Getting the lowdown on NBA 2K21 ahead of its release

2K were kind enough to invite selected folks to learn a little more about the upcoming NBA 2K21, including what some of the bigger changes are for the year, so let’s see what has changed for this year’s release.

They have already released some in-depth articles on the changes to the core gameplay and the MyTeam, so we won’t cover that here, but if you wanted to read up on them, you can here for the core gameplay changes and here for MyTeam, just set aside some time as they are both long posts.

One of the big changes this year, was MyCareer was the return of College integrations, but that is not where your career begins, this year, you can play a few matches in a high School league, and you will then be approached by Colleges, as they attempt to recruit you. The school you choose to sign to or enrol in can be selected from one of 10 and they are some big ones, Michigan State, UConn, Florida, Gonzaga, Syracuse, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, UCLA, Villanova University and West Virginia. Unlike last year, there will be more chances for you to play in your college time, rather than just watching things happen, which is a nice improvement.

Regardless of the choices here, you will be playing as Junior, the star of a former star Basketball player, who is facing the double challenge of trying to get into NBA and follow in the footsteps of his famous father. But he won’t be alone, the cover stars Damian Lillard and Zion Williamson will be there to help Junior along the way, as will new characters, that you might recognise from TV shows and movies. In fact, you’ll see Jesse Williams (Grey’s Anatomy), Michael K. Williams (The Wire, Boardwalk Empire), Djimon Hounsou (Blood Diamond, Guardians of the Galaxy), Mireille Enos (The Killing, World War Z) pop up throughout the story.

Perhaps the biggest new addition to the game is that there will be times when you have to make a choice and that choice will be more like an RPG than ever before. One of the earlier choices is that you will need to pick between one of two agents, the one you choose will impact your career, but later on in the story, that choice may come back to bite you. It seems that the developers wanted to put forth a more direct connection to the player on screen, to those playing the game and if the choices can impact your career as much as they say, that could be something, because you could theoretically replay the story multiple times. It will be interesting to see how that responds with players when the game is released in full.

The other area that has been changed up quite a bit this year is the new Neighbourhood, which given they tend to change it year on year, is no real surprise. This year, they have left the park setting behind and gone for a more relaxing beach location, strangely enough called 2K Beach. As the developer of the game is based in Southern California, they have taken a fair amount of inspiration from the beaches that are littered on the coast, so if you see it and think Venice Beach, that is likely where something came from. Gamers will still get to enjoy the same perks as previous years, 3 on 3 streetball runs or the more challenging 5v5 Pro-am Games, or even forgetting all of that and spending an hour or two choosing your next set of kicks.

Of course, there is a demo available for the game already, so you can sample some of the changes, but what they have been talking about seems to be solid improvements across the board, even changes to things like GM, the Manager mode, where you manage players on your team, changing from fixed results to random ones appears to have vastly altered the experience and each time you manage a team, the results will be interesting.

This information is all about the current platforms, PlayStation 4, Switch and Xbox One, the next gen platforms will be talked about in greater detail soon.