"Given the chance to start from scratch with new hardware, EA is taking a new approach to recording commentary. "No longer do we put a script in front of talent and say 'okay, read,'" Ramjagsingh says. "What you see with that is you try to turn the commentators into actors, and they don't sound like themselves. What we've done with all the content you're going to hear in the game this year, aside from some very specific things with player names, we just give them a situation. We did 30,000 lines of giving the situation: 'Daniel Sedin scores a goal top shelf in the last two minutes of the game. Give me 10 samples of that.' They pause for two seconds, think about what they would say, and they rattle it off. Doc and Eddie have worked together so long they just know how to play off each other, and the stories that they can tell that we've incorporated into the game is fantastic."
Expect more varying degrees of intensity with the commentary as well. "We've been able to add more levels of intensity than we've ever had in the game," Ramjagsingh says. "In the past we've had two and a half, three different intensities for commentators. Now we have almost seven different levels of intensity that Doc and Eddie can go to."
Along with the top NBC broadcasting team, EA is incorporating the full suite of NBC Sports presentation elements, including polished stat and score overlays, city flyovers, and shots of the arena.
NHL 15 introduces something never seen before in a sports game - live video of commentators before each game. To avoid the unpleasantness that virtual avatars commentators create in terms of lip synching, EA decided to record Doc and Eddie on a green screen, then place them in the broadcast booths of the arenas.
. Interesting they went that far.
That's fantastic.
