Developer Electronic Arts has officially revealed EA Sports FC 25. Of course, we’ve known this was coming for at least a few days now since the team dropped the cover for the Ultimate Edition earlier this week. That said, the big reveal included much more than just the cover. We also got our first look at some of the changes coming to several fan-favorite modes in EA Sports FC 25, including Career Mode. Additionally, ComicBook recently spoke to a few EA FC 25 developers to get the lowdown on some of the more intriguing Career Mode changes, including the addition of Live Start Points.
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Live Start Points are a new way for players to dive into Career Mode with a ready-made story. For example, if the feature was in FC 24, you might’ve seen a Start Point during the end of the season with Liverpool challenging you to go win the Premier League with the squad one last time before Jurgen Klopp retires. EA will be updating these Start Points throughout the year, giving you dynamic ways to kick off a new save. Importantly, these don’t end after a certain date. We spoke with game design director Pete O’Donnell and producer Andreas Wilsdorf and they made it clear that you can continue a Live Start save well into the future just like a normal Career Mode save. However, NBA 2K fans might be disappointed to learn that, at least for FC 25, you won’t be able to dip back into soccer’s past and play previous seasons like you can in the basketball sim.
That said, the team is introducing Icon Player Careers. With this, players can select a fan-favorite Icon and put them into the modern day. Again, you can’t go back and recreate their career exactly, but you can take David Beckham, put him on current-day Manchester United, and see what he does. At launch, only a few Icons will be available, but more will be added throughout the season, potentially as part of the new connected Season Pass Career Mode now shares with Ultimate Team and Clubs.
EA FC 25 is also adding a new simulation difficulty to Career Mode. Essentially, this means that your CPU opponent will now learn your tactics and dynamically change its plans to counteract what you do. We made sure to ask O’Donnell and Wilsdorf if this would lead to every team feeling similar as they try to adjust to the player, but they assured us that the computer is also taking into account the matches it plays against other CPU teams and its coach’s general strategy to keep each team feeling slightly different. As Wilsdorft said in our interview, “The Tiki Taka Spain plays is slightly different than Germany’s Tiki Taka. It was like two totally different styles of football.” Plus, you’ll now have further control over Career Mode customization. If you want to turn off Manager Rating, you can. Want to make it even more difficult? That’s in there too, along with several other welcome customization options.
Those are the biggest changes to the mode, but far from the only ones. The new Rush gameplay mode is incorporated in the form of the Youth Academy. For the first time, players can play games with their youth team, testing them out before bringing them into the first team. O’Donnell and Wilsdorf also both talked about improvements in Youth Academy scouting. There are now 160 nations to scout and players will notice different types of players coming from different regions. Using your real-world knowledge of the sport, you’re able to better scout player types based on where they most often come from in the real world. EA FC 25 is also adding women’s soccer to Career Mode, putting it on parity with the men’s game.ย
EA Sports FC 25 launches on September 27th for PlayStation, Switch, Xbox, and PC platforms. If you purchase the Ultimate Edition, you can hop in seven days early on September 20th.
