NHL 24’s big changes include a ‘complete revamp’ of gameplay — and a battle pass

polygon.com:

EA Sports’ hockey franchise hasn’t been a critical darling since the early 2010s, and the series has been stuck in something of a rut for the past few years. That may be why developer EA Vancouver is promising that some major changes are coming in NHL 24, which was revealed Wednesday with a trailer.

First up is what EA described in a news release as a “complete revamp of the EA Sports NHL gameplay experience,” led by a feature that seeks to simulate the effects of sustained offensive-zone pressure. Billed as the Exhaust Engine, this system will offer twofold rewards to players who can maintain possession in their opponent’s defensive zone.

Keep cycling the puck, and you’ll eventually trigger a perk that will reduce the defending team’s attributes for a limited time — and ramp up the fatigue level for its goalie, whose effectiveness will wane if you can continue to pepper them with shots. This is a major piece of real-life hockey: Puck possession is a key indicator of success in the modern NHL. So if NHL 24 can successfully bring it to life — in a way that sounds like an appropriately gamified implementation of this element of the sport — it could have a big impact on gameplay this year.

Other gameplay updates include “overhauled physics and animations,” according to the news release, such as the ability to deliver a big hit that could send an opponent flying over the boards or even break the glass above them. EA also said that it’ll be easier to pull off highlight-reel moves on the sticks because the developers decided to “completely refresh the control setup” for those moves. And the overhauled passing controls, with teammates mapped to face buttons, should give players the ability to be more intentional with their