Anthem Website

So...um...is this just a rip off of Bungie's Destiny with RPG elements? Why depart from mass effect? Why go new IP?

Wtf Bioware. What happened to deep and engaging story telling? I'm so confused right now.

*sigh*

Probably one of the first bioware games I won't be buying period.

Other thoughts?

 

Anthem had the best showing from E3 this year, so I'm definitely interested. On the surface, it looks like the best parts of ME:Andromeda smashed into Destiny, and I'm certainly intrigued by the idea, as I'm a fan of both games.

It certainly can't be any worse than the last ~5 years of Bioware games at least, so it's got that going for it.

 

I'm no game developer, but I think Bioware's thought process is relatively easy to follow.

I see it like this: DA:I was a massive and costly project that drew a huge amount of Bioware's attention during a significant portion of ME:A's development, and ME:A suffered for it. The end product was an average game with an average story, and absolutely shit multiplayer. And the sales reflect that.

Due to ME:A's underwhelming sales, Bioware is likely now a tad short on cash. They saw how commercially successful Destiny was and thought, "Well bros... we need money to ensure DA:4 will be another GoTY success. Lightbulb! Let's copycat Destiny, but make it even prettier!"

So in the midst of Bioware pivoting all their best writers and concept people over to the DA:4 teams (which is all but publicly confirmed to be in creative development), they put the ME technical teams to work to make a game that is purely about graphics, gameplay, and co-op.

 

It does seem super generic to me... but some times, that's all I want. Bare bones, no gimmicks, just gameplay. So I guess I'm actually cautiously optimistic.

 

DId more research.

I'm a bit less pessimistic.

Drew Karpshyn is the lead writer for this one. Love his books and stories.

Linkies info

 

I think it looks pretty promising as a new IP.

Games like Destiny and The Division showed that there is a demand for these loot-based shooters in my opinion. I just hope there is a semblance of a story to go along with the game.

 

Bioware Montreal is officially merged with Motive Studios

 

So having played both the first "alpha test" about a month ago, and the demo this weekend, I can conclusively say that Anthem is a pretty decent game. It's buggy, not to Bethesda, or even Andromeda, levels, but definitely a fair amount of bugs, by far the most impactful of which that I've seen being the UI telling me that my ultimate is ready to use but not being able to actually use it. The rest have been primarily cosmetic, such as the game telling me I've leveled up and unlocked a new suit in the post-mission screen even though I was already at the cap for the demo, or my character being missing from the post-mission screen, but those aren't a huge deal really.

On the whole, if they can polish off the bugs with the final build and the inevitable Day 1 patch, I'll at least enjoy playing through the game's campaign. The core gameplay loop in the demo is pretty good (not quite as refined as Destiny 2, but I'd say it's on par with Warframe), and thanks to the addition of the jetpacks, the game feels substantially different from other such games that I've played. I'm definitely intrigued.

Whether or not I'll stick around, however, is entirely down to how the endgame and loot treadmill works. The one dungeon in the demo is pretty excellent, so I'm not worried about the content being good, but there's no indicator of how long-term progression and loot incentives will be structured. And as Destiny 2 showed, it's pretty easy to fuck that up hard. Guess I'll just have to wait and see.

My other primary concern at this point is how EA is gonna EA it up; we haven't seen diddly about the monetization scheme, and that's where the real issues with the game are almost certainly going to lie. I'm not exactly optimistic about it, but we'll see.

Has anyone else played the game at all and/or have any opinions to share?

 

My response to Anthem is meh. I’ve not tried it. Though it looks interesting, I’ve been burned by EA too many times to purchase it. Even if it is a 10/10 I won’t be buying for that reason.

 

It's from EA.

It's a BioWare game.

It's a live services MP loot shooter.

If there's a story I'll watch it on YT, but I'm willing to bet it'll be the Destiny model: a barebones narrative designed to hook the playerbase and then they'll have the MP to tide them over between DLCs handing out piecemeal short stories without a compelling overarching narrative. DA and ME were marketed as being BW story/character driven first. Anthem is marketed (weakly) as a coop multiplayer.

I'll pass.

 

Frankly, I'm of similar mind. This is Bioware's last chance to keep me as a reliable customer, and it's not looking super hot. I do quite enjoy the core gameplay loop, but much like with Destiny 2, I have a sinking feeling everything surrounding it is gonna be obnoxious.

I'm gonna give it a chance to fail though, and if/when it does, I'm off that train forever.

 

You must be having a pretty good play-through because this demo release is tremendously buggy. Can't speak for the alpha. Just some of the bugs I've encountered along with many other people are gaming breaking ones like not getting a second javelin, infinite load screens, sound just completely dropping requiring a full restart, no VoIP (works for some not for others), strongholds not progressing sometimes, etc. Definitely game breaking bugs.

However, I am hoping these issues are because it's a demo release. Like the amount of man hours they would of had to invest to limit the game to this degree to just grab a quick buck is ridiculous. A more accurate judge on the bugs and the state of the final release will be the beta.

That's the only real negatives I encountered in the game, and even with those overall I still enjoyed it. Can't speak about the main story, but the character interactions etc at the hub? The dialogue is such a breath of fresh air, witty and funny at times, definitely one of the better games as far as dialogue goes, Destiny 2 can't hold a candle to it. I chuckled when I saw the quality of the faces and animations, after the Andromeda fuck up it's like they paid special attention to that area to try and grab some street cred back.

And on the most important thing, the game play, it is actually fun. Extremely laggy at times, not sure what netcode they are using but it feels like its p2p or some such hybrid. When you connect to certain players and their missions you can do the good old non-stop lag step or other times the connection can be extremely smooth. If it's p2p than that would explain why. Flying around feels great and smooth, some PC players are complaining it's a lot harder than consoles, but I didn't find any issues with it although I could see how using a controller for flight would be easier.

I will be waiting to purchase to see the state of the bugs, but I am hoping it's a result of the limiting of the game for the demo and they should iron out most of the worst ones. I'll probably get it and at the current rate definitely enjoy it more than Destiny 2, the questing and storyline that is. As far as end game goes? As others have said, will have to wait and see. I enjoyed the one boss fight in the low level demo dungeon than pretty much all of Destiny 2 boss fights, so that's promising. I'm cautiously optimistic, but I'm cautiously optimistic about everything EA touches and usually end up disappointed.

P.S. They better add a quick launch from anywhere (or even just a sprint option in the hub) to freeplay/missions/strongholds etc because as it is logging on than having to walk for a minute to your javelin, than get in it, than launch the missions will get old real fast. But I'm sure after feedback they'll implement something like that since they are implementing a social hub after player feedback from the alpha.
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So log back on and BioWare has been busy. The second javelin bug seems to be have been resolved and they reckon the rubberbanding bug was caused by their servers so they think they've resolved that. Keen for another play.

 

Pretty much this. The bugs were really annoying, but when they weren't it was fun. Flight feels great and the combat is exciting. Only thing missing is being able to crouch.
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Do you know if they fixed the loading screen issue? It's possible to get past by just restarting, but super annoying.

 

I’ve heard enough shit about this game that it makes me even more disappointed that they put so much into this and shat all over the Mass Effect franchise to do it.

Ah well. EA gonna EA.

 

Yeah, I definitely haven't encountered anything like that. Guess I just got lucky or something. Only one on that list I've seen was the infinite loading thing two or three times, and I figured that was down to the same server issues that was causing the rubber-banding I was seeing occasionally.

And honestly, I'd probably care more about those issues if it weren't for the fact that every online game has similar issues when it first goes live. I assume it's because the publishers are always too cheap to spin up enough temporary servers to handle the initial surge, and while it's obnoxious, it's also ubiquitous, and if I'm gonna swear off a game because of those issues, I'm gonna run out of options for online games real quick.

As for flight on PC vs console, I'm with the people bitching about it. The flight mechanic was very clearly designed with a controller/thumbstick in mind, and then ported over to use a mouse. It feels significantly better to fly with the XB1 controller I've got plugged into my PC than with the mouse and keyboard.

The problem there is that while the flying feels much better with a controller, everything else is significantly better with a mouse and keyboard, so I just put up with the mildly obnoxious flight controls. It's perfectly usable with a mouse, it's just a bit finicky at times (primarily when trying to milk as much time out of your jets as possible, via diving and pulling out repeatedly).

 

Regarding the monetisation, I follow some of the Bioware developers on Twitter, and they've been pretty firm that there's only going to be cosmetic stuff, and nothing that you can't get in game anyway.

I haven't played the demo, although I believe there's a general access one opening up next week which I'll check out, but it's always looked like it's going to be a good game, but not necessarily one that appeals to me, largely because I'm not really a fan of online gaming. I probably am going to pick it up though, unless I hate the demo or it gets terrible reviews, partly because I've got enough points on my Game reward card to get it basically for free.

I'd also say that it feels like a lot of the criticism I've seen of the game has less to do with anything about Anthem itself, and more to do with resentment over MEA, general hatred of EA, etc, which on the one hand fair enough, but on the other hand it feels like Anthem could be the best game released this year and it would still fail out of consumer spite.

 

It deserves to. It should. If it's successful, the message will be clear: EA can shit on its customers, milk them for every cent, break game balance by inserting MTX, steering the industry into GREED>quality and no matter what you do, those same people will still buy your shit if it has a particular sticker on it.

Do you think this game (which has been rightfully compared to every co-op looter shooter out there) would be getting nearly a smidgen of the attention if it wasn't a BioWare game?

You should play it if you want, and the game should be praised if it deserves it, but ignoring the meta context of who the developer and publisher are is playing into their hand at your own risk. I am convinced that EA will pull something shitty with Anthem. It might not come to light on release, but I've been burned too many times to trust them again.

 

My point is that a lot of the negative comments about Anthem are ignoring the actual game itself. It's absolutely fair to be cautious due to past experience, even to ignore it completely, but it would be a shame if Anthem turns out to have none of the shitty qualities people are concerned it will have only to bomb anyway.

I'll be particularly annoyed if, as I suspect, people shouting about how Anthem should be boycotted then start shouting about how awful it is that Bioware gets closed down, should that happen.

 

Bioware closing down now would be a mercy killing. It's a shambling corpse chasing trends completely separate from the games that made it beloved in the first place, and all the talent that made those games is long gone.

 

I just Bioware to die, so EA can finally realize that it should stay solely within the Sports and FPS markets, and stop buying good companies and destroying them.