EA Sports NHL has released the first in-depth look at NHL 25 with their official gameplay trailer.
The highlight was the game’s biggest change, ICE-Q, which is a new skating system that impacts the game in three main facets.
The first new addition is Next-Gen Vision Control, when active with the puck the player’s body will open up and stay centered towards the net, allowing for more unique chances to create offense.
This will help players with walking the blueline and when circling the net, avoiding some of the around the net collisions that were prevalent in past games. The trailer also shows vision control allowing defenders to stay centered with puck carrier.
“The flow of play is fundamentally very different compared to what we came from in 24, the ice is so much more open, having reliable AI teammates to move around and be in spots that you expect them to be and reacting to what’s there,” EA Senior Game Design Director Mike Inglehart told The Hockey News in an August interview.
The trailer discusses a change that has been long discussed in the community, a makeover to the AI and CPU teammates.
“Every playbook got completely re-worked, we built it from the ground up again, we looked at modern hockey to see if we had anything missing, is their something subtle that maybe the previous team that built the older AI system didn’t see,” said Inglehart.
AI players will continuously move while in the offensive zone, which along with the new playbook should minimize collisions between players and AI teammates.
Smarter and more reactive AI would be a monumental quality of life change for NHL players.
The final big addition was reactive actions and skill-based one-timers. Reactive actions are a new set of animations that allow players to get around defenders and find open ice with less collisions, as well as faster turns.
Skill-based one-timers are a new dynamic way to shoot the puck. Players must time one-timers as the puck approaches, if timed correctly the player has a more powerful shot, if timed incorrectly the player loses strength and accuracy.
This should lead to an uptick in one-timer goals and goals from further away from the net compared to NHL 24.
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The changes to AI, reactive animations, and a fresh skating overhaul are all things that have been requested by the community for many years. Along with the game now only being released on current gen consoles, things are looking promising for NHL 25.
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