Anthem had the bones for a fantastic game. If they put the work in to fix its issues I think it would've been quite the hit.
But it's definitely their fault for dicking around 7+ years waiting for "BioWare magic" to kick in instead of developing their game responsibly.
It's sad to see them go definitively but tbh most of the creative talent that they are referencing has gone and the quality of their games kept getting worse. It's a shame but not surprising at all.
Just the feeling of flying and moving around in Anthem was phenomenal and something I've never seen another game match. The gameplay and combat were incredible. Such a shame they landed that, then forgot to add an end game.
That's because it was originally being written by Gaider, who then left and they put Karpyshyn and Watamaniuk in charge and told them to finish it but they couldn't use Gaider's notes or plans and had to take things their own direction without more writing time or budget. Stepping in to write in someone else's story without having their overarching plan is a painful task and takes time (ergo money) they did not have
I don't understand why gamers are so obsessed with "endgame". I loved Anthem but there was no reason it had to be an online-only endless content game. Most great games you can just replay if you want to keep playing. Except this one I can never play again because it requires servers. Utterly backwards.
Most of the people complaining about the endgame were talking about the boss raids. There were only a few variations, and they were pretty cool once or twice, but got old pretty quick if you were doing them over and over to grind for gear. And there was no real reason to grind for gear except to fight those same bosses, so that was a wash, too.
Yeah, it would have been a great game as the single player or co-op experience it seemed designed to be instead of the "open world", "live service" slop monster it got turned into.
I’d agree only if the game wasn’t a looter shooter. The whole appeal of the genre is replaying the same missions for rare loot. They could have made something like the new Iron Man game with co-op but they instead tried to make a Diablo/Destiny competitor.
Yeah, I mean, that's pretty much my complaint. They could have just made a single player RPG with optional online co-op. But they wanted a live service game so we got the worst of both worlds.
Because people liked the game and wanted a reason it keep playing obviously. I don’t have any interest in replaying the exact same game multiple times, especially not ones with an awful incomplete story like anthem had.
And I don't see how it's fun to replay the exact same game I already played with nothing new. Different people like different stuff. This really shouldn't need to be explained.
Creating new IP with Anthem, given BioWare's existing IPs at the time, is by far the worst and most "studio-closing" type of decision BioWare ever made. Absolutely resulted in a decline of backing and trust from EA, and isolated existing fans from getting a future of the actual good IPs the studio should have 100% focused on. It made no sense at the time chasing that looter-shooter trend when story-driven games were BW's expertise
Or SWTOR for that matter. They've always treated the SWTOR devteam like the black sheep, despite the game making bank for them. In the BioWare's 25th Anniversary Dev Stories book, SWTOR gets a tiny section while Dragon Age and Mass Effect has several pages worth of concept art.
This was all on themselves... for once EA is not the villain, if at all it's surprising that they held onto them that long and didn't liquidate them a decade ago.
This is why I'll always pirate EA games, they don't deserve a single penny. But tbh since the massive disappointment of Veilguard, I've had no interest in any EA game anyway. Their games are not even worth playing at all.
Here's a big fuck you to EA, Saudi Arabia and Jared Kushner. I hope EA goes bust since it isn't worth shit anymore.
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u/derthric 8h ago edited 7h ago
The long slow decline and death at the hands of EA has finally come.
It sucks.
Also the fact they put stupid ass anthem on the list and not Jade Empire is exactly the type of mindset that is killing gaming.