Yesterday, EA Tiburon finally revealed this year’s new Madden football game, aptly titled Madden NFL 20. While the initial announcement mainly focused on Kansas City Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes being a cover star, the new career campaign to replace Longshot, and improvements to franchise mode, it also teased one other interesting new mechanic that directly impacts moment to moment gameplay: Superstar X-Factors.
While this feature’s title may sound arcadey, in execution it’s mainly meant to embellish the best players in the league in order to make them actual feel like either a threat to face or an advantage on your team. There will be over 50 Superstar X-Factor players in Madden NFL 20, and they will have access to both Zone and Superstar abilities. Zone abilities are described by the developers as ” once-a-season moments that only the league’s best can pull off;” meanwhile, “superstar abilities are traits that are unique to some of the most talented players that you see each and every game.”
In an interview with Game Informer, Madden NFL 20 Creative Director Mike Young explained the thought process behind this mechanic a bit more. He sees it as a way to transcend players that sometimes make great Quarterbacks like Tom Brady or other excellent players not the best to use As Mike Young sees the NFL as “a star-driven league” after last season, in terms of the best players he wants to “give them very unique things based on their archetype.”
These Superstar abilities will be available for great defensive players like Khalil Mack as well, so things hopefully shouldn’t always be unbalanced. Mike Young says this feature has made “made a lot more teams a lot more interesting to play” across modes like Play Now, Franchise, and Ultimate Team. For those still uneasy about this new feature in concept, the development team will be showing it off in a livestream on Thursday, May 9 at 7pm EST.
In fact, they will also be holding other livestreams to highlight many of Madden NFL 20’s new features, with the full livestream schedule being available on the series’ official website. You can check out the first screenshots for the game below. Madden NFL 20 is poised to hit PC, PS4, and Xbox One on August 2 and can be pre-ordered on Amazon.
The post Madden NFL 20 Features Superstar X-Factors to Give the NFL’s Best Players Special Abilities by Tomas Franzese appeared first on DualShockers.