They had the bones set up for multiple end game raids, a continuing story with dude bro that stole the ancient armor or whatever, and plenty of tools to work with to add new weapons, classes, etc. They were like 90% the way there and then fricken fumbled it and doubled down, so the player base bailed.
If you want a really good write-up about Anthem, its development, and why it could only fail, check out Jason Schreier's long-form article about it. Eye-opening.
Lead Focus Tester: Okay… so test audiences are really loving the verticality and flight mechanics. They consistently rank that as the best part of the game.
Head Designer: I’ve instructed my team to implement an overheating mechanic which only allows players to fly for brief periods at a time.
Lead Focus Tester: Uh… maybe you misheard me. I said flight was the part of the game players lovedthe most. Almost everyone mentioned it as one of— if not the— best part of the game
Head Designer: No, I heard you just fine.
Lead Focus Tester: [long sigh] They’re gonna fucking hate that, dude…
Head Designer: Gamers will like what we tell them to like.
Or maybe because Bioware didn't make a single looter-shooter in their life, and the only "shooter" they made were the ME games, and their loot distribution was ASS in every single game they ever made (including SWTOR). Maybe they could've committed to it and fixed it to a place where it was actually good (like Bungie did with D1 and D2 for a combined 5 or so times - until they didn't), but I just don't think they ever really had it handled in the first place.
Also, as far as Bioware shitting the bed goes, by all accounts ME:A was a complete wreck and got "saved" (or at least thrown out of the door in a playable state instead of scrapping it after like 4 years and hundreds of millions of dollars spent on it) by EA who had to bring in multiple other teams - like the NFS one - just to salvage that particular mess. It also always had a very toxic work environment - the crunch for ME1 (which was partially before EA fully took over) was so bad that they basically lived in the office and held "screaming sessions" in the recording studio to not go insane. Don't get me wrong, EA can go fuck itself for so many reasons, but Bioware was dying with or without them, and I don't think it was particularly long for the world once the writing team started to leave one by one because of how horrible working there was. And that happened without EA.
It's easy to blame the publisher, but dodging every shred of responsibility is still somewhat unbecoming. Especially from Bioware. This was not Krafton and Unknown Worlds.
I would encourage you to check out Jason Schrier's autopsy investigation on Anthem as well as Kotaku's post release report on Anthem.
Long story short: EA gave Bioware everything that everyone would expect to result in a great game. Infinite money and creative freedom with the only restriction being that Bioware had 7 years to make the game.
EA checks in 5 years into that 7 year window, and Bioware doesn't even have an elevator pitch for the game, and that was supposed to be a couple months before the E3 gameplay reveal for the game.
The only reason Anthem even has flying is because EA's contact with Bioware was having lunch with Bioware's CEO and said contact mentioned that he had recently seen the new marvel movie (which at the time would have been either Age of Ultron or Civil War) and commented that he really loves seeing Iron Man fly around.
EA give Bioware everything and supported them even when they were down because clearly someone at EA believed in "Bioware Magic"; the only thing different now is that there are new bosses who don't believe in Bioware Magic.
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u/welzed11 8h ago
This is what happens when you put out 3 flops in a row back to back