MLB The Show 27 Wishlist: From Big to Small

There was a time I used to resent wishlists because it felt grievance-based much of the time. It would boil down to “you didn’t do what I wanted” rather than trying to talk about how to improve what’s there.

I have softened that stance through the years because I understand the frustration some people have with the stagnation of many sports games in this era. The year-to-year differences feel slighter in many games, so it feels a little more fair to slip in some general frustration with your desires for next year’s game.

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However, I still don’t approach wishlists from the perspective of using it to roast the prior game, so this isn’t what this wishlist will be about. That said, my focus for this MLB The Show 27 wishlist will be laser focused on the weaknesses of the series right now rather than “pie in the sky” items.

In part, I’m going that way because I feel it’s time for The Show to tackle some of its other demons now that it’s back in a better place with some of its fundamentals within franchise mode. The “base” is sturdier now, so why not keep working on swapping out that foundation with more fresh material?

To put it another way, I want to be a little like the Sam Gerard to The Show’s Dr. Richard Kimble in this instance by just telling them “it’s time to stop running” when it comes to avoiding long-term problems that have bogged down the series.

I also want to do this wishlist now because, looking ahead, I think I’m running out of time to talk about The Show before football season and new game season takes over with the summer slate.

So let’s jump into things, and I want to start with the big ticket items on my list.

Big Ticket Requests

In-Game Highlights From Around The League

After Madden brought back in-game highlights from other games within your franchise mode in last year’s title with its halftime show (joining the old NCAA Football and NFL 2K games), I’m ready to go full force into requesting all sports games do something with real-time highlights from other games going on within franchise mode.

It’s going to depend a bit on how the simulation engine works because each sports franchise does it a bit differently in terms of “when” the engine decides to simulate the other games in comparison to yours. But however it’s done, and regardless of whether online franchise returns or not to The Show, baseball is a perfect title to add in this sort of in-game check-in.

I think we’ve wanted some sort of “weekly recap” in The Show for years, but baseball is a long season and keeping things fresh for that sort of in-depth weekly show is probably more challenging than with some other sports games.

What’s a little less taxing once you’ve figured out the general way to generate highlights from other games is to give us a little “check in” from around the league during our ongoing game.

Have Boog kick it over to another broadcast talent to tell us about someone hitting three home runs in a game or about a pitcher having a no-no through seven. The next level would be a second check-in to say what happened with a pitcher chasing that no-no, but even if you don’t go that extra step this is about bringing your franchise alive in a way it’s not right now.

I’ve said it multiple years in a row, but The Show is very silo’d off from a presentation standpoint. You still feel very alone in your franchise in terms of battling it out with 29 other teams and feeling like they all have agency and personality — even if The Show is good about showing stats and overlays from around the league during franchise mode games.

This check-in with a highlight or two from around the league would hopefully take a step towards improving that. It could be about individual performances, and it could also change throughout the year to fit in with the priorities for that part of the season.

Yes, it could be about a McGwire-Sosa situation where you find out if X player hit another home run and is running down history late in the summer, or it could just be a mention that X player just hit his 13th home run of the month. It could go from basic to historical, it’s just all about putting you more into something that feels real.

If you’re in a playoff chase late in the year, what better way to add a little more intrigue to your game than by having a highlight check-in where it’s mentioned how the other teams in your division are doing tonight. It would add far more to the intensity of your game than just seeing a score on the ticker below the screen.

Overall, we’re all trying to build narratives and stories within our franchise mode, and seeing highlights from other games is one of the strongest ways to do that. Now that we see once again that the “tech” is possible, it’s time for every major series to jump on board with its own flavor of this feature.

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