Player model/animation revamp

[kingsofthevalley]

Across all of EA's sports titles I've ever played, their player models always have a stiff android feel to them. There's something wrong that I can't quite put my finger on and it takes away from immersion. UFC, NHL, Madden (I want to say FIFA, but I haven't played that with any consistency) all lack a "human" element in the animations/transitions, etc.

Even with this years Madden, which I'm generally enjoying, the player movement has seen some attention to detail (when it comes to locomotion, turn radius, etc), but there's STILL something off about the player models and how they animate.

Any developers out there that can speak specifically to this? Any other opinions of course welcome as well. What say you all?

[CM Hooe]

Basically all of EA's big releases nowadays - not just the EA Sports lineup of FIFA, Madden, NHL, and Rory McIlroy, but also Battlefield, Star Wars Battlefront, Star Wars Squadrons, Anthem, Need For Speed - run on the same tech, that being Frostbite.

I assume Frostbite requires one particular keyframe animation data format, has one way it does animation interpolation, has one way it does inverse kinematics, has one way of doing general physics and collisions, has one way it does fun things like cloth physics and soft body physics, and so on.

This is probably the biggest reason that the general "feel" of the EA games is so similar.

Interestingly, UFC 4 does not use Frostbite, but apparently that's changing for the next game in the series.