FIFA 21: Release Date, Best New Features and Cover

FIFA 21 launches globally on October 9 for current-generation systems and platforms like PC, with Paris Saint-Germain superstar Kylian Mbappe on the cover. 

It's a later launch than usual for the football juggernaut for a few reasons, chief among them being that the team at EA Sports merely wanted to make the best game possible while balancing the current-gen release with the upcoming next-generation of consoles releasing this winter. 

If there's one good way to usher in a new generation, it's by featuring a 21-year-old star like Mbappe on all three editions of the game.

He's on the standard, Champions Edition and Ultimate Editions: 

It's only right the game features a handful of must-know new features to fit the theme, too. 

Changes to the gameplay side of things are most important, of course. Like sporting counterparts such as Madden, the developers behind the game want the star players to actually feel like that on the pitch. 

To achieve this, EA Sports has changed up how ratings play into a star's on-screen performance, with the developers citing the following as an example: "In the past, a through pass used the Short or Long Passing attribute to determine quality. However, in FIFA 21, a through pass is a mix of Short/Long Passing, Vision and Composure attributes."

Other big gameplay tweaks include a new Agile Dribbling system, which lets players hold down a shoulder button to modify dribbling moves. The idea is to make things much faster and more explosive while leaving plenty of control in the player's hands, although the outcome will still see the behind-the-scenes ratings play a big role in how things pan out. 

Sprinkle in better A.I. and collision systems and, as a whole, it's clear gameplay was at the forefront of this year's effort. Differentiating stars from the rest of the participants on the pitch has always been an issue for sporting games, but the tweaks—on paper—should eliminate the problem and make for a better experience. 

Aside from the gameplay, maybe the biggest thing players will notice this year is the work done on career mode. 

While fixes to player development and team-schedule planning are nice details to push things even more into the simulation realm, it's the simulation itself that stands out as the best new addition. 

Dubbed Interactive Match Sim, players are now free to jump in and out of a match while otherwise keeping an eagle-eyed view on the broad in-game tactics. Players can monitor events on the pitch from an informative simulation screen, but they can jump in at any point and take control, per the developer's writeup: 

"Whether you only like to intervene when your team goes down, or you prefer to jump in whenever your team is within shooting range, the Interactive Match Sim allows players to experience matches exactly how they want to. You can also jump back out of gameplay and watch the rest of the game play out in Interactive Match Sim or skip straight to the final result at any time."

While other modes received updates and upgrades, it's the attention to career mode that will likely turn heads upon release, because something like franchise mode in Madden hasn't received this sort of attention in a long time. Giving players a deeper solo experience is something often requested in sports games, but as of late, the focus has gone to multiplayer. 

That isn't to say multiplayer modes haven't received some attention in FIFA this year—it's quite the opposite. The most important detail about FIFA Ultimate Team (FUT) this year is the parsing down of unskippable things like celebrations, allowing players to return to gameplay faster. Less complicated team management aims at the same goal. 

And this is the second year for Volta Football, which means big upgrades for the FIFA Street-inspired mode that lets players create an avatar and play on creative pitches across the globe. The biggest addition is the inclusion of squads, which means the ability to team up with up to four other players before tackling tournaments and even time-limited challenges. 

In the past, the final annual release of a sports video game for a current console generation has always felt like the apex, a strong marriage of the best possible gameplay and features set. That appears to be the goal for FIFA this year, and the promised list of new features makes it sound like the Mbappe-covered installment will fulfill plenty of player wishlists along the way.