Five Game Challenge Day 17: Anthem Not Dead After All?
Funny how these things work out. It was just a few days ago in comments I was saying how much of a dud Anthem had turned out to be. That hope was extinguished for any sort of redemption. Senior Leads associated with the project were jumping like rats off a sinking ship. The complete radio silence otherwise just added to the foreboding atmosphere.
So if like me, you’d given up all hope? Well, I think we could be forgiven.
Heck, even now we still haven’t heard anything officially. But purveyor of all BioWare game knowledge secret and arcane — Jason Schrier — has some sources talking about Anthem 2.0 or Anthem Next.
Details on Anthem Next are hazy, but among other things, the game’s developers plan to overhaul the loot, the quests, the social aspects of the game, the difficulty, the progression system, and the world map. One person on the project said they’re planning to change the game’s entire structure.
BioWare Plans A Complete Overhaul For Anthem (2019, Kotaku)
This all sounds good. And very much needed if Anthem is to have any kind of future.
But along with the specifics of how those things will be changed being hazy, we also don’t really have any inkling of how they’ll arrive. All at once in a mega update? A sequence of updates ala No Man’s Sky? Or… A paid re-release? The latter possibility was raised, noting a likely discount for existing owners.
But I can’t imagine any discount short of 100% satisfying current owners of Anthem if they chose this route. I’m not entirely unsympathetic toward commercial realities. Games companies are first and foremost companies. Businesses. They need to make money in order to keep giving us what we want.
But what we received was far from a final product. For the enjoyment I managed to extract from Anthem at launch — despite how much I wanted this to be a title that succeeded… I couldn’t avoid the conclusion that we’d been given (at best) an early access title.
EA has refused to comment on this story so far. As a result, I can’t imagine we’ll see this any time soon — even if they choose to release these updates in a series rather than all-at-once.
But, hope lives on for Anthem after all.
That’s not something I expected to say or think any more.
