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.
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u/TortuousHippo 8h ago
The fact that “Anthem” is even mentioned is pretty telling. Anthem was hot fucking garbage.