Last week I was invited to Vancouver to fully immerse myself in everything related to EA Sports FC 27. There I found out that EA is fully committing to The Grounds, an NBA 2K-like evolution of Clubs. At the same time, EA is trying to give the game more depth by making more mechanics manual. Defending and making runs in behind have received a considerable rework. Because in FC 27, whoever still lets the computer do the work is done for!

As soon as we walk into EA's office in Vancouver, studio lead John Shepherd tells us in an opening presentation that FC 27 isn't "just a launch," but the foundation for the future of the franchise. This time, that's not just empty marketing talk. He's referring specifically to the introduction of The Grounds, which is set to become the big evolution of Clubs. Where EA's focus in recent years has mainly been on Ultimate Team, the game needs to get more meat on its bones. That means other modes also can and should generate revenue. Clubs, despite always being very popular among fans, has been the neglected stepchild.

In The Grounds you can take part in various activities, ranging from extremely casual to competitive. You can take on one other person, play 2v2, 3v3, or even pit entire teams against each other in tournaments that grow bigger and more challenging throughout the year. Personally, I see the most potential in these tournaments, since they capture exactly the essence of what Clubs used to be. If solid rewards are attached to them, this could become the flagship feature of The Grounds. Other activities like 1v1 and 2v2 are fun for variety, but won't be what keeps you playing for the long haul. For now, I find it a very interesting mode that certainly has potential. Since Shepherd emphasized earlier that this is currently the foundation for the future, we also know The Grounds still has plenty of growing to do in the coming years. As I said, for now it's a nice change of pace, but the real significance will remain with Ultimate Team for the time being.

In FC 27, simply put, you can no longer get away with selecting the wrong player. The gameplay has become a lot more manual, and to be honest, I'm a big fan of that. In FC 26, defending had been made too simple after the first patch. By letting the computer do most of the work, you could prevent a large portion of goals conceded. In FC 27, a number of changes have been made so that none of that comes so easily anymore - you now have to do it yourself, as Executive Producer Sam Rivera also points out: "The feedback from our community was very clear: they felt the AI was doing too much of the work for the player. So regardless of whether it's about skill or not, that just doesn't feel fair and doesn't feel rewarding."

The three most important changes are that the AI defender's range has been reduced, auto tackles for AI defenders have been removed entirely, and tackle range plus jockey responsiveness have been handed back to the player. As a result, defending once again becomes a real strength instead of something you can take for granted. Gameplay designers Rivera and Gilliard Lopes also explain in an interview that leaning back gets you nowhere: "As a byproduct of that, it probably demands a bit more skill. Although I wouldn't even call it skill - I'd say it's more about engagement. You really have to stay mentally locked in. You can't be passive in this game anymore."

Defending isn't the only thing that's changed in FC 27 - attackers also get more tools in their toolbox to keep the game flowing smoothly. The regular triggered runs have been lightly nerfed by making them a good deal shorter than we're used to. They now only last 15 meters, instead of players sprinting all the way to the byline along the touchline. If you want teammates to keep running further, you now have to trigger them again manually. In addition, players move more naturally - they no longer run straight ahead in one straight line, but neatly move around opponents and actually take defenders' positioning into account. On top of that, they're also allowed to drift further out of position if that creates opportunities for a better run.

By holding down the bumpers on your controller while making a pass, you make use of a new feature in FC 27 called Pass & Follow. With this, you pass the ball to a teammate and then run around them in an arc. This gives you a give-and-go where a teammate doesn't storm straight forward in a line, but instead curves around, allowing you to create even more space. These kinds of passes are meant to make the game resemble real football more closely. The trade-off is that it takes longer before you can make the second pass, since the player isn't in position that quickly to receive the ball. If a Pass & Follow results in losing the ball, you're also immediately a lot more vulnerable, since a player is out of position. That can lead to dangerous counterattacks. It's a kind of cat-and-mouse game: do you choose to run alongside the attacker making a run with you, or do you chase down the player with the ball to try to win possession?

Because of all these new interactions, EA Sports FC 27 feels like an incredibly responsive and fast game that demands a lot of input from the player. Of course, you don't have to use everything, but the game certainly doesn't get any easier because of it. Sometimes the game is so fast that it simply takes a lot of getting used to. That was already the case in kick-off, and in FUT it'll only be more so. At times there was a wonderful flow to be found in the game, but sometimes it all just went a bit too fast. That's partly because certain animations have been sped up. Players previously couldn't make certain turns, but that's now been fixed, allowing them to simply follow their natural run curves. Gameplay designer Rivera explains that this is one of the reasons the game feels so fast: "It made the game pretty fast, because players are now always so responsive, and so consistently responsive, that the game feels fast. [...] At one point it got pretty hectic."

Neither Ultimate Team nor Career Mode stand out with the kind of major improvements we see in the gameplay. Still, the improvements we do see, particularly in Ultimate Team - my own favorite mode - are meaningful. The most important addition is FUT Gallery, where you can find every player you've ever had. It's partly a way to show off what you've achieved, while also letting you earn rewards in the form of tokens based on the players you've had. These tokens can then be spent to purchase players and packs, which will also be tradeable more often this year. A major point of criticism from the community was that almost all rewards were untradeable last year, and EA is now moving away from that. Besides more tradeable rewards, players also earn more coins and progression in the season pass after a match, rather than through completing Division Rivals and the Weekend League over the course of the week. The lump sums you receive at once will be slightly lower, but as a result you'll keep being rewarded if you keep playing once you're already done with your weekly matches. The developers of the game mode say they want it to take longer to build a good team, but shorter to go from a good team to an elite team. This would supposedly make it easier for players with genuinely strong teams to keep up. We'll see whether that actually turns out to be the case, but it sounds - as we've come to expect from EA - like quite the promise.

Finally, we should mention a few other smaller improvements. Many fans are always incredibly interested in Career Mode, but to be honest, this area doesn't see the biggest revolutions. The improvements lie mainly in a more in-depth transfer system, built with the help of TransferRoom. In recent years we've increasingly seen EA seek out partnerships with parties from real-world football, as it did earlier with Opta. This results in a system called Transfers 2.0, in which player values are meant to be more realistic. Player stats are visible right away, since clubs are often already aware of them. Still, scouting remains worthwhile, since it lets you see a player's potential and how they fit within your team, and whether they're even willing to come to your team at all. Furthermore, Overall is no longer a stat, but a "state." It moves along with players' performances and can therefore vary considerably depending on how well they're doing at that moment. If Nicholas Jackson misses one chance after another, his Overall might drop to 78. If he's on track to become top scorer, he might have an Overall of 86.

PC players are also likely to be thrilled, as they're getting performance improvements they've been waiting a long time for. The game has been optimized for Steam for the first time, making it start up 50% faster. On top of that, the game features Ultra graphics with sharper visuals and players, while the stadiums also have more detail. I'm personally curious whether cheaters will also be tackled firmly, since that's still one of the bigger problems PC players have run into in recent years. The FUT market on PC will also remain separate from the one on consoles.

All in all, FC 27 is the edition in which EA openly admits what was wrong with the previous installment. The game might not look enormously different, but once you really start looking at the details, it plays a lot better than its predecessor. It's a lot more dynamic, and quality in the game once again has to come from the person behind the controller. I'm curious whether the game will still feel this fast and fluid at release, or whether the pace of play will still be adjusted. Either way, the foundation is there.