"The focus that we have is on acknowledging the player's story as opposed to telling them our story."
Career modes in sports games are hit and miss. Some, like EA’s FIFA really built up a huge narrative around you the player, and others like NHL start off fresh and new before becoming a copy and paste job in the years that follow.
Speaking with HB Studios creative director Josh Muise and senior design lead Jordan Ault, Stevivor asked how PGA Tour 2K25 MyCareer mode will keep players engaged and entertained.
“It’s our marquee mode,” Muise said, matter-of-factly. “The MyCareer experience and the MyPlayer experience go hand-in-hand where you are the star of your movie. This is you playing through your authentic sports fantasy… building your way up or jumping right into the PGA Tour.”
“This year we were able to bring in interviews and conversations systems that are tied to a popularity metric that you’re building, over time, to gain followers,” Guise continued. “That’s kind of a loose approximation of what we’re seeing in the space today. We’re seeing pro golfers — pro athletes in general — start to build their own personal brand and that singular brand follows them through their career. It’s in how they win, but also in how they present themselves, how they play, and you’re starting to build up a bit of a personality over time.”
Muise said HB Studios looked “to start bringing some of those mechanics into the MyCareer experience through the lens of the MyPlayer where you are, again, starring in your own show.
“We’ve given the autonomy of choice to kind of navigate through how you would answer questions, post-match, post-round,” he continued. “We have an agent that is coming into your world this year, helping to steer you through your career in the early phases as that ties into our rivalries and our sponsorship systems that have come back from previous iterations.”
New to the experience are new training modalities that will not only let you gain valuable XP, but better understandings of each course you’ll play on.
“If you want to get a little bit of training in before you jump into your competitive matches pre-round, you can go in and play a practice round which again is kind of mirroring the real life experience of PGA Pro; it’s not uncommon for them to show up on a Tuesday [and] play nine holes to get to know the course a little bit better,” Muise said. “We’re going to award you with a little bit of XP for doing your homework.”
“The focus that we have is on acknowledging the player’s story as opposed to telling them our story — [one] that we want them to to play through,” added Ault.
“We’ve got all of our commentators returning, plus a new addition as well,” Ault said. “And then that’s going to feed into the narrative systems specific for MyCareer in those conversations and interviews where the questions that come up are going to be reflective of what the player is doing in their gameplay.
“That’s really what we want to focus on: highlighting what the player’s doing as opposed to taken by the hand and walking [them] through our little storyline.”
Expect PGA Tour 2K25 on Windows PC via Steam, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, and PS5 from 28 February; two of its three editions include seven days of early access.
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PGA Tour 2K2528 February 2025PC PS5 Xbox Series S & X
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