How Bioware's Anthem Went Wrong

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Kotaku's Jason Schreier is known for a few things, but one of the biggest ones is for his investigative pieces on games and studios. This time he took a look at Anthem's development, talking with 19 people that worked on, or adjacent to, Bioware's Anthem. The article tells a story of how Anthem (originally supposed to be called Beyond) went from a game with lofty ideas to it's troubled release.

https://kotaku.com/how-biowares-anthem-went-wrong-1833731964

Archive link for those that don't want to give Kotaku hits
 
I played about 15 minutes of the beta and quickly decided this wasn't a game I would buy. That decision had nothing to do with technical beta issues, the game mechanics just didn't seem interesting at all to me.
 
I played for what a weekish? Just did a month of ea vault access. The game play was super fun but just felt hollow. And div2 took my attention away anyways. Big releases need to not be so close to eachother IMO.
 
I thought the game play had plenty of potential, but it's too slow, cumbersome and your weapons feel useless. It feels like you need to use all your armor abilities and weapons to kill the most mundane enemies. The missions I played in the demo were largely generic and forgettable. The story is mostly presented in the same fashion as Destiny, which would be fine if it wasn't a BioWare game. I may give it a chance if it gets the support it needs over the next six months to a year to improve. Destiny and other games had lots of growing pains as well. Some eventually got better, while others haven't. So we'll see.

I've been enjoying the crap out of Destiny 2 since Thanksgiving. Maybe this year around the same time I'll be enjoying Anthem. Although, I doubt it given it seems like such a dumpster fire right now.
 
Dan_D said:
I thought the game play had plenty of potential, but it's too slow, cumbersome and your weapons feel useless. It feels like you need to use all your armor abilities and weapons to kill the most mundane enemies. The missions I played in the demo were largely generic and forgettable. The story is mostly presented in the same fashion as Destiny, which would be fine if it wasn't a BioWare game. I may give it a chance if it gets the support it needs over the next six months to a year to improve. Destiny and other games had lots of growing pains as well. Some eventually got better, while others haven't. So we'll see.

I've been enjoying the crap out of Destiny 2 since Thanksgiving. Maybe this year around the same time I'll be enjoying Anthem. Although, I doubt it given it seems like such a dumpster fire right now.
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Luckily I got Anthem for free with my recent RTX 2080ti, but I only played Anthem for slightly less than an hour. The first Destiny I played before even any DLC had released when it launched and my buddy and I had a LOT of fun playing it and put hundreds of hours into it over the coming DLC releases. We never bought Destiny 2 because we wrote it off after spending over $100 on the original Destiny in DLCs and whatnot. Can't say I didn't get my money's worth though because I have never put more time into a game, but Anthem is just plain boring. The flying was awesome the first time, but it just seems wasted and not as interesting after a while. The motivation to keep going just isn't there the same way that it was for Destiny. I am like yourself... i'll revisit maybe later this year and see if anything changes.
 
I know Kotaku and Mr. Schreier come to the table as controversial and such but fair is fair: He's been right on the money with these Bioware stories and such going back at least to the ME3 ending debacle off the top of my head.
 
these kinds of articles are so silly...every time a game is divisive an article like this comes out...people need to realize that pretty much every game ever created goes through similar development issues...ideas change, gameplay changes, turnover happens etc...this is not news...it's only news when people pick up on it and pretend it's something bigger then it actually is
 
polonyc2 said:
these kinds of articles are so silly...every time a game is divisive an article like this comes out...people need to realize that pretty much every game ever created goes through similar development issues...ideas change, gameplay changes, turnover happens etc...this is not news...it's only news when people pick up on it and pretend it's something bigger then it actually is
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I highly doubt “work on game for 7 years but only do real development within 9 to 18 months” is remotely common. Or the serious management issues that are on display here or the engine issues due to the owner forcing everyone to use the same engine no matter how poorly suited it is to the game. Obviously every game has struggles and a lot of the content changes throughout happen (as mentioned in the article) but this goes well beyond struggles.
 
I liked the game for the main story run-through. I actually REALLY liked the main combat style. The whirling interceptor death is a blast, and different from other things one can play right now. But then you finish the story, and it craters.
There is no real "endgame" loop. It's just grinding things you already did, but unlike others that behave similarly, the itemization and numeric systems are horrible. It ends up being pretty frustrating instead of fun with little incentive to keep going.

I hope EAOware stick with it and produce the game it COULD be. I would normally think this was nuts, but Diablo3, R6:Siege and The Division1 all revised themselves post-launch to be solid.
 
Honestly? I still haven't even been able to get the game to launch. Tech support, even the Anthem-specific elevated tiers, has been less than worthless.
 
polonyc2 said:
these kinds of articles are so silly...every time a game is divisive an article like this comes out...people need to realize that pretty much every game ever created goes through similar development issues...ideas change, gameplay changes, turnover happens etc...this is not news...it's only news when people pick up on it and pretend it's something bigger then it actually is
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Dude just stop trying to justify Anthem at this point and come to reality.
 
Thunderdolt said:
Honestly? I still haven't even been able to get the game to launch. Tech support, even the Anthem-specific elevated tiers, has been less than worthless.
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I think you might be dealing with overkill. 4 2080TI's is pretty far out of spec for supported builds and I bet there is some slap dash programming that's calling any of the 4 to act as the organizer in a SLI config and not able to handle more cards than 2.

Not that you SHOULD but have you tried pulling two and seeing if it will launch?
 
theplaidfad said:
I played about 15 minutes of the beta and quickly decided this wasn't a game I would buy. That decision had nothing to do with technical beta issues, the game mechanics just didn't seem interesting at all to me.
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Exactly. Andromeda gameplay / mechanics were more interesting and you were supposed to play that for the story.
 
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Daishi123 said:
Dude just stop trying to justify Anthem at this point and come to reality.
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He either didn't read the article or is suffering from battered gamer syndrome. It confirms everything we suspected about Anthem's development and the fact that it is an inherently broken product.

This whole debacle reinforces a number of points which needs to be permanently seared into the collective consciousness of the gaming community, rather than being conveniently forgotten between every major release.

Firstly, Patrick Soderlund is a grade-A nob.

Secondly, never pre-order games, subject to calculated exceptions.

Thirdly, never accept the truthfulness of trailers shown at gaming conventions, no matter how much the presenter stresses it to be footage of real world gameplay from a working build.

Fourthly, AAA publishers will without hesitation knowingly and happily release half baked bug ridden trash.

Fifthly, the "live service" model is a pretext for publishers like EA to shovel out half baked trash.

People who paid money for this game should actually be in an uproar over it, especially after reading Bioware's glib response.

Good luck expecting it to be fixed in any great hurry given how inflexible and unwieldy Frostbyte is.
 
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M76 said:
Exactly. Andromeda gameplay / mechanics were more interesting and you were supposed to play that for the story.
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Hilariously the excuse for Andromeda being so bad was because the A-Team was making Anthem instead....I am still stunned that EA had the brazenness to pass off the E3 2017 trailer as an in-game trailer when no fucking game even existed. I think this is probably what actually happened:

E3 2017 trailer plays

Everyone: That’s an amazing looking game. Can’t wait til it’s finished.

BioWare: That’s an amazing looking game. We should start making that.
 
Grimlaking said:
I think you might be dealing with overkill. 4 2080TI's is pretty far out of spec for supported builds and I bet there is some slap dash programming that's calling any of the 4 to act as the organizer in a SLI config and not able to handle more cards than 2.

Not that you SHOULD but have you tried pulling two and seeing if it will launch?
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I keep SLI disabled via the Nvidia control panel. Unfortunately, I'm not willing to pull cards in order to get a third rate game to load.
 
Thunderdolt said:
I keep SLI disabled via the Nvidia control panel. Unfortunately, I'm not willing to pull cards in order to get a third rate game to load.
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Honestly to me this game plays like a 3rd person Diablo to me. It's fun to jump in and blow stuff up for a while. And once your gear gets high enough and you get your pattern of 4 abilities down you can tier up in difficulty. They are missing seasons and better more frequent gear drops. Then it will be a 3rd person Diablo game but in power armor. ;)
 
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