EA has dropped its first major Campus Huddle Deep Dive since the initial reveal ofCollege Football 25. The Sights and Sounds Deep Dive is presented by Senior Game Designer Christian Brandt. The core idea during development was that “Every team is someone’s favorite team”, which created the focus on the presentation in the game. The goal was to provide as much detail, sights, sounds and traditions for each of the 134 FBS schools that will be in College Football 25. This Deep Dive serves as a behind-the-scenes on how the implementation happened. There is also a link to an interview with Art Director Richard Burgess-Dawson below as he worked on the motion capture. You can watch the Deep Dive videohere.
Pre-Gaming
EA has been providing an example of the moment Michigan had to call a timeout at Penn State a few years ago. Since Brandt is a Penn State alum, this checks out. The key takeaway is that the development team wants to replicate these moments and it starts with the team run outs. They wanted to replicate the energy, the visuals and the immersion that comes from being down on the field when players run out of the tunnel. Throughout the game, the cameras will stay up close to players, including the run outs.
Motion capture plays and important role as capturing the accuracy and detail of every single prop ranging from historical items to new traditions needed to be implemented. Every single prop was built to its accurate size and weight. It was then mocapped in a studio, which then allowed real people to interact with them. The team did not want to just use stand-in objects. The hill at Clemson and Howard’s Rock were all recreated, so a 2-story structure was needed to replicate the run out.
Other traditions that were mocapped in and recreated include the Notre Dame stairs, Purdue’s rotating bass drum, tear through banners that were replicated with mocapping pool noodles to create the effect, and much more. Even the Florida Gator head was mocapped to correct proportions for their walkout. This also includes mascots as there will be 50 total mascots that includes 10 real animals. The Texas Hook-Em will get the “follow me eyes” and the Stanford tree will change every year. Animal mascots that age will be included, as well. Players can also expect the “New Era” traditions that includes turnover and touchdown props.
On-Field Immersion
Local venues were visited to help recreate each stadium in College Football 25 as accurately as possible. For schools that were further out, reference materials were sent that included an average of 1,000 photos each from 80 different schools. Stadium updates will be a thing post-launch as the team receives new architecture and designs from schools. A specialized stadium toolkit allowed the team to develop all of the essential structures in record time. This enabled the artists to craft unique architectural details and real-time lighting effects for a visually stunning experience. They were able to complete 150 stadiums with one single production cycle.
Interview With EA Sports College Football 25’s Art Director
We sit down for a question-and-answer session with the Art Director behind EA Sports College Football 25.
Uniforms were also created with a new toolset since 134 schools have various uniform combinations plus the fact that the University of Oregon simply just exists. The details for the uniforms include the actual type of cloth material used, stitching patterns, colors, extra patches, stripes, logos, names and numbers. This also includes uniforms not yet used such as UCF’s Space U uniforms. The team was able to get the calendar dates and things ahead of time, so also expect these in Dynasty Mode on the selected dates.
The Emotional Soundscape has been a project for over two seasons. ESPN worked with EA to capture audio straight from broadcasts and this includes the 2022 OT game between LSU and Alabama. Crowd noise was captured from 41 games in locations including Oregon State, Georgia, FSU, Duke, UCLA, Texas, West Virginia, Georgia Tech, Miami, Ole Miss, Missouri, Kentucky, NC State, UNC, USC, Florida, Auburn, Clemson and more. Fight songs were recorded in Nashville from featured producer Torsten Staley. Bands also comprised of previous students from various university bands. Players can expect over 180 school band songs that includes all 134 fight songs.
Stadiums will also have crowd themes including the checkerboard from Tennessee and Penn State’s White out. There are over 170 different patterns for schools and these will also match the calendar dates in Dynasty. Players can also expect Dynamic Attendance, so if the team is suffering, so will attendance. Stadiums will also have dedicated sections and those with props will also be seen. Fans will also show hand signals for their specific universities.
Television Presentation
Gameday broadcasts will come with the option of two commentary teams. When there is a Game of the Week in Dynasty, Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit will call the game. This also includes Conference Championships, the College Football Playoff and the National Championship. The other games will have a three-man booth with Rece Davis, Jesse Palmer and David Pollack. Both teams are selectable in Play Now and have recorded 68,000+ lines of dialog, which took over 870 hours.
College Football 25 will be bringing Studio Updates from around the country that will be hosted by long-time ESPN Studio Host Kevin Connors. He will jump into the game and call out national upsets, scores pertaining to your conference or updates on rivals. These occur both in offline and online Dynasty, which sounds cool to hear a score update from someone else in your Dynasty. Championship Celectrations will be a part of the game as each trophy was built from scratch as it matches the weight and dimensions of the real trophies.
Picture-in-Picture
Game flow is important and EA has dialed in to provide useful information during each game. A new look and feel to the game will be streamlined via a PIP Dynamic Playcall experience. With assistance from team members Chris Husein and Alejandro Thornton, dozens of layouts were tested and with this design, important information pertaining to the situation and the game will be displayed. When a play is done, the screen shrinks to the top left corner for replays and pageantry to be displayed. Playbooks can be navigated at this time but important updates will be in the upper right hand corner.
The information to be displayed will be stat comparisons that include the current game, season, career, vs Last Week and Vs Opponent as well as current Impact Players, Player Rankings in stats from around the country, Rankings in conference, media and potential playoff brackets, Wear and Tear, Kicker range and much more. There are over 400 panels that will keep each game, and furthermore your Dynasty, more involved.
College Football 25 will launch on July 19 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. Users can pre-order the Deluxe Edition now or the EA SPORTS MVP Bundle that includes Madden NFL 25 and gain three days early access. Gamestop is also offering the Collector’s Edition of the game that includes a football, locker and jersey for College Football 25.
EA Sports College Football 25
The first entry in EA’s series since 2013’s NCAA Football 14, EA Sports College Football 25 is a sports sim that focuses on realistically capturing the college football scene.
