EA Sports College Football 26is out this month, and I still can’t tell if it includes a much-requested fix from the previous game. Although the series technically dates back to 1993,CFBwent dormant in 2014, only to be revived by last year’sCollege Football 25. That revival proved pretty popular;with solid reviewsand apparently decent sales,CFBis poised to make a comeback this year, with the potential to become aMadden-grade annual franchise in the very near future. It’s clear that people want their college football fix, andCFB 26has a chance to deliver it.
But the first game wasn’t without its flaws. Beyondrecurring complaints from recentMaddenreleases, theCFBseries has its own set of problems. Thankfully, one of the advantages of the annual release format is that future entries can address these flaws in comprehensive ways, extending beyond the potential of a simple update. And although EA Sports has sworn up and down that it’s addressing one of the most persistent complaints aboutCFB 25, it’s not entirely clear how - and that lack of information worries me.
So Close, Yet So Far
One of the biggest issues withCFB 25was its wonky camera, and those issues were especially pronouncedin Road to Glory mode. On its closest setting, the camera would follow your custom player too closely; you’d barely be able to see what was coming, from behind or from the side, until it was on top of you, and by then, it was too late.
Of course,CFBalways gives players the option to use a more zoomed-out point of view, but playing like this has its flaws, too. Road to Glory is all about taking your custom player from rookie to MVP - if they’re not a direct self-insert, they’re something close to it, and you want to follow their journey closely. Zooming the camera out too far makes them feel less like your own personal avatar, and more like another anonymous ant running around on a distant field.
For whatever reason,Road to Glory lacks the standard camera settingsavailablein every other game mode, which means you’re stuck with these two options: either far too close, or far too far away. It makes me feel like an even more indecisive Goldilocks: there’s no setting that I would describe as “just right.”
EA Sports Has Addressed Them, But How?
Now, in a recent Road to Glory deep dive posted on the officialEAwebsite, it was revealed thatCollege Football 26would include"new Road to Glorycamera options, based directly on player feedback.“In a way, that’s comforting - it means EA is at least aware of the problem, and is attempting to take steps to fix it.
But still, we don’t know the extent of these fixes, and that’s what worries me. Ideally, I think it’d be as simple as bringing standard camera controls as they work in every other game mode straight into Road to Glory, but I acknowledge that certain gameplay concerns may make this impossible. And if all EA was doing was transferring over the regular camera settings, I doubt this would make for such a carefully-worded mention in its enormous deep dive.
It seems more likely, then, thatRoad to Glory will have an entirely new suite of camera settings, but I’m worried about what they might look like. The old adage “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” largely holds true forCFBandMadden’s default camera angles, and I worry that, by trying too hard to improve on what’s already there,College Football 26will wind up with a worse result once again.
Still, it’s impossible to say just yet what form the changes have taken. I’m prepared to eat my words if EA really does pull off an entirely new camera mode for Road to Glory that’s better than what it had before. But we’ll have to wait untilEA Sports College Football 26is in the players' hands - just under a week and a half from today.
