There are some big changes that players will need to adjust to when it comes to FIFA 21’s presentation, including a massive swap in who provides commentary during games.
To start, the main commentary duo of the FIFA franchise, Alan Smith and Martin Tyler, have both been removed from the game entirely after 15 years. The news actually didn’t break until after the game released on Oct. 6, with Smith himself confirming their exclusion yesterday.
Lee Dixon and Derek Rae have now taken over as the main commentary duo for games, after mainly being featured in Champions League and Europe League matches in the previous two entries.
This move also limits the overall commentary options for players who want to enjoy quality English calls during their matches. Instead of multiple options, players will now essentially be stuck with Dixon and Rae barring any post-launch update from EA.
There are also heavy regional restrictions for live commentary in the game, as an EA community manager pointed out that not every commentary language is available to all players.
According to the post only English, French, and Spanish (South America) commentary are available with every version of the game. FIFA 21 uses the location where the game was purchased to determine what other commentators can be selected.
For example, if you live in Portugal and purchase the game, you would have Portuguese commentary available to select from. But the community manager noted that someone, say from Sweden, would not have that option.
This has spawned hundreds of complaints from fans who are angry that they can’t get support for things like Arabic commentary when they live in the United Kingdom. This isn’t new either, as regional restrictions have been in place for commentary in several of the FIFA releases in recent years.
The only way to get around this currently is to check the storefront of whatever platform you purchased the game on and see if the other languages are offered as free DLC. But that still doesn’t explain why commentary is region locked nor fix the issue for all parties.
Here are all of the commentators you can select regardless of your region, though this could also vary depending on certain factors in the game since other users have noted purchasing the game in the UK unlocks English, Norwegian, Italian, French, German, Dutch, and Swedish, but not others like Spanish.
- Derek Rae – English commentary
- Lee Dixon – English commentary
- Alan McInally – English commentary (in-game updates)
- Nira Juanra – Spanish (South America) commentary
This article is being updated as more information becomes available.
