// Previews // 29th Aug 2016 — 8 years ago // By Dom D'Angelillo

Four Ways PES 2017 Continues to Make Strides on (and off) the Pitch

Following the success of last year's game, PES once again returns, going hand-in-hand with with that early season excitement. After a presentation with Global Brand Manager Adam Bhatti, here's four ways PES continues to make for, arguably, the best football experience out there.

New Premium Partnerships

The biggest news for Pro Evolution Soccer 2017this year was the announcement of it’s all new premium partnerships. PES has always looked to lock in one of Europe’s elite teams or players to have to market the game, previous versions included Brazil’s Neymar and Bayern Munich’s Mario Götze as cover stars, but 2017 has the full Barcelona team as it’s cover stars. This is just one part of a premium partnership with three of Europe’s biggest clubs, including both Borussia Dortmund and Liverpool as well as the Catalan giants. What this means for PES this year is that it will be the only football game to include the 90,000 seater Camp Nou, the Westfalenstadion and Anfield following it’s recent developments. It will also include the likeness of every player for each of the three clubs, scanned in and built using the Fox Engine, producing some of the most accurate representations of players to date.

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Legends

PES’ team building online game, MyClub, returns for its second year in this year’s iteration and returning players are enticed back in with an in-game bonus known as a ‘Veteran Bonus’. Also returning to MyClub will be a myriad of legends from eras gone by who you can scalp and mold perfectly into your starting 11. This year offers a much broader selection of legendary players, all of which tie-in with the all-new Premium partnerships. Reimagined in game by using photos of their prime to recapture the essence, Barcelona offer up Ronaldo, Rivaldo and Ronaldinho of their golden generation as well as more recent heroes Xavi and Carlos Puyol. Liverpool legends such as Ian Rush, Robbie Fowler and Michael Owen will also be available, too.

More Licenses

Adam Bhatti, Global Product and Brand manager for PES told us during a presentation that PES has, for some time, been known to have several problems in recent years, but this year he told us that there is only one; the lack of licenses. While that is an issue that remains out of their hands (EA have multi year deals with numerous leagues, teams and championships), Konami have once again upped their game and managed to acquire more licenses for PES 2017 than any previous version of the game. On top of the aforementioned premium partnerships, PES has once again maintained the rights to the European and Asian Champions League as well as the Super Cup. While the Barclays Premier League still illudes PES, both Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 have full team line-ups as well as more Spanish, Italian and German teams. Perhaps the most interesting license acquisition belongs to that of the CSL, the increasingly popular Chinese national league, with PES now flying the flag for Asian football including the top Chinese teams such as Guangzhou Evergrande, as well as top J League and K League teams, ensuring PES is the game for global football fans.

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More Human Goalkeepers

PES 2016 was universally acclaimed for its authentic feeling gameplay last year and according to Adam Bhatti “It was hard to find something to refine even more”. After collecting feedback from the community, they gleamed that last year’s moment-to-moment was considered too fast; that has been slowed down and Konami has introduced ‘Real Touch’ which calculates the first touch based on skill level, and quality & speed of the pass. The big news though, is that PES 2017’s goalkeepers have become ‘more human’. Fully rebuilt for this year’s version, you’ll notice more reactions and emotions from your number 1, they’ll get angry at defenders or agitated by strikers, this emotion will then lead to them either playing out of their skin or making sloppy errors and thankless mistakes; it all lends itself into maintaining PES’ well regarded level of gameplay.

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