FIFA 17 AI is going back to school and Marco Rues is the teacher. The FIFA 17 Active Intelligence System is today’s lesson so let’s hope your team-mates are taking notes.

OK, when I was writing the New Attacking Techniques post I thought something sounded familiar. But when I heard about the FIFA 17 Active Intelligence System my brain went into a full déjà vu loop. Do you remember Attacking Intelligence back in FIFA 13? How about Team-Mate Intelligence in FIFA 14?

Recognise this?

FIFA 14 Man Marking Testbed

FIFA 15 even delved into emotional intelligence where we were promised the each player would have emotional connections with all 21 other players on the pitch. In reality it boiled down to your player having the occasional frustrating hissy fit animation whilst you’re trying to track back.

So although the AI’s intelligence has increased year on year, despite the hype the computer controlled players are still more Joey Essex than Albert Einstein so forgive me if I don’t jump on the Active Intelligence hype train just yet.

What does the FIFA 17 Active Intelligence System have to offer?

Players are smarter, more active off the ball and they react to better define space. – Like previous FIFA’s then. Marco Reus has given EA’s AI a master class in movement off the ball. Let’s hope they’ve taken notes. One dubious point is Reus’s quote “everything just runs on instinct”. I’m not sure you can teach that to artificial intelligence.

In FIFA 17 players have a heightened awareness and better analyse space to understand attacking opportunities. They also have the ability to adapt and identify future opportunities that might come about.

FIFA 17 Active Intelligence System Movement

The FIFA 17 Active Intelligence System also introduces fake runs by team mates and opposition and more interlinked team work, for example one player might come short whilst another runs into the space in behind.

I was quietly optimistic that following last year’s dabble with the power of “next gen” consoles and the addition of the Frostbite Engine, EA would’ve harnessed the extra processing power and ramped up AI Intelligence to Premiership levels but going from Dave from Futhead’s Player Positioning analysis I’m not so sure. There’s still a while left till we get a finished FIFA 17 build so hopefully by the time it’s shipped the AI will have had a few more lessons. ;)