Madden NFL 24 Gameplay Deep Dive Shows How EA Is Changing the Game

Madden NFL 24 was officially unveiled a few weeks ago when EA Sports gave us our first look at the game in action and announced that Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen would be the cover athlete. Today, EA has pulled the curtain back even further, giving fans a deep dive into this year’s gameplay. As we detailed in our hands-on preview, some of these additions have the potential to be game-changing in Madden NFL 24, at least if you’re playing on a next-gen console or PC.

That’s probably the more important thing to note about this deep dive. If you’re on an Xbox One or PS4, you won’t have access to FieldSense, Sapien technology, or any of the associated benefits. That doesn’t mean it’s just a roster update, but the improvements will be more limited. FieldSense has the potential to move the game forward as a simulation of football in a few important ways, most notably in how the team is handling foundational football. In our preview, we noted that run blocking seemed much improved, and this deep dive explains that in more detail by discussing how AI blockers better match up with defenders before the snap and explaining how the Hit Everything system has been implemented to make things like chip blocks and double teams more realistic.

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Hit Everything has actually been expanded as well to provide more variety in pass break-ups, contested catching, and general tackling. In fact, Madden NFL 24 has added more than 1,700 new tackle animations which should mean that every hit feels a bit more realistic. After all, the more tackle animations they can put in the game, the less frequently you’ll see them, which means they’ll feel much less like canned animations. They’ve also introduced changes to route running to filter out the slow-down and speed-up we saw in the past and have implemented upgrades to the passing system to allow QBs to perform Jump and Dive passes. The worry here is that you’ll see something that’s done rarely in real life happening all the time, but hopefully, EA can get the balance right on those throw types.

The final major change mentioned in the deep dive is the new Sapien skeleton technology. EA has fully overhauled its skeletons for Madden NFL 24, which will extend across all of its games. Considering it has been years since we’ve had new skeletons, this is going to make animations look more fluid across the board, improving Madden in ways you might not immediately notice.

For a full list of notes from the deep dive, check the official site. Madden NFL 24 comes to PlayStation, Xbox, and PC platforms on August 18.