The big EA Sports FC 25 preview: a proper career mode update, a Football Manager-style tactics system, FUT tweaks, and m

[sofiya]

FIF- sorry, EA Sports FC 25 has been officially unveiled, with England wonderkid Jude Bellingham this year's cover star. As usual, developer EA Sports has also outlined plans for a couple of big headline changes for the year - as well as a bucketload of little tweaks to go alongside them - but there are a couple of surprises. For one, FC 25 is going all tactical, with a new system with its customary proper noun, FC IQ, being introduced behind the scenes. And maybe even more surprising: there's an actual, proper update for career mode.
https://www.u4gm.com/fc-25-coins
Availability: Out 27th September (20th Sep in Early Access) on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
We've been out to EA Sports' studio in Vancouver to get a briefing ahead of time - where we also discussed EA Sports' opinions on a potential FIFA rival - and there's a lot of granular detail to run through, so we've broken this one down into sections for all the relevant parts of the game. On top of all of these, there's also a new "play experience", called Rush, which is available within all of FC 25's separate modes, and acts as a kind of replacement for and combination of Volta and Pro Clubs. We have a separate hands on preview of FC 25's Rush for much more detail there, coming very soon indeed.

FC IQ: the headline tactical revamp coming to FC 25 that's straight out of Football Manager
EA Sports match experience producer Thomas Caleffi described this as the "most significant change to tactics in over a decade" and a "beyond massive gameplay change". It does, on paper, sound like a genuinely big change to how the game works.
https://www.u4gm.com/fc-25-coins
On the surface, it's a switch in how players and their responsibilities are handled in the game's tactical menus, and then beyond that, a change in the under-the-hood workings which dictate what those players do on the pitch, how they do it, and why.

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First up, the old system of work rates - a set verbal description for how hard a player worked in attack and defence - has been removed, as this was the primary dictator of what sort of positions a player moved into at what moment. Now, that's dictated by the player's "role", and the "focus" they're given within that role. I can see the Football Manager players' ears perking up here - this seems to work extremely similarly to "roles" and "duties" in FM.
https://www.u4gm.com/fc-25-coins