going to feel like there is a storyline, and the hope is that everyone will feel like they had a different storyline, both by how they played in Face of the Franchise mode, or just the different decisions, and their record, and who is on their team will trigger different events throughout the season,” Young says.

Other players may challenge you to rise to their level during the course of your career as well, which could allow you to earn one of their superstar abilities, a new feature in Madden NFL 20. Think of these like interchangeable skill powers you can swap in and out depending on the game scenario. Some give you straight up ability, like the Bazooka skill that lets you throw up to 80 yards in the air when you’re in the zone. Others are more about being a savvy field general, like the Hot Route Master skill that gives you four additional hot routes to choose while making pre-play adjustments. You can earn up to seven superstar abilities in Face of the Franchise, allowing you to experiment with the skills that best match your play style. 

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“It’s not about getting to 99 [OVR] anymore, it’s about trying different loadouts,” Young says. “It’s a lot more like an action/adventure game where you’re unlocking different abilities and maybe this one suits the way you play more and it’s what you like.”

Occasionally during your career, you will be asked tough questions from reporters. Coming off a loss, an ink-stained wretch may ask, “who let you down tonight, your coach or offensive line?” If you take the Aaron Rodgers route and criticize your coach. your coach will lose confidence in you but your line will get a boost for the next game. If you take the Jay Cutler route and throw the line under the bus, they’ll play worse the next game but your relationship with your coach may improve. 

Overcome these seasonal obstacles and put up strong numbers, and you may earn a spot in the Pro Bowl, which finally returns to Madden this year. Since the career mode runs on the Connected Franchise Mode system, you can play up to 15 seasons and write your NFL legacy, with new scenarios popping up throughout your career. 

If you aren’t interested in being a signal caller and would rather play another position, Madden NFL 20 makes that option available to you as well. You won’t have the college, combine, or draft day experience going that route, but the Scenario Engine will still sprinkle story threads throughout your career.

Madden NFL 20 ships for PS4, Xbox One, and PC on August 2. To learn more about the game, read our in-depth breakdown of the superstar abilities, proposed fixes to gameplay issues, and franchise mode changes.

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This console generation hasn’t been a great one for fans of sports franchise modes. While the dominant NBA 2K series continues to explore meaningful innovations in the space with new concepts like a GM story mode, persistent injury systems, and deep customization tools for MyLeague, the rest of the sports games have largely sat idle with decaying, dated systems. Madden has been one of the guiltiest parties when it comes to stagnation. Outside of a few scouting and progression updates, EA Tiburon has been largely content to let this mode idle while committing more resources to the lucrative Ultimate Team mode and prestige Longshot story mode. For NFL fans longing for major leap forward in franchise play, if it executes on its concepts Madden NFL 20 could be the first step toward realizing that dream. 

“It’s the most interesting year-round sport in my opinion,” says Madden NFL 20 creative director Mike Young. “We care about it all year long, and there are phases of it. [With Madden NFL 20] we want to bring to life the ability to have decisions that can impact your franchise based on how you handle personnel, morale, teammates, and employees. That just wasn’t in Madden at all. It felt like a stats management game only.”

To dig Madden’s franchise mode out of its self-dug rut and realize this ambition, Tiburon has brought a group of franchise mode enthusiasts from the community on board, like Franchise Nation’s Andre Weingarten. This strike team works not only to freshen up pre-existing systems like trade logic, free agency, and scouting, but also to help develop the Scenario Engine, Madden 20’s instrument for recreating the dramatic storylines that drive headlines all year round in the NFL.

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Introducing The Scenario Engine

Creating an impactful narrative experience in a franchise mode isn’t as easy as writing a linear story. Though you can use that format to great effect for a shorter experience, franchise modes are dynamic systems that deliver dramatically different results based on the decisions the user makes. You can’t predict what players are going to do, but if you identify the individual elements for a good story, you could conceivably develop a software underpinning that mix and match these elements to generate a series of moments that feel in line with the stories that emerge out of the NFL every week. 

“When we looked all year at storylines like Le’Veon Bell’s holdout or Antonio Brown demanding a trade, we really didn’t have anything in Madden right now to bring leadership and managing the locker room, and personalities, and cohesiveness that’s needed on a football team either from a player perspective or a coaching perspective,” Young says. “The Scenario Engine is intended to create dynamic storylines week to week based on how you’re playing, who you are, your record, your stats, and the personalities around you. It fires off stories that could be one-week stories, but there are also several storylines that are branching.”

To achieve this goal, EA Tiburon essentially reverse engineered major and minor storylines from the last seven years, finding compelling scenarios that could challenge players and looking at the inputs that would be necessary to trigger these circumstances in a franchise playthrough. If a star player found out he was placed on the trade block, how would he react? If you cut ties with a future Hall of Famer in favor of a hotshot rookie, what would that do to the locker room? 

Recreating these scenarios required the creation of a personality system that gives the players some degree of agency. Team players like Julian Edelman may be more likely to take roster disruptions and drops in their usage rate in stride, but more volatile personalities may trigger crises that coaches/general managers need to resolve. Some of these may be gameplay based. If a talented receiver like Martavis Bryant is frozen out for three games, he may demand you get him the damn ball. If you don’t, maybe he demands a trade. 

The offseason presents dynamic obstacles to overcome as well. “If you franchise tag a guy, there should be a risk that he’ll just retire or demand a trade,” Young says. “You should feel that weight when you are making these choices instead of sorting a spreadsheet and going, ‘eh, he’s not that good.’ There’s got to be a risk/reward to this stuff to really make you feel the immersion of it.” If you’re the type of GM who doesn’t like surprises, this may affect how you approach drafting. Maybe you’ll pass on a temperamental player with more potential upside just for the peace of mind knowing that your pick won’t lead a revolt against your leadership.

Madden NFL 20 has several scenarios like that that can arise on the fly and give you player boosts or small goals with meaningful rewards. If your team is struggling, perhaps a locker room leader calls a player’s only meeting that gives a boost to the position group you think needs the most help. If your team has a short week, you can decide to push them to practice to earn some more XP, or give them time off to boost morale. If a young player has a good game, you may trigger a “breakout player scenario” that issues a specific goal for the next game. If you meet it, then the player could earn a dev trait increase mid-season, jumping his trait status from normal to star. 

The Scenario Engine is flexible enough to incorporate more variables as Tiburon sees fit. “One thing we’re really excited about is planning to add content throughout the year,” Young says. “This will be the first time we’ve ever done updates to franchise throughout the season.”

Scheme Fit System Changes

Last year’s major new franchise mode feature was the scheme fit system, a crude and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to replicate the idea that certain players perform and develop better in certain offensive and defensive schemes. Aspiring to capture this dynamic in franchise mode was admirable, but the execution left a lot to be desired. Not all the schemes and their required archetypes were reflective of the real-life teams, and you couldn’t alter the archetypes for specific positions to better fit the scheme you wanted to employ. Making matters worse, star players who were dynamic enough to excel in several schemes wouldn’t receive the scheme fit XP boost if their top-rated skill wasn’t scheme-fit appropriate. This system isn’t going away in Madden NFL 20, but EA Tiburon hopes to smooth over the roughest patches. 

The development team revisited the archetypes associated with schemes from Madden 19 in hopes of providing more flexibility in how teams can be built, and the reduced the XP bonus associated with scheme fits. If a player is not a scheme fit, then their progression will be slightly slower but it will “no longer feel crippling.” I’m not sure this addresses the underlying issue with the system, but we won’t know for sure until we spend more time with it. 

Madden NFL 20 finally brings run-pass option to the game, which also necessitates the creation of some new scheme types. This year’s game introduces three new offensive schemes to the mix. The West Coast Spread is all about keeping defenses on their toes with quick-strike horizontal passes. This attack also opens up running lanes for quarterbacks. The Pistol is a shotgun-based formation that allows attackers to target the weak side of the field with runs or passes. Air Raid is a pass-heavy no-huddle system that requires the quarterback to make quick adjustments at the line of scrimmage. 

Madden 20 also tries to inject more variety into the defensive systems with four new schemes. Coaches who want to slow down attacking offenses can employ the 4-3 Cover 3, which is designed to only allow small gains. Teams who want to pressure the quarterback can try out the 3-4 Storm scheme provided they have speed up front and linebackers who can jump passing routes. Another counter to spread offenses is the 4-3 Quarters, better known as Cover-4. The last new scheme is 3-4 Disguise, which is predicated on confusing the quarterback with symmetrical lineups and disguised concepts. 

Superstar Abilities Embolden The CPU Competition

For too many years, there has been too little player differentiation when playing CPU opponents. Whether you were squaring off against a future hall-of-fame quarterback or a shell-shocked rookie, chances are they would complete a high percentage of short yardage passes and rarely do anything that mimicked the ability of their real-world counterparts. 

“I feel like with franchise, a lot of people just like to play against the CPU and try to crank out Super Bowls and get to the draft and they don’t enjoy playing other people, but it felt like week-to-week there wasn’t a difference between who you played,” Young admits. “You weren’t really that scared about playing Tom Brady and the Patriots.”

This could change with the addition of superstar skills and X-Factor players, which we explore in great depth with this feature. This new pool of more than 70 new abilities isn’t meant to make Madden play like NFL Hitz, but rather accentuate the unique capabilities of the league’s star players. Patrick Mahomes now has unique animations that let him escape the pocket more quickly than his counterparts, as well as new abilities that raise his accuracy throwing on the run and across his body. Tom Brady can diagnose the defense quickly and find the first open target much faster than other quarterbacks. Ben Roethlisberger has a deadly pump-fake that can disrupt your coverages and spring his receivers open. 

The same goes for the other side of the ball. If EA Tiburon succeeds in its goals with this new system, you won’t be able to simply ignore studs like Khalil Mack or Aaron Donald anymore.

The Future of Franchise Mode

Though I still have questions about the scheme fit system, the Scenario Engine and superstar abilities sound like promising steps in the right direction. But will EA Sports continue down this path moving forward, or reverse course and chase a different feature set next year? That danger always exists with sports titles, but Young says he has no plans to neglect franchise mode next year.

“Franchise has come back to being a big focus on the game and it will continue to be,” Young says. “We just want to add this rich depth and immersion to it so we’re starting to think about it more like a sports RPG.”

Madden NFL 20 ships for PS4, Xbox One, and PC on August 2. To learn more about the game, read our in-depth breakdowns of the superstar skills, our discussion about how EA plans to clean up the gameplay bugs from last year, and the new Face of the Franchise career mode.

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