I enjoyed the initial experience. The flying felt great, the atmosphere was fantastic. There was just absolutely nothing to the game. Mile wide but and inch deep.
anthem made me sad rather than angry because it was legit pretty fun, it just didn't have any content. my buddy and I actually resorted to guides at launch thinking we must be missing the next quest or something but we found out we were "at endgame" like after the second play session.
when the demos first showcased at E3 way way back, the graphics were astounding and the engine looked fascinating. they put focus on the realism of NPC's (recall this was the mid-2010s) and hype was measured only because of skepticism by that point of YEARS of new launches failing to resemble their announcement trailers (not just this game, but from many many studios building out Phenomenal trailers showing enormous promise only to reveal that the videos could not run natively on the platforms they were made for - or that the tech demos were the size of the final game, so they had to scale back on tons of textures, shaders etc.
i think on launch, the game only had a handful of missions and people were very disappointed by the lack of diversity in characters and playstyle. whether you played as 'iron man' or as 'war machine' you were still doing the same things.
it didn't sell well and was QUICKLY overshadowed by other games.
I'm paraphrasing a vague memory here, but I believe I read that the flying was just one aspect, investors saw it and suddenly made development pivot to making not-Iron Man after they were already waist-deep in whatever they had been making and had to scrap so much of it to put a demo together.
To me, Anthem was the first visible crack in the ideal that "Bungie made a looter shooter GAAS game, and they made Halo, so obviously looter shooter GAAS games are an infinite money printer!!!!!"
I actually love how Anthem played and felt... it just completely lacked any content and it was clear they needed way more time with it. Shame, I felt that could have actually been a cool title. Last interesting thing they did though.
This is the game out of their catalogue I'm most bummed about because the game was actually so incredibly fun and could've been amazing. "Potential" was the word thrown everywhere about it.... but it was so obviously unfinished like every other looter shooter at launch and they just never bothered to put the development time into it.
I dunno what happens with their IP's from here but I hope anthem gets picked up and given new life with another studio.
Anthem had great gameplay. From the aspect of the actual in the moment mechanics it was their best, but it lacked meaningful activities, rewarding loot and an engaging story. I enjoyed playing it more than I enjoyed Destiny 2, but it felt pointless after a week or two.
Anthem is the poster child for why the narrative team is just as important as the technical team.
It had incredible mechanics and excellent gameplay, but there was nothing to do. There was no real story, no immersion, no opportunity to inhabit the characters.
Good mechanical gameplay is not enough to hold people’s interest. People want stories - that’s what video games are, at the end of the day; just the next evolution of storytelling.
Anthem was a game everyone wanted to fail to the point it was a self fulfilling prophecy. But there has still yet to be a game that had pure FUN in the actual mechanics of PLAYING the game. The guns felt good, the abilities felt awesome, the combos between abilities and your friends felt amazing, and the actual movement tech between flying and the on the ground movement is the most I have ever felt like iron man in a video game.
The problem was that the story was just ok, and it didnt have the endgame that its main competitor destiny had. So everyone rightfully thought the game had a lack of content. Didnt matter how FUN the game felt to play, there just wasnt anything TO DO with all those fun mechanics.
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u/TortuousHippo 8h ago
The fact that “Anthem” is even mentioned is pretty telling. Anthem was hot fucking garbage.