On the 28th April a select number of members from the EA community were invited to attend a webcast to get an early look at some of FIFA 12's new features and put our questions to the team who are making the game.

Upon connecting to the webcast we were greeted by Aaron Mchardy and Santiago Jaramillo who are both game play producers for the FIFA series and I had the pleasure of meeting last year in Vancouver, Canada. We were also joined (off camera) by Romily Broad who was helping take questions and feed them back to Aaron and Santiago.

The webcast started with Aaron informing us of an embargo that did not allow us to mention anything that we saw during the webcast until the 20th May. It was for this reason that I have not posted this until today as if I had mentioned anything that is about to follow I would have been breaking the embargo and I'm pretty sure EA's legal team would have sacrificed me to the Rancor that they keep in their basement.

Onto the stuff that I'm sure you want to read and that we were all waiting eagerly to see. Aaron continued to inform us that he was going to talk mainly about game play as that was the main area that he and Santiago work on but did also point out that he would like to give us a general idea of the direction FIFA was going in as a whole. Aaron said "what we really wanted to achieve this year, as a game as a whole, is we want to make a game that feels really different from FIFA 11. Its change really every area of the game from the boot flow to the final whistle. We've done a lot of changes to the menu, to the presentation, a lot of things happening in game modes around the game but we're not going to tell you about that today." I have to admit at this point I was a little disappointed as I'm a big clubs fan/player and I was hoping to find out more information on clubs but Aaron went on to explain the focus of the webcast would be on game play.

I've been playing FIFA since its first incarnation on the Sega Mega Drive back when I was a kid, but it wasn't until FIFA 08 that I started believing that a video game of a sport I loved could actually start to feel like the real game I played down the park, on the weekend for a local team or even the real sport itself that my heroes such as Andy Cole, Roberto Baggio, Romario, Paolo Schmeichel or Paolo Maldini (who my brother is named after) played week in, week out.

Since playing FIFA 08 I've always been quite vocal in what I wanted from FIFA and last year my voice seemed to have been noticed as I was invited to join the development team in Canada for a FIFA 11 community week and try the early code of the game. Since then I have learned a tough lesson which is do not hype FIFA until it has been out long enough to discover bugs, glitches, potential flaws that can be abused etc after my good feedback to the community was rubbished after a few months of retail release because the game was not the same as the game I had tested. This was not down to EA changing their game itself but the good features such as pro passing being weakened in their finalisation process and the servers being a massive issue in clubs with many unable to play at all. For these reasons I am remaining a little more skeptical about the release of FIFA 12 and what is in store for us in regards to what we'll be playing for a year commencing the October release date (educated guess, nothing confirmed).

I firmly believe that last years FIFA was an evolution of the game but after FIFA 08, FIFA 09, FIFA 10 and FIFA 11 I think it is fair to say we need a larger advance in the game as things such as the pressuring, AI and other key parts of FIFA are still too weak and feel too generic. So when lead producer David Rutter promised a "revolutionary year for FIFA, especially in the game play department." I couldn't help but wonder if this was a marketing campaign or if we potentially had a very interesting game in the making. After seeing the full webcast I now think he is justified in his statement so long as what we saw can be delivered without any major bugs, glitches or exploits slipping through the testing. I will add however that from what I've seen I would not say this game will be revolutionary to football gaming, it will however be revolutionary in how FIFA will be played, if that sounds a little cryptic in a sense then read on.

Back to the webcast, it was after this brief intro that Aaron went on to explain that each year EA's main focus in gameplay is trying to take the key issues that were not so good in the previous years title and improve them, which was more about evolution than revolution. This year however the plan is to create a revolution by making some key changes that will in turn change the way user play FIFA. Aaron continued on to say that he was going to talk about four key features of which three "live together in what they like to call Trinity of gameplay features". The three features that live together are:

Tactical Defending
Precision Dribbling and the
Impact Engine
with the fourth feature being something referred to as Pro Player Intelligence.

Aaron then moved on to explain the first of the four new features which was:

Tactical Defending

Aaron moved into his explanation of tactical defending by saying how in the new system should change the way we think about defending. It has been a long time that the community have complained about the "heat seeking missile defenders" and argued that it lacks skill to defend as the game does the majority of the defending for you. When defending holding down the press and/or secondary press results in the defender going straight at the ball holder and automatically making the attempt to tackle. The argument was that this lacked skill and did not represent the real art of tackling which was largely down to positioning and timing.

On a personal note I've always enjoyed defending but my most satisfying moments are landing a perfect sliding challenge to prevent the ball carrier breaking through the defence and this is largely down to the timing of the tackle.

The good news is that pressing has been removed and replaced with a tracking jockey that Aaron referred to as "contain". When you hold down to press it has been replaced so your player will track the ball carriers run by jockeying at a distance that you adjust with the left analog stick. What I was impressed with was that holding down contain and moving as close as you can to the ball carrier does not result in your player making an attempt to tackle, instead the automated tackle has been replaced with a button press so now you have to time your tackle effectively. Pressing too late may result in missing the tackle altogether or pressing it too early may give the ball carrier too much time to see the tackle coming and step away from the attempted tackle. The secondary press has also been replaced with the new contain system which means if you are using contain with your own player and you bring in the secondary contain instead of preparing a tackle, he will also track the player but will actively look to block off passing options. Essentially the new contain feature puts the realistic art of timing a tackle into FIFA where it was previously automated or as Aaron put it "bringing the skill of real world defending into FIFA".

Unfortunately there was not much talk on how this will affect the pressure abuse in most games but my personal opinion is that it sounds as if it will be a lot harder to apply constant pressure without missing tackles and pulling players out of position. This is something that has always plagued FIFA making defending a rushed action to try and get back on the attack rather than being smart, positioning well and taking the chance to steal the ball at the right moment. Instead FIFA has mainly been about pressing with the secondary press whilst cutting off options with your own defending player, a very basic style of defending that lacked skill.

As a big clubs fan/player I can only imagine how much this will make good defenders a lot more desirable as it will require a lot more skill to be an effective defender who can time challenges well. It will also be great for wing backs as they will need a lot more skill to be able to get forward and do the offensive duties and have the skill to get back and time their tackles well.

One clip we were showed by Aaron showed how mistiming a tackle also opened up a realistic element of the game which was beating defenders through simple dribbling as opposed to having to use skill moves. In the clip we were shown Walcott was running down the wing but getting closer and closer to the sideline and thus running out of space as he has Bale chasing him down from behind and Modric tracking along side. On FIFA 11 it would most certainly ended in a tackle and the ball going out of play or a foul but with the new tackling system Walcott stopped his run and shielded himself against Bale as Modric committed to the tackle missing him entirely. This allowed Walcott to cut in between Modric and Bale and get infield without losing possession. What made this so impressive to watch was it looked like a real bit of football and it showed that the new tackling system allows for more realistic situations that you see in football. Another great detail was that Aaron had beaten two players using Walcott's basic dribbling, something that would rarely happen in FIFA 11 due to the missile like defenders.

Precision Dribbling

With the example of how the new tackling system will effect dribbling it allowed Aaron to move onto the next new feature, precision dribbling. Aaron summarized that the new precision dribbling as "the ability to dribble the ball, maintaining close control when you're in traffic and when you're near the sidelines, as well as giving the ability to shield players and dribble at the same time". Now to me this sounded very similar to what we already have with the current precision dribbling so I did not understand how this differed until I watched a video demonstration. The video showed real life footage of Diaby playing against Blackpool and as he approached the edge of the box he had very little option so he took numerous small touches whilst looking for a viable option. Aaron then pointed out that it was five touches in the space of a yard or two and went on to further point out that if you tried to do this in FIFA 11 at jog speed you'd probably end up on the half way line due to the heavy touches. This also means in FIFA 11 you don't have the ability to take small touches that change your direction in traffic/a congested part of the field without risk of running into an opposition player and losing possession. This in turn has been a key problem area in FIFA as it restricted the creativity of a player in tight situations, yet in real football this is where the best attacking players in the world would shine and it also didn't allow teams like Barcelona to be realistically created due to this being an area of the game where they excel.

The reason why Aaron pointed out this video and the small touches was because he then led onto a video which we saw in FIFA 11's build up where there was a demonstration of the jog speed turn radius followed by the new lower tier speed dribble. With the jog speed you could see that the player had good control but used a space of four to five yards to make all of his turns and twists which as we all know in real football and FIFA is actually a lot of space. Aaron then showed a clip of the newer lower speed dribbling (precision dribbling) which showed a player turning and twisting as he did in the jog speed video, only this time the space used was within a yard which in-game would allow a player a lot more ability to avoid a tackle or to turn his back to a defender allowing him to maintain the ball in a small space. I know this may sound basic but with the new tackling system combined with the ability for a much more precise dribbling could add a whole new depth to maintaining the ball. This will in turn make the pitch seem a lot bigger which was an issue in previous FIFA's as the pitch felt cramped and lacking space. Essentially the combination of potential to miss tackles and a more precise dribbling system should give us the space we have when we play PES which is something that has always been lacking.

Another great advantage of this new system is how it will affect the pace of the game as you will have three tiers of pace and this will be combined with various statistics such as acceleration, sprint speed, ball control etc giving you a very large variation of speed/pace. This opens up a whole new world when it comes to dribbling as you'll be able to use the differing paces to beat players by going from a slow pace to a burst of speed or vice versa. The combination of the two systems (precision dribbling and tactical defending) will also allow you to create time on the ball giving your team mates to make various runs, lose markers or just get up field and give you support when options are lacking, something that never really happened in FIFA 11 as it was more of a case of keeping the ball moving constantly via passing to avoid being tackled by the heat seeking missile defenders.

At this point Santiago added that the precision dribbling system is "very sophisticated and very intelligent so it's based on context and that means we're not really alienating various users. It's not just going to be for the community, the hardcore fans that really know how to use very complicated mechanics with the controller, it's something that when you're asking for it with the left stick it will recognise all these situations and give you a much more intelligent result and really what in your mind you were hoping for". He then further elaborated that the precision dribbling is basically a combination of the games mechanics being a lot smarter in realising what the user is trying to achieve with simple movements of the left analog stick and that when you first play FIFA 12 you will "feel it" right away. He also added that there will be a button command for it too so that the user could use it certain situations when they wanted to which sounds much more like the current "precision dribbling" we have in FIFA 11.

Aaron then went on to talk about the ability to dribble whilst shielding and brought up a real life video of Toni playing against USA for Italy that showed Toni move his back to an American defender as he received a pass and take a few touches as he held the defender off. This gave his team-mates a chance to move up field, giving him options which resulted in him playing a simple pass off to an advancing team-mate, allowing the attack to progress. Aaron then went on to say that in FIFA 11 you had the ability to shield but it was stationary and was largely based on how strong the player you were using was, but if you were weak the option of shielding wasn't really there due to a larger player being able to push you off of the ball which lacked realism.

Aaron then continued to give an example using Berbatov as his subject, explaining that Berbatov is not "the strongest guy in the world but he is able to take these little touches away from pressure just to buy himself some time, without really dribbling, but just knocking it away from the defender, changing his angles, using the dribbling to do those things to buy himself some time on the ball whilst his team-mates jump into the attack and he can find an outlet pass or go on the counter". Aaron then stated that they really wanted to recreate this in FIFA and showed a test bed video of FIFA 12 showing the shielding system in action which looked great and very much like the Toni video he used as an example. He then showed how it could be used by the sideline to maintain possession and hold the ball up which again looked very realistic and organic.

Another use of the precision dribbling and shielded dribbling was then shown in a video entitled "change of pace" which went back on what I was talking about earlier with the three tiers of pace being implemented. The video showed a test bed set up of a player slowing up the play by turning his back on a defending player and as the defending player came in attempting to make his tackle the precision dribbling was used to turn the attempted tackle and then the player explodes out using his sprint into the open space. This was all executed using a change of pace and the new precision dribbling and shielded dribbling which leads me to believe that FIFA 12 should give us a lot more freedom to slow up the play without losing possession so easily, this in turn should have a massive impact on the variety of styles of football that we can play.

Impact Engine

The introduction to the new Impact Engine involved some big statements from Aaron when he said "we've basically taken out a large chunk of our game in our physics engine and put in a completely new one" and added "this is probably the biggest change we've made to our engine since we rebuilt it for the next gen consoles". I personally have got used to hearing comments like "this really will be huge" or "this is the biggest thing in FIFA to date" but for once the big claims actually seem to have some weight behind them as a massive change to the engine of the game like this is always going to have a large impact. Impact Engine in a nut shell is a new physics engine/collision system which is one of the best technical advances that FIFA has had in a long time in my personal opinion.

Aaron began by talking about the motivation behind this change as the collision system on FIFA has always been fairly good with some fantastic animations. The motivation for the change was down to the technical limitations of the old collision system like how to solve things such as a player jumping up to contest a header and going over the back of another player, a mid-air collision during a diving head or a player poking the ball away as a striker shot and how the legs would collide.

The first video that we saw was from FIFA 11 of a player in possession running directly into a standing tackle which resulted in a tackle and the player who was in possession stumbling. The problem we've all seen in FIFA 11 is that this quite often results in an unrealistic stumble rather than an actual collision, especially when two players run right into each other. As we all probably know from playing football, when you run directly into someone it's very rarely that you stumble but instead one of you, depending on the momentum, will end up getting knocked over. In FIFA 11 this never really happened due to the collisions being largely scripted and not understanding the physics of a collision fully, like how a knee makes contact with another knee at the same time that the shoulders collide.

Aaron then moved on to show us a video of the new engine simulating the exact same type of collision only this time the new engine took into consideration all of the points of impact and momentum resulting in the player who was tackled getting knocked backwards due to the impact of the hip, chest and knee. This gives a much more organic and realistic look and feel to the animations as it's based more on rag doll physics style engines than animation triggers.

Aaron continued on to show us a further two little clips, one showing a player stumbling all over the place after making a basic tackle and another of a player clipping right through his tackler and explained these were issues that we've all seen at some point or another. I'd have to agree that I've seen this plenty of times in FIFA 11 and I've always put it down to how difficult it must be to get the right animation/s for so many situations and how difficult it would be to implement rag doll like physics due to a large amount of rebuilding in the engine. The great news of course is that EA have finally gotten around to doing this and it really showed in the following two short clips showing various slide challenges as there was no clipping and a lot more realistic animation/flow.

Santiago also added to what Aaron was saying by explaining that the variety of animations adds a whole new level of depth too as he said "last year you could play FIFA and then after a couple of months you would have seen all the falls and the stumbles that we had in the game, but when you get FIFA 12 because all of these animations are now getting modified in real time and giving you a different result every time then you can be playing FIFA for 8 months and every game there is potential to see something you haven't seen before."

We were then shown another example of how the new engine helps give a more realistic outcome in shielding by being shown a video from FIFA 11 where the ball was being shielded and arms were clipping through each other frantically and even at one point the aggressors head managed to penetrate the defending players shoulder. Aaron explained that this happened because the situation was changing so rapidly that the old engine could not string together animations well enough to prevent this from happening. He then went on to explain that with the new engine the information is being constantly updated and there is a more organic sense of impact which results in more realistic collisions. The video that we saw demonstrating this actually was very impressive as a defender came charging in from behind on a shielding player. Due to his momentum and the better detection of impact the charging player made impact knocking the shielding player over and then his own momentum caused him to fall over too.

The videos of how the impact engine affects the game was then followed up further with Aaron explaining how it can create something that they have been referring to as "unexpected behaviours" which essentially is animations that you would not expect having played previous versions of the FIFA series. This was the video that impressed me the most out of all of the clips we saw, the reason being was it gave a very distinct feeling of the realism/randomness you see in football from game to game. In the video clip it showed Jon Obe Mikel sprinting and Johan Djourou closing him down head on. As the two players near each other for the collision Mikel side stepped and Djourou's leading knee makes contact with both of Mikel's thighs causing his body to flip a full 270 and land on his back. This clip showed that the physics really are a lot more realistic and add a lot more unpredictability to the game which is something that has always been lacking. One thing that Aaron then cleared up is that you won't see "extreme" situations like this all of the time and it was just one random outcome they wanted to show off as it was the kind of challenge you would only see once or twice in a season. The main thing is that it was possible whereas in previous FIFA titles it wouldn't have been which gives the FIFA 12 a lot more potential to have a realistic feel with the anatomy and realism of collisions and physics in general.

Aaron and Santiago followed up to describe how the engine will create a vast variety of animations and how it gives them more time to work on other areas of the game as they will no longer have to go through a long process with engineers and animators to get these realistic outcomes. This can only be a positive step in the development of future FIFA titles, as an engine that improves the game and makes it less time consuming to add such collisions means both improvement in game play and more time to spend tweaking and weaning out bugs and glitches (I hope.... I really really hope!).

At this point Aaron handed over to Santiago to tell us more about "contextual dribble turns". Santiago began to explain how in previous FIFA's it was common to try and dribble in and out of tight spaces due to players attempting to tackle you and how quite often, even if you managed to navigate the ball through the contesting players, the player you were controlling would make contact and go into a stumble animation causing you to lose the possession. With the new impact engine and contextual dribble turns the players now "understand" the context of their collisions and so if they weave the football through two players but get clipped on the leg it won't necessarily result in a free kick and a stumble animation, instead the player will be clipped but will re centre his balance and maintain his run. This is one area in FIFA I think dribbling has always been made to be useless due to the fact you could beat a player but the poor collision detection would almost always end in a foul and stop you breaking away after taking two players out of the play. The example clip we were given was a great example as a defending player attempted a slide tackle as the ball carrier turned, this caused the ball carrier to attempt to jump/hop over the sliding players legs only for his trailing foot to be caught. In previous series this would have resulted in the player going to ground and being given a free kick but in this case, using the impact engine, the player managed to shift his weight to avoid falling over and carried on his run. Essentially it's the addition of contextual dribble turns and the impact engine that allows players to battle through challenges rather than the game being started and stopped every two minutes due to lack of animations for various collisions.

Aaron then said that the last thing he would talk about was "the foundation for the future" and how this new engine is also laying a foundation for future FIFA games as it allows the team to do so much more than they could before implementing it. He then added that they have in fact added a few "cool new things" this year using it, one being "true injuries".

True Injuries

True injuries can be created in FIFA 12 thanks to the new impact Engine. The engine and some new programming allows the understanding of impact magnitudes of every single part of the body, understands joint torque and when things happen how much force it applies on a joint or a limb giving realistic injuries.

In the demonstration clip we saw Torres being tackled by a defender but as the defenders outstretched leg collides with Torres' knee he falls backwards causing his other leg to buckle under his own weight and twist backwards putting a massive amount of torque on his other knee. Instantly after he rights his leg on the floor he rolled back in pain and then leaned in to hold his knee on the floor whilst play went on. He also went on to get up and limp slightly and when this is all plays out in game it really did look genuine and realistic.

With this new system in place collisions can cause injuries all over the body in a realistic manner rather than it being a scripted chance as it seemed to be before.

Another form of injuries that have been added are self injuries. In the clip we were shown of a self inflicted injury the player had run himself down and then as he stretched to reach the ball he suddenly began to limp due to pulling his groin.

Another injury form that has been added is re-injury and in this clip we saw Fabregas wearing a knee brace after just coming back from a knee injury and during a tackle he falls to the floor and re-injures his knee.

Aaron then informed us of something called "push pull" which has been added with the purpose to create better and more realistic battles for possession via pulling and pushing.

Pro Player Intelligence

The final segment of the webcast was about Pro Player Intelligence which is basically an improvement for the AI players. Essentially pro player intelligence is about players knowing who they are playing with, what their strengths are, what their weaknesses are and using that to an advantage.

A good example of this was when we were showed Peter Crouch winning high pass after high pass whilst playing for Tottenham Hotspur against AC Milan in a real match. We were then showed how this is replicated in FIFA 12 with players choosing to cross when Crouch was in the area but when Defoe was in the area instead the cross was not delivered and the ball was recycled.

The dev team are confident this will change the very essence of how the game is played with team mates making decisions based on the type of players they are playing with and the situation itself.

My Personal Thoughts

So after reading all of the information above what are my personal thoughts on how these changes will effect the game?

Well the more and more I think about certain changes the more and more skeptical I become whilst trying to remain positive. Last year I made the mistake of enjoying the beta so much that I never really considered how others may find the experience and I also never really got to play the AI which is FIFA 11's biggest problem short of the servers. This year I really want to see a massive improvement in the AI, servers and Career Mode and these three elements were not actually talked about in the webcast with the exception of the Pro Player Intelligence. I truly hope as more details emerge that we will see that EA have not just focused on the new engine (although this is a massive improvement) and will have spent a good amount of time working on the Career Mode and AI as ATM I find Career Mode to be a shell of it's potential.

My thoughts on how these changes will affect the quality of FIFA 12 are that first of all the new engine will add a whole new level of depth to the natural feel of movement, collisions and general physical feel of the game which can only be a good thing. I'm also feeling very positive about true injuries as this should make Career Mode a much more interesting experience if injuries can resurface and players can injure themselves. The idea of picking a team, knowing it's a massive match and that I have my star striker ready for selection but he's still not 100% recovered from an injury which could potentially result in a long term injury, will make for a very thoughtful process in team selection. Do I put him on the bench and bring him on if I need him? Do I start the match with him and keep an eye on him in case he shows signs of needing to come off? These were the things I never felt like I had to worry about in career Mode before, all I thought was "will this player last the match even if his stamina is very low when the match starts". If I play a tired player this year I know I run the risk of him pulling a hamstring etc This instantly adds a lot more depth to Career Mode and it's these kinds of changes I am looking forward to as they add more depth and realism.

With the single player modes cleared from my head I have some concerns to how containing will work in clubs, will the attack have a much bigger advantage now due to defenders having to time challenges and attacking players having the precision dribbling and new engine working in their favour as they'll be able to weave in and out of player more freely? It'll certainly mean defenders will need to be a lot more skilful and thoughtful in their game and that they will have to practice the element of tackling rather than hoping the game will do it for them as it has done in the past.

On another note my main hope for Clubs this year is the ability to set up your own leagues and tournaments, even if they are unranked, as this would obviously help the FVPA a lot and would make for a fun addition. I'm also very hopeful for creation centre to be implemented into the creating of a club, with the possibility of creating your own club badge and kits as well as allocating squad numbers.

I guess to summarize my thoughts would be to say I am impressed with the decision to push FIFA harder this year by making such drastic changes but I obviously have my concerns that the changes made could also mean a need to re balance the game and leave potential for new exploits. For now though I think FIFA 12 is looking to be a very big change for the series and I hope that EA will deliver the game we've all wanted for quite some time now.

So what do you think about my preview? Please post your feedback below in our Facebook comments and let's see how everybody is feeling


The presentation focused entirely on gameplay changes being made to the series and particularly the key areas of Tactical Defending, Precision Dribbling and the all new Impact Engine. There was a lot of information to take in during the 60 minute presentation and I have a whole six pages of notes to work through as I write up my version of events to share with you. There were a number of times during the presentation that I was simply wowed by what I had seen; the development that has taken place in the six months since the release of FIFA 11 is considerable. However, I should add that what we saw was still in the early stages of development and things are often changed or toned down long before the game hits the shelves.

Tactical Defending

Where to start? I know I wasn't alone in being frustrated with defending in FIFA 11 and those that came before it. It was all too easy to hold down the 'press' button and allow your player to 'home in' on the opponent and then run straight through him and steal the ball. Well, it appears that that is all about to change with the introduction of Tactical Defending.

The big development with Tactical Defending is that the familiar 'press' button has been changed to a 'contain' button and allows your player to track the run of your opponent (although a little too accurately for our liking) whilst allowing you to choose the distance between your player and the opponent. The standing tackle is no longer a foregone conclusion and now requires a well-timed button press similar to the sliding tackle. What EA are telling us is that this should make for a more tactical defensive game where you feel good about making a saving tackle and where the game is engaging for the full 90 minutes even when the score is 0-0.

Not only will the human-controlled players have to time their tackles but the CPU-controlled players will have to as well. We saw a gameplay video where Walcott stopped on the ball to evade a tackle from Bale and was able to side step the tackle and burst in to space because Bale was already committed. Tactical defending is not only good for defending but opens up the play and allows attackers to take on defenders in a way that isn't possible in FIFA 11. It will also still be possible to call a second man in to press the player with the ball but this time, instead of two-players homing in on the ball, they will work together, blocking off the options whilst containing and closing in on the ball.

It's very difficult to judge from some short gameplay videos but Tactical Defending appears to solve many of FIFA 11's problems by making tackling as much a part of the game as shooting, by taking away the automatic pressing of attackers and by allowing attackers to run at defenders and evade their tackles. This is a very promising development and one I look forward to getting my hands on when I visit EA's offices in Guildford on the 31st May .

Precision Dribbling

The second big change we were taken through during the presentation comes under the heading of 'precision dribbling' and though it wasn't explained as such, it looks to be an advancement of FIFA 11's 'skilled dribbling'. Currently in FIFA we generally have two player speeds; jogging and sprinting. What Precision Dribbling does is adds a third, slower, speed where the player in control of the ball takes many smaller and closer touches on the ball. All players will have the ability to use this new speed however some will be better at it than others.

Precision dribbling has many uses all over the pitch and the closer control will allow you to 'explore' more of the pitch without fear of a hefty touch knocking the ball out of play. Probably the best example we saw was how the new dribbling could be used by a striker to hold up the play whilst keeping the ball just out of reach of the defender. Shielding no longer relies simply on a players strength to hold off opponents but also, and maybe more so, his ability to keep close control of the ball.

Want to recreate a Messi style run through the defence? Well maybe, just maybe, it will be possible in FIFA 12 as you have the ability to change pace from dribbling to jogging to sprinting with ease. Precision dribbling combined with the new defensive mechanics should give that much more time and space to the attacker to choose his pass or make his run.

New Impact Engine

By far the most impressive development in my opinion was the incredible new impact engine. EA have removed some of the game code that made animations feel clunky and unrealistic and replaced it with an all new frame-by-frame animation engine in what was described as the biggest change since the game was redesigned for the next-gen consoles.

For those familiar with 'rag-doll' physics, this is the football equivalent where player collisions (and injuries) are analysed on a limb-by-limb basis and the resulting animation is fantastically life like. In FIFA 11 when two players collided the game had to decide whether a collision had taken place and either play an animation or not, often with the clattered player stumbling along for a few seconds. Player collisions in FIFA 12 will be organic in that the outcome animation is determined by the type, direction and speed of impact. We were shown a number of examples and each one looked realistic and believable e.g. a player shoved in the back while shielding the ball will fall on his front, a player body checked by another player will fall flat on his back, the resulting animation from a heavy side tackle will show the rotational momentum of the player as he falls to the ground whilst a rash high tackle may even result in a player being somersaulted through the air.

The new engine not only affects the animations but also allows players to be more resilient on the ball; if your player takes a slight knock whilst running with the ball he won't necessarily fall to the ground but instead may stumble a little and be able to continue. If two players impact then the collision is shared, both will be affected in some way based on which limbs contacted which other limbs. The game should be able to flow better; where before there was a definite outcome for every impact the result now is dynamic and contextual and the players will actively try to avoid collisions using 'avoidance detection'.

I touched on it briefly above that injuries will also be affected by the new engine; a tackle that results in "too much torque on the knee" will result in a knee injury. Players with existing injuries, or recovering from injury are more likely to get re-injured and injuries can also occur off the ball if you work your players too hard. Should you rest your star player or risk him? These kind of decisions will be more common place and if you make a bad call and he does pick up a recurring injury then he'll be sure to let you know as he shows his frustration and signals to the bench.

During the presentation we had the opportunity to raise questions and there were a lot of these related to the new impact engine. Will all the hard tackles resulting in dramatic tackle animations e.g. somersaults? No, these will be contextual. Will there be more injuries because of the new animations? Not more injuries but the injuries will be more true to life. How well will the new tackle animations be refereed? The referees will be intelligent enough to know when a foul has occurred and the new animations should result in less free kicks as small niggly tackles will occur less frequently which should also result in less cards being handed out.

There's More

The presentation might only have been 60 minutes long but there was a massive amount of content covered. I'll try to wrap the rest up fairly briefly and if you have any questions or would like me to expand on anything then I'll do what I can.

Last years AI was something of a let down for me, particularly when playing as a single player offline i.e. BAP style. The good news is that AI intelligence has been taken to the next level, every player now as an extra layer of awareness; the ability to know their own ability and the ability of their team mates. This helps the player to make better decisions and gives a greater variety in CPU player decisions. An example of this was given using the aerial threat trait; in the first video a winger chose to cross the ball to Peter Crouch, knowing that he is good at winning the ball in the air, but in a second video David Villa was switched in for Crouch and the winger chose to hold the ball up instead of get the early cross in, all other variables were identical. The CPU should no longer play so predictably and it should feel more like playing against a human player.

The decisions made by the CPU players are also affected by a new 'vision map'. Not all players have the same field of vision and are able to make the same decisions/passes as quickly. You may recall 'that' Arsenal goal against Barcelona in the Champions League this season, well EA tried to recreate it. With Fabregas in midfield he has the vision to see the run from Nasri and release the ball early but by switching Fabregas for someone else the chance has gone before the pass can be made. Player selection will be much more important and there will be advantage in choosing players to suit the team you are facing and the type of players they have.

Finally, you'll be pleased to know that gameplay is not all that is being worked on this year. We have no details as yet on game modes such as Career Mode or Clubs but there are fundamental changes made to other aspects of the game as well, including presentation, menus and lighting. We are also advised that all of these new features will be included in the PC version of FIFA 12 and this is backed up by recent news that David Rutter is the producer for the PC version of the game this year in addition to the PS3 and Xbox 360.

I really hope you've enjoyed reading my insight in to the FIFA 12 developments as there'll be more to come once I've played the game at the beginning of June! FIFA 12 is being heralded a revolution and not simply an evolution of FIFA 11; based on what we have seen so far it is certainly on the right tracks though there is still a long way to go between now and the game hitting the shelves. Feel free to ask me questions either here or on Twitter (@leemeadowcroft on Twitter) and though I can't promise to answer them all I'll do what I can.