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EA Sports' Cam Weber even admitted that the commentary in recent years has sucked.
"It was a painful cycle for commentary," Weber admitted.
This year, we've been told to expect something that looks and sounds a lot more like televised football. Not only do the presentation designers on Madden NFL 13 have a better handle on the commentary engine, they benefit from a duo that did work together in recording a lot of their audio. "No dead air," was a mantra the Madden production team repeated, and the banter between Nantz and Simms that EA Sports showed appears to sereve that purpose.
They give a variety of introductions, not just for the time of the season, or of the round of the postseason, but in capturing that game's particular story. The same team could be introduced as a divisional rival in one game, the franchise for a hot new quarterback in another, or a contender battling for a playoff spot in a third.
Moreover, you will see Nantz and Simms on screen in Madden NFL 13. Not only that, their background will be specific to the broadcast booth location in each NFL stadium. (Candlestick Park's long grandstand and the deep, shadowed angle behind it, was behind them in one shot.) While not motion-captured per se, the two were filmed in a variety of pre-game studio discussions that were then rendered into Madden—so it is not a straight cinematic, either. We saw only a single brief clip but I got the feeling that their on-screen dialog is necessarily generic, before transitioning to off-camera specifics about the two teams on the field.
The two will banter mid-game, too—we saw a clip where Nantz teased Simms, the former New York Giants quarterback, about the position, playing to the stereotype of it as a self-centered role.
This year, we've been told to expect something that looks and sounds a lot more like televised football. Not only do the presentation designers on Madden NFL 13 have a better handle on the commentary engine, they benefit from a duo that did work together in recording a lot of their audio. "No dead air," was a mantra the Madden production team repeated, and the banter between Nantz and Simms that EA Sports showed appears to sereve that purpose.
They give a variety of introductions, not just for the time of the season, or of the round of the postseason, but in capturing that game's particular story. The same team could be introduced as a divisional rival in one game, the franchise for a hot new quarterback in another, or a contender battling for a playoff spot in a third.
Moreover, you will see Nantz and Simms on screen in Madden NFL 13. Not only that, their background will be specific to the broadcast booth location in each NFL stadium. (Candlestick Park's long grandstand and the deep, shadowed angle behind it, was behind them in one shot.) While not motion-captured per se, the two were filmed in a variety of pre-game studio discussions that were then rendered into Madden—so it is not a straight cinematic, either. We saw only a single brief clip but I got the feeling that their on-screen dialog is necessarily generic, before transitioning to off-camera specifics about the two teams on the field.
The two will banter mid-game, too—we saw a clip where Nantz teased Simms, the former New York Giants quarterback, about the position, playing to the stereotype of it as a self-centered role.
You can read more about the new commentary stylings of Nantz and Simms over at Kotaku.