The crucial thing to take away from this change is that more points of animation, and more available animations, allow for more to happen, so an example given was from FIFA 17 where 2 players of differing height running alongside each other would still touch the ground with their feet at the same time, each stride in tandem, obviously wrong. The comparison from FIFA 18 showed Messi running alongside Pique with Messi’s feet touching the turf more often which seems obvious enough and simple enough but it’s a tech advancement that will bring some really positive changes. With animation cycles being shorter you’ll be able to “change your mind” quicker, because there’s now an animation to actually play out what you’re trying to achieve, whereas previously you’d make a decision, start an animation cycle and pretty much be stuck with it until there was an opportunity to break out of it.
That running example might seem like a small one, but it’s part of a bigger system that will hopefully allow us to see players able to deal with situations they weren’t able to previously, things I could reference positively were players taking the ball out of the air defensively in a much more natural way with high blocks and certainly more occurences of players intercepting balls running past them. Think of all the times your defender has stuck a leg out only to see the pass find its intended target anyway, I saw a lot more instances of players being able to intercept passes that would run past them in FIFA’s gone by. One last example I can think of seeing the new animations shine is with chips shots whilst running, I scored an absolutely beautiful little dink over an onrushing Oblak with a first time chip that I’d have never gotten away with before.
The new animations also allow for better trapping in tight areas, a new half tackle that somewhere between standing and sliding, sharper dribbling without the need for modifiers, it felt pretty nice to run at people with nippier players and EA noted that no touch dribbling had been tuned but to be honest, I still won’t use it.