NHL 25, the 34th edition of the NHL video game series from Electronic Arts, is available to purchase and play today.
The game has undergone significant changes from years past, including new ICE-Q Technology, Reactive Animations, and a complete overhaul to Franchise Mode.
The Hockey News spoke to EA Senior Creative Director Mike Inglehart and Senior Producer Chris Haluke during Early Access to discuss the changes to the game and what the development process is like.
ICE-Q is the signature addition to the game, it includes skating improvements, a completely redone AI system, new reactive actions, and skill-based one-timers.
The changes to skating include Next-Gen Vision Control, when active it allows offensive and defensive players to stay locked on the net front. The overall game speed has been slowed in comparison to previous games in order to allow for more creative hockey plays and less reliance on speed boosts.
Changes were made to two of the game’s most popular online modes, Hockey Ultimate Team and World of Chel, adding a new Wildcard Mode in HUT and incorporating new Live Events in WoC in hopes of attracting new players.
“The idea is to invite more players into Hockey Ultimate Team because if you join HUT in January, February, even December sometimes the arms race is so far gone its hard for players to jump in and get a chance to play,” said Inglehart
Wildcard Mode is a new salary cap based mode that can be played online or offline, it replaces HUT Rush from previous games. Live Events will be challenges with unique rulesets that require less time commitment than traditional club games.
This is the first installment of the series that is only available on new generation consoles, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, which helps improve the technology the developers have to work with. It will also helps players with load times and improved graphics, which will be evident in the Next-Gen Characters.
A longstanding complaint in the community has been the baffling decisions made by AI teammates, NHL 25 is working to address those concerns in two ways. including a new totally rebuilt AI system.
“Our AI historically has been inconsistent, its been trying to do too much, one of the real efforts this year was to have our AI do things more consistently,” said Inglehart
“The idea was to allow players the chance to execute more passes, take more control of the offensive zone, move the puck around the way a fan who comes to our game expects to and in a way that feels authentic.”
More intelligent AI working with the new Reactive Actions will minimize collisions between players and ideally lead to less clutter in scoring areas.
Additionally, the AI allowing for more offensive space, the new skilled based one-timers, and slower game speed should lead to a different goal scoring experience than NHL 24.
Perhaps the biggest overhaul in NHL 25 is to Franchise Mode. The fan-favorite mode that allows players to take control of any NHL team or manage their own custom league is now more immersive with the addition of contract clauses, players conversations, and in-depth stat tracking.
While discussing the difficulties of making changes while on a yearly development cycle Haluke noted there is a point in the year where the team is working on three games at once, further stating, “If we could we would refresh modes on a yearly basis, we have to make sure we’re listening to the community and that we’re prioritizing on our side simply because of the team size.”
When asked if they had ever considered moving the franchise to a two or three year cycle as opposed to a yearly release Mike and Chris stated they are always exploring what is best for the product and business model but that their focus remains on NHL 25, acknowledging they approach in-game changes from a multi-year development standpoint.
Related: New NHL 25 1.1.0 Patch Notes
Ultimately it is up to the player to determine how successful these changes are, but EA expects the fluidity to translate throughout the game, “Skating, the AI, and the Reactive Actions were designed to work together, as people play more you’ll notice the nuances… and I think you’re going to see more good hockey, you won’t be fighting the game as opposed to playing it anymore,” said Inglehart.
The NHL 25 Standard Edition is available for $89.99 CAD on the PlayStation and Xbox stores and wherever games are sold.
Check back with us tomorrow for a complete review of NHL 25.
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