NHL 26 Gameplay Deep Dive Trailer and Blog

I just want our human controlled goalies to stop being forced into ridiculous animations and flopping like fish out of water.

This was called out in the trailer.

Will we be hearing about improved menus, too? 

Yeah now let’s wait and see how many of the new animations screw over us human goalies.  🤨

The deep dive looks promising!  However there is one thing I’m worried about…. 2 years ago we couldn’t toggle off the “full pressure” icon in the middle of the ice, last year we couldn’t toggle off the “open for one timer” icon.  For people who want realistic visuals this is a deal breaker, and I don’t know if I can buy NHL 26 if there is more clutter added. All we want is the option to turn it off and make our game look realistic.

With that being said, please tell me that the visual display of x-factors showing every time someone uses an ability (from the deep dive video) can be toggled off?  Also hopefully we are finally able to turn off the “open for one-timer” icon?   ​ EA_Aljo​ 

When talking about gameplay we expect to see how the menus look and work. Any new presentation information like tunnel run outs and new camera angles. A deep dive you expect it to be well deep not just a few min like at littlest around 10 min explaining all new gameplay.

Hey there. That could be turned off in NHL 25 under the visual settings.

We haven't announced any details on settings yet for NHL 26 so we'll have to wait and see if that's possible.

Menus and presentation aren't part of gameplay so they wouldn't be included in a trailer about gameplay. Hopefully, we'll have some news on presentation and menus as we get closer to release.

As someone who does understand marketing, its frustrating. Same shallow bits of information every year. This was a "deep dive" for gameplay. Great, this should have come out a month ago. And A deep dive is not a few minutes long, it shows gameplay, speaks with the devs of the game in interviews. They answer questions from fans/gamers, talk about the video of gameplay and then speak more in depth on it. This is is how it works with any successful franchise game out there. I get its a sports game, so its a bit different, but the strategy is the same. Convince people to buy the game by showing them why they should. Build hype, get gamers/streamers involved in the process. Take a page from games by Frontier, they know how to market with all of their titles. Colossus was the same before Cities Skylines 2 went down the toilet. Paradox, another company that knows how to build hype, though some of their expansions have been flops. Its about creating a marketing strategy that makes you want to believe that the game or expansion is worth my spending money on. I love hockey, I just want the game to succeed, but with the shallowness of information that they provide before release, its really hard to justify the money, and excitement just isn't there. Create hype. I want to believe that the changes will come, but from past experiences with EA, so far, its not enough. Not when you are releasing a game so similar each year. Listen to your loyal customers. 

That's all fair. I personally would have liked to have seen a trailer more like what you described.

As far as listening to our customers goes, there were community feedback changes highlighted in the blog. We also haven't announced everything yet. As with every year, details come out as we get closer to release.

And on top of just this one the marketing for the game needs to be better and not so secretive. Like what is the big issue telling us for the rest of the month when the next information will be coming. Gives us something to look forward to as well not just waiting in the dark hoping for more info. EA_Aljo​