FIFA 22: All About HyperMotion & Why It's Not Coming To Old-Gen

FIFA 22 Hyper Motion
What's behind the HyperMotion technology in FIFA 22? | © EA Sports/EarlyGame

FIFA 22 offers a new milestone in capturing with HyperMotion. Two technologies are combined with each other. Here you can see what's the deal with that and also, why HyperMotion is only available for next-gen consoles.

What does HyperMotion mean? Actually, EA uses it to refer to all the new technology that was used to capture players and their behavior. The players wore special suits and were scanned on the pitch during the game.

It all seems a bit closer to reality than capturing the players' individual movements in studios. Let's break down the individual terms that are circulating around HyperMotion and what actually hides behind this technology.

What Is HyperMotion In FIFA 22?

EA distinguishes HyperMotion in two different technologies, which in combination, produce an unprecedented blah, blah, blah. The game should look better, feel more real and make the leap to the next-gen consoles. That's actually, um, what it's about. Before you take a closer look at the individual components, you can simply take a look at the EA presentation. (Tip: Skip the first 30 minutes, nothing happens.)

Advanced 11 v. 11 Match Capture

As already described, this year, 22 professional players recorded the new movements for FIFA 22. Two teams, each in so-called Xsens suits, played several games at the highest level in order to capture the animations.

This should not only re-animate the ball controlling and running styles, but also better emphasize the movement patterns of the offensive and defensive. Meaning: In FIFA 22, the defense will move more compactly as a unit, while strikers should find more variable gaps. In combination with the new machine learning, that sounds pretty neat.

Machine Learning

The company's own algorithm learns from 8.7 million frames that were recorded by the capture. New animations are to be created in real time, which then depict the footballers in a much more real way.

Supported by the ML-Flow feature, lunges after a sprint, for example, are calculated in real time. So if you were too fast, the player shouldn't stop with the same animation every time, but rather have different movement patterns depending on the intensity and length of the run. In addition, e.g. small steps will be shown, depending on how the player stands towards the ball and how he is supposed to hit it.

We don't know how that will feel yet, and what the effects there will be. What we can say: new animations were overdue, so we are happy about them. But FIFA 22 offers other features as well.

FIFA 22 Hyper Motion Action
Players should behave much more intelligently in FIFA 22 | © EA Sports

Tactical A.I.

The new A.I. in FIFA 22 makes more and more individual decisions. All 22 players should therefore always have an overview of how their own team is doing and how the opposing team is acting. When attacking, for example, strikers should be able to make six times more decisions per second on how to behave.

If the whole thing really leads to more intelligent runs, both in attack- and defense situations, we really get a nice change.

Full Team Authentic Motion

The authentic movements for all 22 players are also part of it. Players should interact with each other, i.e. address and discuss the opponent. That sounds really cool too, let's see how quickly these gestures become boring.

Hopefully not too quickly, EA is talking about 4000 new animations. Together with new emotions that faces will show, the whole thing will look really cool.

Kinetic Air Battles

The aerial duels have been revised? Yes, you read that right. Whether the new duel patterns such as pushing, jostling, holding and pulling ensure that headers are effective again, cannot yet be said. However, EA emphasizes that the quality of headers will depend on these new tackles.

The more undisturbed you get to do the header, the better the result should be. Exciting, exciting. The defense is also affected. If you're in a better position, you'll be able to clear the ball more safely.

Why Is HyperMotion Not Available On PlayStation 4 And Xbox One?

Do you like the sound of that, and are you looking forward to the new FIFA 22? Same. The only problem is: You can only get everything you've just read if you have a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X|S, or, if you are playing via Google Stadia. There is no HyperMotion for old-gen, nor PC.

The reason for this is easy to explain. Old-gen simply does not meet the technical requirements. Even on PC, EA didn't want to increase the minimum technical requirements for gamers.

Sounds logical, but it's cheeky that EA has canceled the free next-gen upgrade. So when pre-ordering, pay attention to the version that you get.

EA really gave us a lot of new info. We can hardly wait to grab our controllers when it's time for: "E – A – Sports. Itsinthegame."

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Lukas Scherbaum

The head of the EA Sports FC 24 category has played every FIFA since FIFA 04. In FC 24 you can find him mainly in Ultimate Team, but he is also a big fan of Career Mode, Clubs and VOLTA. Before joining EarlyGame, he worked for the German sports website Sport1 and as a gaming journalist for Kicker eSport....