Right? They mismanaged the game since inception and then had the audacity to blame its failure on the pandemic. Anthem could’ve been an IP defining title like Destiny and Warframe but the suits couldn’t pull their heads out of each other’s asses to make it happen.
what little gameplay was there was actually pretty solid but I recall completing the main stuff with a friend (via xbox gameshare) in the span of 2 days and we tried to figure out what we were supposed to do next and the answer was "you're at endgame".
yea there was just nothing to do after you went through the little story there was, and it always hinted at things developing and then the story just kinda ends waiting for the next installment that never came.
Honestly, not sure how they fucked Anthem up. A looter shooter where everyone gets to fly around like Iron Man and customize mech suits? That sounds awesome!
Then you see what it is, how it was monetized, and you say "Oh, right, EA".
EDIT: Monetization was not much of an issue, I was mistaken.
The monetisation was the least of their problem. The lack of endgame, their first Maelstrom event being super disappointing and the weapon scaling being so fucked that the level 1 grey weapon had a better DPS than a maxed legendary weapon killed the game far more than a few skins being slightly overpriced
Ah, I seem to be misremembering then. I recalled their being a big snafu about how Anthem was monetized at launch, but I guess I was mistaken. Perhaps a little bias from EA being EA. Thank you for the correction.
The funny thing is, people were practically begging for skins or anything but there was nothing. The shop was there and they had like a couple paint jobs or whatever, but I never even knew if you could buy the currency or if you got it somehow else. And then the true shittiness of the game started hitting people and I guess they never had the chance to update the store, at least for the month my EA sub lasted.
Yeah, I do remember that there was just... Nothing to do. Nothing to work towards. The concept and gameplay loop was there, but because of the terrible balance and wonk ass decisions for pacing, it wound up feeling hollow.
Weird part is, that's all top layer stuff. It's far easier to balance numbers and make cosmetics than it is to create a solid core for a game...
The older you get, the more you realize the suits generally catch a lot of flak for simply doing their jobs and herding the developers.
I can't remember, and I don't care enough to look it up, but wasn't Anthem sort of sent out to its death after they realized very late in development that the core game loop simply wasn't fun? I seem to recall there was some situation along the lines of, "yeah by the time we realized it was a problem there was no time to fix it." Or maybe they just kept rebooting the game until EA finally told them they had to ship something.
Anthem was a lot of fun, but it was a looter shooter without any loot. Still wish we were in the timeline where they didn't shit the bed with that one.
I loved Anthem so much. I absolutely love any game where movement is so prioritized and customized. Flying around and dashing was an amazing gameplay loop. It's really a shame they messed up the endgame so much.
Imo it's not the suit's fault for anthem. They literally gave the studio 7 years to crap it out and the actual Dev time was just 2 years. 5 years of back and forth incompetence among the devs
That can go both ways. If they didn't include Anthem, plenty of people would be like, "Why are they so afraid to mention Anthem?"
Bottom line is that Bioware was a stinky shell of its former self and hasn't produced anything worthy of note in over a decade. And for anyone who didn't care for DA: I, it's been far longer than that.
I'll die on the hill that the mismanagement of Anthem was a crime again humanity and biggest fumble of modern gaming. I don't know of another game that had more enjoyable core gameplay, and I've largely been an FPS purist.
This was the last one for me too. The Bioware I miss has been gone for a while. After Andromeda and Anthem (gifted, but still) there was no way I would buy from them again.
Hopefully a competent dev can buy the IP and make something good.
I’d raise the question, “where are those Jade Empire developers today,” and expect to quickly find that they are doing important work, after 5 minutes of googling:
It was rough around the edges, but I also have a soft spot for it. I think the spot is even bigger in that many parts of the gameplay like the closed/open fist choices served as a rough draft for Mass Effect including the paragon/renegade choices. Had Jade Empire not existed, Mass Effect wouldn't have been as smooth an experience.
"Former developer of XXX" is a trap that people should be very aware of. I mean, I hope I'd see something as fun as JE, but I'll be sceptic until proven wrong.
A low effort but fully playable remaster with maybe some upscaled textures released on a modern console or PC would really be all it would take for me to be happy.
An older single game with no major IP attached to it, unless you actively look through Bioware's list of games to find it it really is easy to miss. I played it after playing Dragon Age Origins and Mass Effect 1 and I just wanted to play more games from them. Good times.
Back in the day I played it on XBOX. It was one of the first games I ever bought with my own money. They foil covered Limited Edition. Absolutely loved that box art.
I recently replayed it on PC though and all of the extra content that was not included in the XBOX release was a wonderful surprise. I ended up using Iron Palm and Paralyzing Palm primarily for a fighting style I took to calling "The Palmening" lmao
"Fling accretions my discretion" is still apart of my vocabulary, so I'll drop a "Don't go flinging your accretions my discretion" and literally nobody knows what I'm saying.
Man Jade Empire was so good. I was 14 or so and we had 3 days off due to a massive snowstorm. I binged the game. It was incredible. Them not mentioning it is absolutely criminal.
Genuinely surprised Neverwinter Nights got second billing. I love that game, and im the only person I've ever met whose played it.
Which is good for me, because it means I can rip off its story wholecloth for my DnD campaigns
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u/BriggieRyzen 7 5800x / ASUS Crosshair VIII Dark Hero / TUF RTX 40901h ago
One of my childhood friends turned me to Neverwinter, I’m glad he did. Shadows of undrentide and hordes of the underdark are still my favorite games/expansions.
A perfect encapsulation of why they're closing and how inept and incompetent the new team was. They coasted on the rep earned by others. As have several other major studios.
If they had a grave so many of us would piss on it bc what they did is a gaming war crime
Jade Empire was pre ME3, Anthem was post ME3. That's kind of the delineating point in time for when things started to go really bad for BioWare I'd say.
I wonder if with all the reverse-engineering going on, someone will manage to bring back a working version of whatever Anthem had at the point it closed down.
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u/SadlyItsSearles 8h ago
Refusing to even mention Jade Empire but including Anthem is a rough choice.