Madden NFL 21's announcement during the Inside Xbox event in early May left many fans curious for more information. Its subsequent reveal during this past week's EA Play event tantalized with teases for new gameplay improvements. Now, a new set of Madden NFL 21 screenshots are showcasing just how far the new game is moving forward visually. Specifically, these four screenshots show that Madden NFL 21 will be utilizing ray tracing, at least on next-gen consoles.
To be fair, the only obvious usage of ray tracing in the new Madden NFL 21 screenshots is fairly limited. Nevertheless, it's a great addition and brings a new layer of quality to the visuals that was absent before. In two different screenshots, both of the Green Bay Packers, raytraced reflections can be seen on the players' freshly polished helmets. In one gorgeous screenshot, Lambeau Field can be seen in surprising clarity reflected off the back of Davonte Adams' yellow, green, and white helmet.
To be fair, the extent of the ray tracing being used in these screenshots, let alone the entirety of Madden NFL 21 isn't known. If anything, it's probably severely limited. It may not even be ray tracing. The helmet reflections may not be a true reflection, but rather a fake approximation using a Lambeau Field texture. There certainly doesn't seem to be any fans, players, team staff, officials, or anything else in the reflection. It's just an empty field with noise around where the fans would be.
Also notable is that the two screenshots showing what appear to be raytraced reflections are both cinematic sequences in the game. One appears to be Adams doing a celebration, maybe even going for a Lambeau Leap, and the other shows the Packers coming onto the field from the tunnel. Neither are live gameplay sequences. In fact, screenshots from the same set that do appear to show gameplay notably don't appear to have raytraced reflections. Rather, they have some dynamic lighting instead.
Suffice to say, exactly how Madden NFL 21 uses ray tracing, incuding whether it's ray tracing at all, remains to be detailed. With only a year to iterate on last year's Madden, no one's expecting cutting edge graphics improvements, but some small ray tracing additions would certainly be welcome.
Ray tracing is going to be an interesting graphics feature to pay attention to as the next generation of consoles arrives. With Sony's first wave of PS5 game announcements now having been made, only a handful of games used ray tracing. And of those, ray tracing was used in a limited fashion. After ray tracing was touted as a major next-gen addition in 2019, so far it hasn't made a splash. Perhaps it just needs more time for developers to learn how to use it efficiently.
Madden NFL 21 releases August 28 on PC, PS4, and Xbox One, with PS5 and Xbox Series X versions to follow later this year.
