EA CEO Andrew Wilson confirms that FIFA 18 will feature a return of The Journey, the cinematic story mode which just had its inaugural season in FIFA 17.
The FIFA franchise has been pushing annual titles for about 24 years now, so when Electronic Arts announced that FIFA 17 would be receiving an all-new story mode called The Journey, people took notice. The change of pace was a breath of fresh air for the franchise, offering potentially jaded consumers something new in a sea of perpetual AI and roster updates.
Speaking to investors last night, EA CEO Andrew Wilson confirmed that The Journey would feature in FIFA 18, promising a second season filled with new characters and new storylines. So far, the story-focused game mode has gamers donning the boots of a fictional young up-and-coming football star supported by a cast of both fictional and real characters. The Journey was well received, and we’re looking forward to seeing how Electronic Arts can build upon the platform left by its first foray into such storylines.
Wilson stated that over 10 million users had begun The Journey, although it remains unclear what percentage of this number actually completed the story of British stalwart Alex Hunter, who many surmise was more or less based upon the earlier success of Machester United’s Marcus Rashford. In any case, it’s clear that the game mode brought in enough interest for Electronic Arts to green light a second season.
With the way The Journey ended in FIFA 17, it’s not clear whether Alex Hunter will continue to be the star in the next season of The Journey, or if Electronic Arts will switch focus to a new player in a new league. There’s still the majority of the year to go before FIFA 18 presumably releases around late September, and given that the inaugural season of The Journey was only announced a few months before the game released we expect it’ll be some time before more information about it is put forth by Electronic Arts.
The FIFA franchise is returning to being a triple-console franchise, with the series now returning to Nintendo consoles via the Switch. Rumors about the Switch edition of the game being an Xbox 360/PS3 port have cropped up, but nothing is currently confirmed regarding the matter. With FIFA 17 being the top-selling game in the United Kingdom, the potential for the second season of The Journey to reach an even larger audience is large, though we hope some of the persistent glitches which continually plague the series will still be worked on, too.
What do you think about The Journey, Ranters?
FIFA 18 currently has no release date, but is expected to arrive in late 2017 for Xbox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
