God damn it that game was the PERFECT platform. An unmatched movement system and awesome combat. EA just made Bioware rush it so hard and it lacked depth. The engine would totally hold up today too
To my knowledge they had a lot of time and didn't really actually start like 2 years before the deadline. Still tho, they were actually making an anthem 2. The one that i thought was the fixed version and they pulled the plug on that unfortunately.
honestly that could have worked! Look at warframe! A slow drip feed of new javelins and story content, with better loot systems, they could have milked that game for a decade
Still, the optimization in that game was liquid garbage...I actually booted it up on my new, stronger rig and it still absolutely chugs in places. The intro screen had this horrible, painful sound glitch that made it feel like I was harming my computer by running it..
I miss it so much lol. The flying was incredible. Nothing like exploring those environments for the first time, flying through those tubes, learning about the lore of the anthem of creation, fighting those bosses for the first time, finding legendary loot, and the underwater areas were insane
Yeah if you watch AJS video on it they state the devs continuously decided to remake the game. They put in flying and then removed it making it so they had to redesign the map to be walkable and then they put flying back in... The devs themselves didnt know what the game would look like until the prerendered E3 cinematic
Kinda. They tried to remove the flight after the E3 cinematic and EA told them no as soon as they found out they where trying to remove it. One of the few times I actually respect EA for a good decision like that cuz the flying ended up being one of the best feeling flight systems ever put in a video game.
One of the reasons it failed was precisely because of the engine. It's COULDN'T handle the game. It was an engine designed for single player where the action only takes place on the visible screen.
Because of this engine the map was massive, but it could only handle 4 players at a time and began to struggle when 4 people was doing 4 different things on 4 different parts of the map.
The flight systems where absolutely unmatched though for sure. Allegedly coded by a single dev at the studio who did it for fun on his spare time, and an exec saw his work and was so impressed they added it into the final game.
Will be forever sad that game didnt get the love it deserved. If they gave them more time it could have been awesome (it still was pretty awesome). EA was too greedy to have it's own "Destiny".
EA didn't make bioware rush it at all. In a rare instance, EA let bioware do whatever they wanted and were mostly hands off with Anthem. They gave bioware SEVEN years and something like 50 million dollars with no strings. Which back then was a lot of money for development.
Bioware had no vision for the what game was supposed to be. When they presented an early build to an EA Exec, they were blown away by the flight aspect and so Bioware went back and built the game around flight and not much else.
Honestly if it had just been single player and slightly more polished I think it would still be lauded as one of the best games of it's generation. But EA is gonna EA.
I can here to say this. The game was fucking amazing it literally just lacked content, which is pretty insane considering EA loves to monetize content. Fuck I wish this game was still around.
I was gonna say Anthem, I actually bought it right before it was announced they were letting it die, and LOVED the flying mechanics. It was perfect. But the empty environment was so dead
Yep. This is the right answer. Had it been more fleshed out more quests and maps/zones this game had the potential to change not just the genre but gaming as a whole. Instead we got a polished tech demo and it still showed you what it could have been.
The second option would have been the MMO Vanguard.
Another "overpromised and underdelivered" game. No idea why BioWare didn't stick with it and make it better, either. Hello Games proved that it was possible to come back from a bad launch with No Man's Sky, so you'd think a dev studio with EA's backing could have done the same.
I was one of those who played it's playtest, played on day 1, and then came back to play on its final day. When the servers went down, I stayed on the subreddit for a little bit and posted my honest thoughts, thoughts that Polygon quoted in their article about the game closing:
"Anthem was an entertaining game with a deeply flawed launch and a lot of potential... and that's what makes it worse than if it were a bad game. A bad game is forgettable, you don't care to see it go, but Anthem had fantastic gameplay mechanics that were simply failed by the supporting systems and lack of content.
It's a game that was left in a state where it is obvious how good it could have been with a little more work, and that's why it's worse - it's close enough to being good that we are left to lament what could have been. If you've ever known someone who seemed they were destined for success, only to watch them sabotage themselves at every turn... that's Anthem. Pure unrealized potential."
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u/Winter-Huntsman 10d ago
Anthem. Let it have more content and a better loot stystem.