Deeper Look at Pro-Tak

This week’s blog posting for Madden 10 takes an even more detailed look at the Pro-Tak system that has been discussed a great deal the last couple weeks. This is a really extensive and technical overview of what Pro-Tak will provide this year along with two videos displaying the gang tackling and pile pushing. You can read the article in full and watch the videos here.

In order to truly match the look of the NFL, motion captured animation is still the answer to stay authentic and be realistic. But you can only fit so many animations in the game because of the memory limitations of the hardware. So knowing all that, we knew the way for us to truly build dynamic and fun NFL gameplay was to use a mixture of run-time manipulation and motion capture. This approach can make one animation look totally different every time you see it, while still retaining an authentic look that can be controlled artistically.

I came away from the Pro-Tak demonstration impressed. Still it is difficult to gauge how effective it will be without playing it and seeing things like the gang tackling, pile pushing, fumble pile-ups, and pocket formation in the proper context and frequency.