Football Manager 2018 will be officially released on November 10th, but as is the case every year, information as to what we can expect in the new game begins to leak out a few weeks or even months in advance.
This year, in an effort to address leaked news and features that have leaked out into the community before anything is confirmed, the Football Manager team have released a video confirming some of the game's new features and teasing some others that will be revealed in the coming weeks.
Sports Interactive director Miles Jacobson answering questions out of the window of his car was a very nice touch.
With the game not coming out until November the team obviously want to keep some cards close to their chest, but the gameplay footage at the end coupled by what was confirmed by Miles have given us an idea as to what we can expect.
We've picked out five learnings that have tickled our interest already:
1. 'Dynamics' are totally new and look seriously interesting.
By far the most enigmatic and intriguing buzzword we heard in the video, the amount of time 'dynamics' are mentioned suggests that this is a big deal this year.
From the above screenshot, it looks like a much more personal and in-depth way to manage your football team by being able to see the social dynamics of your group of players and how your players interact with each other... This might things more difficult if you've chosen to manage PSG.
2. The graphics engine has been revamped to make everything look more polished.
Every year little tweaks make the match experience more enjoyable and easy on the eye, and this year is no exception as the graphics engine has been revamped to make stadiums look more detailed and improve the authenticity.
3. There's a lot more information and detail in terms of sports science.
Introduced as a new feature last year, the ability to hire sports scientists was a big help in finding out more about the players you manage, and this year it looks set for a big upgrade with further statistical analysis on hand.
4. Scouting has been updated, and is now more realistic.
After touching on it in the video, a screenshot at the end confirmed that how you scout and monitor players will change this year with the ability to buy packages to scout by region.
Also, your scouts will now tell you how long they tracked players for and their impressions from what they saw, which again is just more like the real thing.
5. Transfer fees should be much more in-line with real life.
Another point that Miles confirmed, it was always going to happen as Football Manager tends to move very quickly with the changes in the sport itself.
Hopefully this means that if you've managed to develop the next superstar, you can hold out for an utterly ridiculous fee from the big clubs that will inevitably be sniffing around.
We're expecting to hear more and more about the new game every week until the release on November 10th, but we're off to a good start.
