EA Sports is now reportedly providing updated commentary tracks in Madden NFL 17, allowing gamers to download the latest discussions between sports analysts Charles Davis and Brandon Gaudin, along with other weekly updates. These commentaries will be refreshed throughout the 2016-17 season, and will touch on real-world events taking place during the current football season, including a recent controversial decision made by San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick.
Kaepernick is currently making waves in the sports industry with his refusal to stand during the playing of the national anthem at preseason games against the Denver Broncos and the Green Bay Packers after that. He said that he will continue to sit during the national anthem until something is done about the oppressed people in this country.
“There’s a lot of things that need to change. One specifically is police brutality — there’s people being murdered unjustly and not being held accountable,” he told the press. “The cops are getting paid leave for killing people. That’s not right. That’s not right by anyone’s standards.”
During a recent interview, he said that the response from his teammates to his decision to sit during the national anthem “has been great,” and that many of those teammates come from areas where oppression may exist. However, former teammate Alex Boone doesn’t share that train of thought, indicating that Kaepernick should show some respect for those who serve in the military, like Boone’s own brother, who served with the Marines in Iraq, by standing during the national anthem.
“We’re out here playing a game, making millions of dollars. People are losing their life, and you don’t have the common courtesy to do that. That just drove me nuts,” Boone told ESPN.
According to GameSpot, Week 1 of the NFL regular season is a little more than a week away, with the first game scheduled for September 8. The 49ers won’t play until September 12, however, when they go head to head with the Los Angeles Rams. Right now, there’s no indication of what the Madden NFL 17 commentary team will actually say about the whole Kaepernick situation, or when the commentary will actually arrive.
Madden NFL 17 is pushing to feel more authentic this year, in part by bringing in Gaudin and Davis throughout the season. Lines recorded by the sports analysts will be integrated into the game itself so that when something huge happens on or off the field that week, the player will hear about it in-game. EA Sports wants to “blur” the lines between Madden NFL 17 and a real-life NFL broadcast.
A spokesperson for EA Sports told GameSpot that the weekly commentaries will mostly focus on in-field performance along with other major news like injuries and player trades. “Kaepernick’s decision will be briefly mentioned in-game, reflecting our commitment to authenticity in Madden NFL 17,” the spokesperson added.
Madden NFL 17 just shipped on the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, and Xbox 360 consoles on August 23. The Madden NFL series on a whole provides downloadable content each week to keep gamers up to speed with the latest happenings in football.
