The delayed Madden 25 trailer released earlier today, and I think it’s fair to say it was met with a collective “that’s it?” feeling overall. Whenever something gets postponed, it sets up unrealistic expectations, and that mixed together with many of us already playing the Madden 25 beta means this trailer was sort of doomed to underwhelm.
We did not get any other deep dives today, so we’re just left with a light hype trailer that to the untrained eye mostly looks like Madden gameplay from any other year. The biggest way to realize it was not gameplay from last year was the new kickoff formations, Justin Fields on the kickoff return (well played EA), and the reverse that happens during the return.
That all being said, it’s hard to talk about the trailer because the beta does exist. Many of us have strong feelings on the beta that we’d love to share more publicly but can’t right now due to EA’s rules. With this in mind, it makes it tricky to talk about this trailer because, yeah, by itself it does leave a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. There is not much substance to this trailer that really showcases why the Madden gameplay is going to be that much different.
The most positive things in the trailer are also things either we knew about from previous EA information drops or from things being in EA Sports College Football 25. I would consider things in that bucket to be items like the NFL Draft presentation, enhanced playbooks, the new coverage shells and signature animations.
BOOM Tech is the item EA marketing is setting up as the thing that separates its gameplay from EA Sports College Football 25, but it’s hard term to really put into a sizzle trailer. BOOM Tech simultaneously seems to be about creating “physics-based” interactions, allowing more missed tackles, but also giving the Hit Stick more power to influence events. Again, without being able to talk about our beta thoughts, it’s impossible to say how this is all actually playing out on the field right now.
But on the topic of BOOM Tech, the trailer does make me worry about how much animations still might drive certain interactions. The jukes in ’24 were incredibly powerful, and I don’t really love games where you doing one animation as the ball carrier causes my defender to do an animation even when I’m controlling that player. The deadleg and hesi are the two animations that immediately come to mind for me here where this is most annoying, but it can happen on jukes as well. If “physics-based” interactions is what we’re going for here as a way to avoid animation-driven outcomes, the same goal should be applied to the moments before the hit as well.
On top of that, using “physics-based” as a catch-all term is maybe not the way to go anyway because that brings to mind gang tackling and the idea of tackling as a whole being more free-flowing than it probably really is here. BOOM Tech seems more about driving these one-on-one interactions and their outcomes not a change to tackling as a whole.
Regardless, all I can really say for now is I do not think this was a great trailer, but I wouldn’t give up on the game as of yet. This trailer was clearly marketed to folks who are not very hardcore, and it’s about pushing the idea that open-field play is going to be more wild and spontaneous this year.
Due to circumstances alone, EA Sports College Football 25 is going to eat Madden 25‘s lunch this year from a popularity standpoint, but if you think the gameplay in EA Sports College Football 25 looks promising, then you should keep that same hope alive for Madden 25 even if the trailer did not impress you.
