That said, these cutcenes are played out with awkward animations and a lack of voice acting, save for the intonations of a documentary narrator that sounds more like he’s narrating a middle school biology filmstrip than discussing a young baseball player’s experience. In particular, an unexpected post-season trade to the Blue Jays farm team hurt both my pitcher Bubba Bottomley and myself more than I expected. While not all the choices have a meaningful impact on your player’s career, some occasionally added surprising emotional heft.
New this year is the Pave Your Path feature, which adds to the mode’s narrative by portraying key moments in your player’s career – being called up to the majors, deciding whether to enter the draft, being traded – and giving dialogue options and choices that theoretically impact said career.
Road to the Show remains the best part of the game, and every year Sony San Diego inches closer to making the mode a full-fledged baseball RPG. While it’s kind of shallow to be the key addition this year, as a side attraction it adds a lot to the overall package and reinforces the game’s implicit nostalgic themes, which makes the lack of online for the mode all the stranger – you’ll have to have your old friends come visit you in-person to reminisce. After a few innings, though, I found myself sorely missing the depth of the main game and thinking they might have scaled it back too much. With era-appropriate music and sound effects, pixelated chyrons, and even Griffey himself commenting on the plays, this mode is undoubtedly charming and fun.
This mode tosses the complex simulation of The Show aside in favor of a high-angle camera and simplified control setup – fielding, batting, and pitching are all accomplished with combinations of the analog stick and the X button. as cover athlete, it’s no surprise the most-ballyhooed addition to The Show ’17 is a Retro Mode that evokes the slugger’s own 16-bit baseball franchise. Considering its choice of the legendary Ken Griffey, Jr.