FIFA 21: Breaking Down Standard, Ultimate Covers and Newest Features

FIFA 21 promises to usher in the next generation of football gameplay as the next console generation arrives.

Fittingly, this year's cover star is Kylian Mbappe, the 21-year-old global superstar famous for his goalscoring exploits with Paris Saint-Germain and France. The FIFA World Cup winner will grace all three covers this year, including the standard game, Champions Edition and Ultimate Edition.

Fittingly, the standard cover has an awesome backstory:

The star forward shared a look at all three covers:

It's only right Mbappe infuses some new life into the world's biggest football game to symbolize the evolution of the series. In the past, Wayne Rooney, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo featured on multiple covers. He touched on similar ideas and themes in his official statement, as Gamespot's James O'Connor shared:

"Being on the cover of FIFA is a dream come true. From my time at Bondy to Clairefontaine to the World Cup, this marks another big milestone. I've been playing this game since I was a kid and I am honored to represent a whole new generation of footballers and be in the same group as many other amazing footballers who I now share this honor with."

Given the ideas here, FIFA 21 offers plenty of progression promises.

On the gameplay front, the new Agile Dribbling system throws out new skill moves that, on paper, are more responsive and could end up providing more of a skill gap on the pitch. An extension of this is more playmaking freedom courtesy of more moves tied to the right stick.

Also on that front, this year's game offers the general wide-sweeping upgrade promises in areas like positional awareness for A.I.—teammates and opponents alike—as well as better collisions on the physics side.

Granted, gameplay upgrades are given each year. What onlookers might be more excited for are additions to things like Career Mode, where some of this year's biggest features occur. One is the arrival of a new interactive match simulation, which is exactly what it sounds like—players can monitor a game from afar before popping into it themselves when they see fit.

Add in tuning to player development, expanded transfers and giving players even more control over a team's schedule, and there is clearly an effort this year to provide more player agency for those who enjoy a deeper simulation.

Of course, the other end of that is taking things to the streets. Or atop skyscrapers. Or next to the ocean. Or any other number of creative pitches in Volta, last year's big addition reminiscent of the FIFA Street series.

This year is mostly about the addition of squads, something not unfamiliar to fans of EA Sports' NFL title, Madden. Players now have the ability to link up with up to four other players and form a squad on the pitch to tackle solo challenges or hop online to face off against rivals.

All of this functions through the creation of a player avatar before hitting the streets, which leads into the seemingly endless number of unlocks and planned events like divisions and limited-time events and rewards.

It's the latest way to keep the game fresh for longer outside of FIFA Ultimate Team. Over in FUT, the promise of streamlining things so players can get to what is most fun—the gameplay—is the biggest talking point. That means less time managing teams, less time staring at replays or celebrations and simply more time playing the game itself.

Add in a feature like the FUT 100, which assembles some of the greatest footballers of all time for collectors to gather, and it's hard not to like the idea of hopping back into FUT for another season.

As a whole, it's clear FIFA 21 wants to provide players with more ways to play the game of football itself while keeping them on the pitch of their choice. And that's a hard theme to complain about for those who just want to enjoy the most popular series representing the sport.