Yeah, yeah, we know what you’re thinking. Another year, another Madden. Just another roster update plus a few bells and whistles listed on the back of the box while EA Sports kicks back and counts their money.

You’re wrong.

However Madden NFL 13 turns out, it’s undergoing a radical redesign everywhere – audio, gameplay, presentation, and more. As we’ve chronicled here, here, and here, EA Sports’ Tiburon Studios are going all in this year, and are being loud and clear about it.

“The big target for Madden 13 is innovation,” audio designer Matt Bialosuknia told us when we visited Tiburon for a hands-on preview. “A really high-end, elite broadcast presentation is what we’re doing this year.”

“This is the most excited I’ve ever been with what we’re doing with gameplay,” designer Larry Richart echoed. “The amount of changes we’ve made is the most in this console generation.”

So with that in mind – knowing more announcements are coming at E3 - here are the improvements we’re the most excited about so far.

Whether you loved Madden 12 or not, there’s no denying the in-game commentary was seriously lacking. The Madden team knew it, and made the decision to scrap the entire system and rebuild it from scratch. Jim Nantz and Phil Simms have replaced Gus Johnson and Cris Collinsworth in the virtual booth, which works well for many reasons, not least of which is they’re arguably the best broadcast team in the business today.

Over the course of last year, the team recorded more than 80 hours and 9,000 lines of Nantz and Simms dialogue, boosted by the latest technology as well as techniques like piping in crowd noise to better simulate game-day conditions. We’ve gotten some sneak previews, and so far it sounds terrific.

“We were nervous about starting from absolute scratch,” Bialosuknia told us when he talked about the decision to rebuild commentary from the ground up. “But we added a significant number of people to our team with a goal of best-in-class audio, and from the very first recording session we were confident we would get there.”

Commentary is terribly important, but when it’s combined with authentic on-field sounds it elevates the experience that much more. The Madden team hooked up with NFL Films to get hundreds of real game snippets of tackles, whistles, and player banter to add to the mix.

For example, specific quarterback cadences – the ‘Blue! 32! Hut Hut Hike!’ before every snap – have now been captured for most of the real NFL QBs for use in the game. When Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers step to the line, you’ll be hearing their actual voices barking out the signals instead of a generic one. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

“As we sat in the audio rooms and NFL Films played us what they had, our jaws were on the floor,” said Bialosuknia of his time at NFL Films. “We wanted to bring everything back with us. These hits especially – we would cringe when we would hear a 250 lb. guy and a 300 lb. guy collide at full speed. It’s got a very unique and intense sound to it and that’s going to be a big piece of our sound design.”

As mentioned in the intro, there are scads of modifications made to on-field gameplay. One of the most important is the introduction of the Total Control Passing mechanic, which allows the quarterback to guide receivers to open spots. Leading a receiver is not new in and of itself; the adjustment this year combines the left stick for direction and button pressure for speed to grant significantly more options to the passer.

“Teams are passing the ball more than ever in the NFL,” Larry Richart told us at our hands-on session. “We wanted to emphasize that, and now you can throw the ball to open areas of the field. Say you have a slot receiver on an ‘In’ route against a Cover 2 defense; normally, you couldn’t complete that pass. Now, you hold up on the L stick to lead your receiver down the field to the open area between the two safeties and it’ll convert it to a ‘Post’ route.”

The most intriguing aspect of this is that it should benefit casual players as well as hardcore fans, as it’s always been easy to see open areas to throw to, but tough to get the ball there.

For too long, a play-action pass meant a play-action sack – to the point where many Madden players ignore them completely. The sad irony, of course, is that a good play-action pass is a staple of most successful NFL attacks.

“This is a big hit with our community,” Richart explains. “The first thing we did was speed up the quarterback. He now gets away from the center and turns for the fake much faster. We’ve added more block and release routes, too. A couple of months ago we talked to (former NFL Head Coach) Brad Childress, who explained that you typically don’t have all 5 receivers going out on play-action; offenses don’t do it for a 2-yard gain, they’re trying to pull in the defense and go for the big play. Also, the running back will block first. If there’s no one there, he’ll release to his pass route. Lastly, the QB can abort the handoff if there’s a blitz coming.”

We’ll see how well this turns out in the final product, but – full disclosure – we were actually able to throw a touchdown pass off a play-action pass during our hands-on session. Hallelujah!

Anyone who’s played Madden 12 knows that the linebackers have jet-fueled sneakers that allow them to jump and knock down or intercept far too many passes. It’s nearly impossible to get it past them.

“This year, you’ll be able to do it,” Richart told us. “Last year, there was a lob pass, medium pass, and bullet pass. This year, we’ve added over 20 new pass trajectories and speeds, and have tuned the amounts for each. For example, you can throw medium lob passes to get it over those linebackers without fear of the so-called ‘moon ball’ that’ll get the safeties to come over and clobber your receiver. Similarly, a lob swing pass out of the backfield is now much lower, just enough to throw it over the defender for the receiver to catch it with plenty of time to get upfield.”

We had a chance to test out the new mechanics and agree they’re looking stronger. In fact, we even threw some passes over the middle – ones we’d been trained never to throw in last year’s game – with some success.

Another common complaint has been that players on both sides of the ball have been ‘psychic.’ Defenders have long been able to make plays on the ball while their heads are turned the other way, while receivers can often catch the ball at the beginning of their route before they’ve gotten close to where they’re supposed to be.

No more, says Richart.

“Passing icons will be faded for receivers on certain routes until they would be expecting a pass in real life,” he explains. “We’re trying to eliminate the ‘snap and fire’ where the receiver is able to magically catch the ball. It’s set up on a per-route basis, based on what’s happening at the moment. It’s not an ‘open’ indicator, though, just a way to ensure the user knows that timing matters.”

“On defense, a new read-and-react system eliminates the ‘psychic DBs’,” he continues. “If a defender doesn’t see what’s going on, he’s not going to be able to react to it.”

This is indeed welcome news to Madden fans old and new, as nothing is more frustrating than a perfectly thrown ball that gets picked off by cornerback who’s staring the other way.

Savvy Madden players know how to beat Man and Zone defenses, and it’s been relatively simple to discover which defense your opponent is running. All you had to do was put a man in motion – if a defender followed him, it was man-to-man, and if no one did, it was zone. This season, the defense won’t give up their scheme so easily.

“You always hear the announcers talk about how it’s a chess match between the coordinators,” Richart says. “In last year’s game it was really easy to tell. This year, if you put a man in motion, we have the zone swap. The players will still follow the man, so you don’t know until you snap the ball what defense they’re in.”

Updates to Madden’s menus and visuals happen every year, but this season the team has vowed to ‘Touch Every Pixel.’ The Home screen has been redesigned, dozens more in-game cutscenes have been created, and the overall look and feel of the game has been adjusted to be like a network television broadcast. Even the scenes of the pre-game warmups behind Nantz and Simms as they discuss the matchup will be reflective of the location of the TV booth in every NFL stadium.

“We’re going for world-class presentation, and that starts from the beginning,” presentation designer Patrick Bellanca told us as he walked through all the updates. “From the moment you put the disc into the tray, Madden is fresh. There’s a whole new user interface and 3D intro that brings you to the new main menu, tons of new lighting upgrades, motion blur, and tuned depth of field. Plus, we’re going to bring our broadcast crew to life in a way that we’ve never done in a Madden game before.”

While there’s still much to reveal – and 3 months until its late August release – it’s obvious that there’s been a massive investment of time and money in Madden NFL 13. Whether or not it all comes together remains to be seen, but our initial sessions with the game were promising. As regular players of any sports game know, even the best title’s faults start to show themselves after dozens of games. Tiburon has listened to its vocal community, beefed up the development team, and attacked Madden’s weaknesses with surgical precision. We’re certainly rooting for it to be the best one yet.