Since spring, EA has pulled back the curtain on its many buffs and polishes to the foundation that FIFA 12 established. First, the team unveiled the five new gameplay features you can expect to see throughout FIFA 13. Then, at E3, we got hands-on with the game-in-progress and discovered more information about the team’s plans for EA Sports Football Club beyond FIFA 12.

And now, we’ve witnessed the next steps for FIFA 13, some of which will be big news for certain platforms, and others which will affect the game across the board.

The biggest news? Big changes to game modes, especially in career mode. Producer Santiago Jaramillo –who worked on gameplay refinements in FIFA 12—is captaining game modes in FIFA 13. Whether you play as a manager, player, or player-manager, your international career will flow as seamlessly into your experience as your club career has for years.

If that doesn’t sound like a big deal for those who’ve been playing through an international career as a player, you’ll likely be thrilled to find out that it doesn’t just entail call-ups. You’ll be able to play through an entire international career, complete with tournament qualifiers (both World Cup and continental), plus, if you win your continental tournament (UEFA European Championship, Copa America, etc), you’ll compete in the Confederations Cup. That also includes the presentation and international fanfare seen in content such as the recent Euro 2012 DLC pack for FIFA 12.

As a player, the integration of international caps will completely alter career mode. If you’re playing as a virtual pro, the game will gauge your experience level, and based on the team you pick, you may go out on loan to gain more experience. That’s especially likely if you’re a 19 year-old striker playing for Barcelona. Thanks to midseason job change implementation, you can build your way up to more playtime and eventually, first-team football.

If you decide to play as a real player instead, FIFA 13 will give you objectives to play for and a set of expectations for your club. For example, Jaramillo showed off Robin Van Persie and (unfortunately for Arsenal fans), his transfer request. Upon moving to a new club, he’s provided with a number of goals to score and assists to make. These elements will be key to getting a call-up for Holland.

All of these elements tie into a vast number of revamps to career mode and how the game processes the ins and outs of the business more realistically. The transfer logic has been totally rewritten. That is to say, Manchester City won’t be selling David Silva at the drop of a hat right as Silly Season kicks off on July 1. The transfer market AI now recognizes the importance of specific players to the overall health of the starting XI and won’t let them go without a fight. Or PSG’s money.

True Market Value is another implemented feature that puts AI transfers and reactions much closer to the real-world response. How much is the player worth to the team he’s playing for? It’s a huge factor in regard to how tough it’ll be to put Ronaldo and Messi on the same team for laughs. “The metagame of player market value plays more strongly,” Jaramillo explains.

FIFA 13's international elements of career mode extend beyond simply players and their transfers. Win enough seasons with a club, and you'll have better offers on the table than just second division Scottish clubs (no offense to fans of said second division Scottish clubs, mind you). Now, you won't simply work your way through season upon season as a club journeyman. You'll have the opportunity to manage national teams, which will add a totally new dimension to Manager Mode.

The fun of negotiation will be highlighted as FIFA 13 institutes counteroffers. As an example, Jaramillo demonstrated a bidding war between Manchester City and Napoli for the services of attacking midfielder Marek Hamsik. In this case, City wants to buy Hamsik for €25 million. We’re not sure how closely EA followed the logic of Napoli’s middle-finger waving, scooter-hailing president Aurelio De Laurentiis, but Napoli wasn’t having it for less than €42 million. The fun of one-upsmanship will be a huge factor in FIFA 13’s manager mode.

And, if you’re looking to cut corners and have some surplus, you can now negotiate players plus cash for transfers. If your squad is dying to sign Van Persie, you could throw in a young player with lots of potential alongside your projected cash bid to make the transfer happen. Plus, if you’re inclined, you now have to option to promise the player a specific role on the team. If you want RVP in your Starting XI, you can select the option before making the bid. As of announcement time, it appears that you can designate “starter,” “crucial,” or “bench” players as options.

And, on the heels of EA’s announcement of unlockables for high XP in EA Sports Football Club and the rollover of your FIFA 12, Euro 2012, and FIFA Street stats, you’ll have much more leeway with unlockables in career mode. Sure, you could buy legacy boots and kits for your team, as seen in this image, but why do only that when you can use XP points to buy your way past grinds and straight into career mode content, or more importantly, the ability to rematch after losing a crucial game?

Arguably less dramatic than the career mode overhauls, but still important, is the introduction of Skill Games into FIFA 13. After five years of kicking the ball around the arena as your favorite player and three years of practicing setpieces at your discretion (and, okay, two years of goalkeeper drills), there’s a big change coming to the time you spend in between matches. Remember how you see your friends’ fastest goals in the arena? It’s like that, magnified on a higher level.

You’ll have challenges across eight disciplines (dribbling, shooting, advanced shooting, crosses, etc.) with four different difficulty rankings (from bronze medal to legendary difficulty), and they’ll focus on helping players improve fundamental skills. One challenge we saw entailed passing in triangles with three teammates inside a restricted area with manual controls only.

If it doesn’t seem like a big deal, trust us: it’s going to make you not only better about play and techniques, but it’s going to make you exceptionally competitive with your friends. Case in point: shooting. We did the basic shooting drill, which finds you aiming to hit a handful of bullseyes in the penalty box. That’s simple enough to hit the bronze. By the time we got to gold, we had to hit a multitude of very specific shots, and suddenly, we found that you’ll have to dig deep into your offensive repertoire and mix up chip shots, finesse shots, and power shots to hit all of your targets.

In crossing minigames, you’ll have to hit targets in the box. On bronze, those are huge bullseyes. But by the time you hit gold, you’ll have to land those crosses into tiny targets, or perfectly inside of trash cans lining the pitch. It’s a lot tougher than it seems, and you’ll probably be obsessing over hitting gold more than you worry about loading up a friendly match.

We also got some more rundown on platform specific features. Despite the fears of some regarding Kinect and cursing, don’t worry: referee feedback won’t get your players sent off. What it does mean is that if you curse up a storm and Kinect picks it up, commentators will respond with “oh, it sounds like the manager isn’t happy with that decision.” In career mode, if you keep it up, you’ll be labeled as “difficult” in the press, and in the worst case scenarios, referees will be more strict with your players.

In Be a Pro, you’ll be able to call out on-pitch commands, such as to shoot or pass or go on a run. It sounds rather similar to a number of face button controls already at your disposal in the mode, for what it’s worth. It gets deeper for normal games, as you can use voice commands to change tactics (which means less time fiddling with the d-pad while you’re trying to start a run or defend). You can also make substitutions. When we pressed EA further for how it will work, we found out that you’ll call up a sub by position, then you’ll have numerical options for which players to swap (ie: “swap in number two”) rather than proper names.

The PC version was among the most eye-catching. Starting with FIFA 12, the PC version is mechanically on par with the console games, so it shares the same features as the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions. It will allow keyboard and mouse support, but only for offline play, and within that, it will feature point-and-click teammate runs. Arguably the most impressive element of the PC version was a demo running on a very highly powered rig with two video cards outputting to three displays. In essence, the rare (and wealthy) PC gamer could run a full panoramic view of the pitch, from end to end. It’s both awe-inspiring and a tad exhausting to play, all at once.

We still don’t know all of the details about EA’s plans for online and FIFA 13. We’ve got a great glimpse at its core gameplay, its career mode, and now, its skill games. Outside of simply getting a final build in our hands (with proper stats), the online announcements are the last piece of the puzzle. Stay tuned for more information on the game in the coming weeks from GamesCom, then keep an eye out for our review in late September!