Madden 21‘s biggest calling card is its realism. EA Sports’ NFL Football franchise has always valued presentation and realness in its stadium design, and this year’s Madden version is no different. While many gamers have complained that there aren’t enough new features or updates, that could be a good thing for stadium realness. Stadiums designs have pretty much stayed the same over the last few editions of Madden, and this year is no different.
The most exciting stadium aspect in Madden 21 is going to be the two stadiums new to the NFL this year: SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California and Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. The Los Angeles Chargers and Los Angeles Rams will be playing their home games at SoFi and Allegiant is the home of the Las Vegas Raiders. The Chargers and Rams both boast new team jerseys in Madden 21 as well. Fans with early access to Madden 21 have been given a look at SoFi about a week early, and reports suggested the field and exterior of the stadium are quite accurate, despite the fact that fans won’t be able to visit the real-life stadium for a while.
SoFi stadium has a whole exterior neighborhood around it in real life. The Madden 21 copy of the stadium’s surrounding architecture is very realistic, despite the fact that it only shows up in brief cutscenes before the kickoff of games. Dozens of ribbon boards are present around the upper tiers of the stadium just as in real life. The field, which features the Chargers’ Bolt logo at midfield, looks fantastic from the regular game view. Going into instant replay mode and inspecting the field will show a few places where textures could be better, but overall the grass and lines of the floor of the stadium serve their gameplay purpose well.
How Madden 21’s Stadium Fans Look
One place that Madden has historically fallen short is the animation of the fans in the stadium. Previous versions of Madden put very little effort into the presentation of NFL fans, to a laughable degree. Fans have largely been two-dimensional and usually had only one or two default ‘cheering’ moves, such as a fist pump or both hands in the air. Madden 21 appears to be no different. The way fans jump up and down looks incredibly clunky, as opposed to the movement of players or even the coaches on the sideline. Coaches and players on the bench move realistically, especially in the between-play cutscenes shown behind the play selector. However, their counterparts on the sidelines (like the photographers, chain gang, and team staffers) are also poorly animated and two-dimensional.
Overall, the stadium and field realness is about the same as it was last season, which was relatively well-received. The two new stadiums look great. There’s also a few new stadiums in Ultimate Team mode. The graphic details have been just about maxed-out on current-gen consoles, and it will be interesting to see if graphics (and audience realism) gets a large update when Madden 21 moves to next-gen consoles.
