The Madden 24 news onslaught began today with the announcement that Josh Allen will be the Madden NFL 24 cover athlete. (Another topic of discussion would be where Josh Allen now goes in the rankings of a real player who is even more evil in a video game — would probably place somewhere behind Vick and Lamar Jackson but ahead of Vince Young.) Along with that news, EA posted its first Gridiron Notes going through the schedule for what’s to come and giving some high level bullet points for what the team is touting for this year. Plus, we have the beta likely starting tomorrow, so people will potentially be playing the game in less than 24 hours.
Madden 24 Highlights
There’s plenty to read today all across the internet as EA had its first preview event last week ahead of this announcement today. We also highlighted some of the high-level items EA is touting in today’s cover athlete announcement. That said, in terms of things that will interest most members of this community, a couple things stand out from the news released so far.
Cross-Play With A Catch
The long-rumored cross-play addition has finally come to fruition. We thought we might get it last year, but it’s now here, but there is one big exception. Franchise mode will not have cross-play enabled. So while you can play H2H, MUT, Superstar KO, and Superstar Showdown against other platforms, we will still have franchise mode separated by platform. This hurts more because of the next note.
PC And Next-Gen Consoles Will Be The Same
From the sounds of it, everything with the PC and next-gen console versions will finally be equal. People will talk about features here, but really this is about gameplay to me. It’s nice to hear that certain gameplay elements will no longer only be on “next-gen” consoles and not PCs. The next step for EA here would be to make sure all platforms can share rosters and such that are posted via the Share feature, but I don’t think that will be here this year. And as previously mentioned, it’s a bummer that we won’t be able to play in cross-platform franchises.
Gameplay Bits
Since the beta is starting so soon, we won’t have long to wait to really get a feel for what’s going on here with gameplay this year, but it’s worth noting that EA seems to be expanding on features from last year. Skill-Based Passing 2.0 is here, and it’s nice to see EA sticking with a passing system for multiple years for once. Hit Everything 2.0 sounds like a way to refine how you decide to tackle a player, so this will be interesting to see what that really means in practice.
Other than that, AI is being hyped up, which is always exciting but always comes with the caveat of “try it for yourself” to really see what that means.
Sapien Technology?
Look, it actually does sound useful in terms of creating more body types in the game, but I just want to call it out as being one of the silliest names I’ve heard for a feature.
Franchise Mode
From the looks of the bullet points and what’s been said in other articles around the internet today, it more seems like EA is focusing on “quality of life” improvements in various areas rather than blowing out one specific portion of the mode to make it better. We’ll see if that’s enough to satiate folks, but it does seem like people in online franchises and people who like customizing their franchises will make out the best so far.
In terms of elements being hyped, restructuring contracts, a better relocation process, and having six trade slots are the biggest points of intrigue off the field. A lot of these improvements will come down to whether the AI can use these new elements properly, and if the AI can put together a solid roster with the salary cap on, which has been a big problem in the past.
I also want to call out mini-games as EA is really pushing them here. There’s good early buzz on these, but at the same time, it’s not Madden 04 anymore. I hope they’re a good time and play some role in franchise mode, but I hope they’re not the main way of leveling your players and all that.
Superstar Mode
Lastly, I do want to at least mention Superstar mode just to point out it seems Face of the Franchise is gone. Face of the Franchise was never good, in fact it was generally always the worst part of the game. We’ll see how Superstar mode tweaks the “career mode” formula, but I have a hard time believing it’s worse than Face of the Franchise because not much could be.
Refs Are Back
Oh right, REFS ARE BACK. Look, is this the classic case of something being gone for many years and then being a small hype point just because it’s now back? Yes. But also, refs are back on the field.
