NBA 2K22 just revealed its cover star athletes, including the first ever WNBA cover star in Candace Parker, who will appear on select special editions. Due for launch on September 10, I recently had the opportunity to sit down with executive producer Erick Boenisch, gameplay director Mike Wang, and MyTeam producer John Smith to get to grips with the game's new features. While no gameplay footage was shown, plenty of new details emerged around The City and The Neighborhood, including the lessons learned from last year’s installment.
"We're creating two unique experiences again for NBA 2K22," Boenisch says. "The largest percentage of our users play in MyCareer mode and the subsequent City and Neighborhood modes, and it's definitely an area we always put a lot of focus in. The city is all new in NBA 2K22; it was all new in NBA 2LK21 as well, and we took a lot of learnings from our time developing that, and also watching how people interacted with it. We took all those learnings and applied them to 2K22. The all new City it is teeming with interactivity. There's NPCs that populate the fresh city layout. If you look at last year, it was dead in many ways, because there were no NPCs, right? The only people you ever saw were other people blowing by you on their skateboard or jogging by.
Related: Sports Games Should Let Us Recreate Classic Moments"The buildings were there, you could interact with them, but there was nothing really taking place with them. In a way that was part of the plan. It takes many years to build a complex system involving a big environment like a city, and NBA 2K22 takes a big next step to realise the vision of what that is. There is an all new quest system that engages my players with creative content, while offering different ways to level up to earn rewards for your MyPlayer. It's a complete re-envisioning of what The City is. Another thing in The City for next gen is we heard a lot of feedback from fans about 'I only have an hour, I just want to hop on, I want to get some games in 2K, then go do what it is we got to do in our lives'. We hear that, so we're going to be offering some matchmaking options in the city this year. There's gonna be select buildings in the city that you can roll up to, and get a quick game."
As with last year, this version of The City is limited to current gen consoles, namely Xbox Series X/S and PS5. On Xbox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch, and PC, players will have access to a lighter version of this game mode taking place on a cruise ship. This ship will have various daily events while the ship sails closer to different landmasses, l allowing you to jump off and shoot hoops all around the world. "You're going to start to see an island off in the distance, and everyday it gets closer," Boenisch says. "You can jump off the boat, you can go to various locales around the world – we have an event in Egypt, we have events in Iceland in the later seasons. It's just a really cool way to keep the experience fresh and really show our passionate support for the current gen console base, who's still thriving very strong in our community."
While the focus of the preview was on systems and modes around the game rather than on the court play, there were a few new details about gameplay, although more will be revealed prior to launch. "The thing that I'm most excited about personally is probably defence," Wang says. "The big goal for 2K was all about balance, all about skills, and all about counters and defence. We've completely revamped our blocking system, steals, our body system, and our shot contest system. All the things in the game that you do as a user, they're all more skill based. What you come away with is an experience that just feels a lot more rewarding. It rewards IQ, it rewards stick skills, and making the right plays. We want to really empower the defence to change the game this year. But as always, offence is huge for us, and there's so much going on there as well. There's a lot to talk about with some new skills we've been adding to the game, things that in the past maybe had been more animation based or even dice roll based, those things have all moved into more skill based elements. So on the offensive end, if you don't make the right play, that's gonna be on you. For me, it's a lot more fun, more engaging – it really rewards the veterans who put in the time and the work to get good at the game. And at the same time, we're still accessible."
Wang added that NBA 2K22 will have improved movement this year; a system that partially debuted in 2K21 with specialised dribbling styles, but could not reach its full potential due to COVID induced time constraints.
"We really evolved the [MyTeam] mode all year long in 2K21, and we're looking to do that again in 2K22," Smiths says. "We're expanding the mode and we're gonna do it right from day one. We will be bringing the long requested return of the draft to MyTeam. The MyTeam draft mode will have you select an entire lineup, and it's going to have a constantly updated pool of players, because as everyone knows with MyTeam, that roster and the players we put out all year long evolves very much from season one to season two to season three and beyond. This is an online mode. The rewards that you get with your draft team are for your permanent MyTeam collection. Every season in MyTeam will see new challenges, new rewards, new events, everything to make each season feel fresh and unique.
“Going into your two seasons in MyTeam, we have all the experience to build off of it's a great foundation for this mode. One thing that I can allude to, and tease a little bit, is that in one of these seasons coming up in this holiday season, we will be adding another new mode outside of draft mode to the game. It's very unique, very fun, and I can't wait to talk more about that. Again, in 2K22, [your] progress and collection carries over, everything you do on PlayStation 4 transfers over to PlayStation 5, everything you do on Xbox One transfers over to Xbox Series X and S, and vice versa. That's your VC wallet, your MyTeam points, your MyTeam tokens, all those balances, the mode progression, all of it stays and progresses between the two generations."
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