EA's freaky red and blue non-humans are back for EA Sports FC 24's Spring Update, illustrating more changes

You know the strangely captivating not quite people EA’s previously used to show off some of the changes in EA Sports FC 24’s biggest updates? Well, it’s time for a sizeable spring overhaul and I’m glad to report that they’re back, baby!

Yes, forget about that mixup that saw an image of the wrong Rodri be added to an Ultimate Team card and the fact that up until recently, your prized re-creations of folks for your life as millionaire footballers were at risk thanks to a bug, everything’s right with the world again. Just take a long look at the bright colours of these daft demonstrators and relax.

It’s time for a spring update, and as you can see by the size of the blog post EA’s put together about it, it’s a biggie. Title update 11, to give it its alternative name, is headlined by “86 new star heads”, as well as a revamp of the on-pitch gameplay via some “PlayStyle tuning” and “legendary CPU AI difficulty adjustments”.

It’s the former of those last two that’s prompted the first use of EA’s skinless, Morph suit-esque henchmen, and more specifically, a reduction to the “maximum possible Sprint jockey speed” of players with the Jockey PlayStyle, which surprisingly doesn’t make them very good at riding horses. In line with the change specified, this first non-human usage is a little race between two blokes with before and after versions of the PlayStyle, as you can see below. It’s almost startlingly mesmerising to watch, since it plays on a loop in the blog post.

Having outlined that the purpose of the PlayStyle tweaks is to “ensure that meaningfully different options are available to players when building their Squads, with PlayStyles and PlayStyles+ helping offer greater variety”, EA’s helpfully divided it array of changes to them into two categories - “slightly adjusted” and “significantly adjusted”.

Meanwhile, in terms of the legendary AI changes, EA says its “objective is to give more agency to our players, especially on the defensive side” in matches against tough opponents. So, legendary AI players have been made a bit more predictable, and should stick more rigidity to their defined tendencies.

Now, into a rapid-fire rundown of the rest of the uses of those non-humans, since that’s what we really care about. The update comes with a bunch of new animations “based on volumetric data captured from the real matches in the UEFA Champions League Group Stage”. There’s a shooting motion from Erling Haaland, Vinicius Jr’s “idle stepover” skill move, and, most importantly, a new clearance based on a highlight from Borussia Dortmund’s clash against PSG.

All of these are lovingly re-enacted by the non-humans, whose public service will hopefully eventually see them rewarded with official virtual human status. While you wait for that joyous day to come, why not check out the full notes for this update, which is set to roll out soon, if it hasn’t already on your platform of choice.

Also, if you’re EA Sports FC 24 Ultimate Team soon, make sure to check out our regularly updated guide to the best cheap top-notch players to use for SBCs.