"With PES 14, we had a new engine - FOX Engine - that we were trying to incorporate and many of the gameplay feelings of PES were just lost really, because we were trying to make a game that looked beautiful," Bhatti says. "But really, PES has been known for playing the beautiful game but not really caring about... how we moved, having the most accurate animation. [Earlier PES titles] definitely captured certain things, like a player run, for example, but it was super responsive and that allowed you to be very instinctive when you played. [In] PES 14, you had to think two seconds before you were going to do something because the animation would play out, and that's not PES."
He continued: "So for us, [PES 2015 is] about going back to the basics, going back to why you played PES in the first place. PES 5 and PES 6 have been earmarked by us, mainly because it's that era where the fans still say to us, 'That's when you guys were good, that's when you guys were the best'. Now, you can't just high-res a PES 5/PES 6 game and ship it for £40/£50... We really can't... and I don't think we should as well, we should be aiming a little bit higher. But the gameplay feeling is still magic, it's still perfect to me. We've tried to capture that and [rediscover] why it was special."
PES 2015 screenshot
The key to getting PES back on track, though, is getting the controls and responsiveness right, Bhatti suggests.
"The most basic thing for me is, in PES, when I played it, 1) super responsive and 2) left stick dribbling and R2 stop," he says, "this feeling that I didn't need a trick stick or needed to do tricks to beat a player, it was all about seeing the play and react to what's going on.
"The final thing is not scoring the same goal twice. That was so important to me in PES. You will shoot from anywhere, take a chance, you'll feel like, hey I've got a chance here. I think really with all football games you started to find too many sweet spots. PES surely had its own, PES 5 did as well, but you weren't just locked to those moments. You could try it and score [a wonder goal] and 'Oh my God, did you see that?'. They're the moments that we're trying to catch with the gameplay."