FIFA 18 Career Mode: EA Sports Announces New Features

One of the most intriguing aspects of any sports video game is career mode. These modes give you a chance to guide your own path as a player in a major sports league, or as the general manager of your favorite team.

One of the most intriguing aspects of any sports video game is career mode. These modes give you a chance to guide your own path as a player in a major sports league, or as the general manager of your favorite team. EA Sports’ FIFA franchise is no exception, and the newest iteration of the game, FIFA 18, has a career mode that’s getting quite an overhaul once the new game drops. What can you look forward to once the time comes for you to manage your favorite soccer club and take it to the top of your respective league?


Transfers System Has Been Revamped

According to a report from goal.com, FIFA 18 will come with a new transfers system, as the game will now allow you to acquire top players or re-sign existing stars by negotiating with players, clubs, managers, and even player agents. As they describe it, this could theoretically mean you, as the manager of Arsenal or Liverpool, for instance, could negotiate with Manchester United’s Jose Mourinho and talk about acquiring one of his players, before you run the deal by the player’s agent. Or if you want to automate the process, you can have your assistant handle the negotiations, while you focus on setting lineups and doing the other things a manager is expected to do. It’s a more in-depth, realistic approach to signing players, and one of the key changes to debut on FIFA 18’s Career Mode.

Aside from the more realistic negotiation system, the game will also make transfer announcements splashier, as billboards and press conference will herald your new signing and reveal him to media and your fans. All this takes place in real-time, so with that alone, one can say that the transfer system has come a very long way in just one year’s time.


Introducing: The Decision Wheel

Just like what you may be familiar with in the Journey mode, Career Mode will now come with cutscenes powered by the Frostbite engine, and these cutscenes come with interactive decision wheels. You will use these decision wheels to talk to various movers and shakers in the world of association football — as we mentioned, these may include managers, owners, agents, and the players themselves. The wheels will allow you to submit offer fees, select optional conditions and clauses, and pretty much set up your contract offer so you can start talking turkey with the opposing manager.

According to EA, the AI has also been improved, and that should allow opposing managers to “engage with dynamic and varied responses.” Without a doubt, they’ll be out to make sure they don’t come away with the short end of the stick, so be prepared to play hardball in FIFA 18’s Career Mode and test your negotiating mettle with the best of the best!


What We Think Of The Changes

As you can see, we’re quite pleased to see that EA has listened to fan critiques suggesting that Career Mode has seen better days and needs a little spiffing up. It’s going to be equal parts fun and frustrating, we’d wager, as you can’t expect to acquire a top name like Romelu Lukaku (as featured by EA in the official screenshots) so easily unless you’re willing to come to a compromise. And while all you get are text transcriptions of what each character is saying, complaining about the lack of voice acting is nitpicking. Maybe that’s something we can look forward to on future versions, but we’re already pumped up as it is for FIFA 18’s Career Mode that we can overlook some of the minor omissions.