• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Anthem is not worth reworking

Based only on a morbid curiosity i thought id give this game another shot and just assume the first time was a bad nightmare and it wasnt as bad as I remembered. But boy oh boy was i wrong. It truly is as bad as I remembered and maybe worse than my first impression. Not necessarily the gunplay(passable) or flight mechanism(ok at best) but the game is just so damn uninteresting and outright clunky. Right off the bat it does a really bad job at masking the mundane tasks at hand almost shamelessly so. It feels like the devs just assumed itd be a success because destiny was. But god this is such a far cry from having the appeal destiny has on so many levels (world,characters,storyline, exceptional gameplay) despite both having a repetitive grindy nature to them.

The “hub world” gotta be the least inspired and just a clunky slow total bore to run around in with no aesthetic appeal whatsoever . The story at no point made me give a single shit about it nor did a single character manage to endear themself to me. The world in general feels soulless and uninspired despite the game graphically being rather stunning. Once the endgame rolls around there is literally NOTHING to do. And given the genre that is unacceptable. Hard to believe a game made by such talented devs(i know andromeda was meh) could put this out in this condition. Id love to know the story behind its development. Based on the active player base being as small as it is(im assuming) and how many very real problems this game has before it can reach a point of being even interesting enough to play... i just cant help but wonder why EA is so keen on trying to revive this disastrous pile of garbage. I think this will take such a drastic overhaul in pretty much every aspect to turn around and i cant imagine the reward being worth the risk. I think the task to make this appealing to enough people to invest themselves back into it will take much more effort than a no man’s sky or a battlefront 2 because at least those games at their core had something people could attach to long enough for them to see the changes made to them. Oh and it HAS to be free to play. But for me I just wish EA would move on accept the flop status and let bioware make more (good) mass effect starting with a trilogy remaster. Please. Forget this 🗑. Does anyone like this game ? And if so , why? Sorry for the long winded rant.
 
Sometimes games just don’t come together as they originally hoped

I mean I don’t think they set out to build and release a bad game and the devs obviously cared and tried to do what they could

But when the corporate world of set schedules and meeting release date windows is what you use to guide the project. Then i can see it not always ending well. I assume Ea didn’t want to pony up more money to address issues and with modern games as a service. Perhaps they thought they could release and update their way out of it

Hopefully this is yet another lesson of why that is not normally the smart move to make to gain players and attract more investment (first impressions counting and all that)
 

VertigoOA

Banned
It’s wayyyyy too late. It’s already been more than a year with no New content. It sold well at launch but the playerbase died completely after a month.

It launched half baked. Less than half baked. You’ve seen everything and done everything after 15 hours. And that is pitiful for an online game. The flying was solid as well as the shooting but everything else is amateur hour.

I will always find it hilarious that Division 2, Anthem and Fallout 76 all came out at the same time... and only Fallout 76 came out successful and with a playerbase and while Destiny never leaves the top 10 of steam or Xbox game charts or any other metric you could use.

It doesn’t help that EA pulled the plug on it anyway. You can’t expect anyone to come back when there was never any content to keep them there.
 
Last edited:

BadBurger

Is 'That Pure Potato'
My guess, they already sank a lot of time and money into it and think they can still make some kind of long term investment off it, even given the additional development costs. Kind of like what SquareEnix did with Final Fantasy 14.

Though, OP, I am pretty much in your boat. The core game was so clunky and poor I don't see how they revive it without a near complete re-do. It was also clearly unpolished on some fundamental levels. This isn't like FF 14 where they can fix everything around the core product. In this case the core product seems to be flawed.
 

VertigoOA

Banned
My guess, they already sank a lot of time and money into it and think they can still make some kind of long term investment off it, even given the additional development costs. Kind of like what SquareEnix did with Final Fantasy 14.

Though, OP, I am pretty much in your boat. The core game was so clunky and poor I don't see how they revive it without a near complete re-do. It was also clearly unpolished on some fundamental levels. This isn't like FF 14 where they can fix everything around the core product. In this case the core product seems to be flawed.

Nah it can be done. Just seems like they pulled the plug on it. Too many BioWare internal messes that prevent it from happening in any timely form. It took them 8 years to develop a game half the size of vanilla Destiny 1. BioWare is one bad release away from being shuttered.
 
Last edited:

sobaka770

Banned
The current game is basically on life support while a core dev team makes a huge adjustment to all systems. I don't think there's been a big patch after the Cataclysm event introduction apart from bug fixes.

That being said, the game is ass. It can play beautifully but somehow it's also a boring, joyless slog. I really hope the devs come up with huge update but we're not even in No Man's Sky territory - they don't need to add more stuff, they need to rework the core of the game.
I don't hold much hope but EA seems to be thinking it's worth the effort for now so I'm ready to be entertained one way or another.
 

Spukc

always chasing the next thrill
hey i bought the base game for 2 dollars.
i want it to be fucking reworked OP
that is the only reason i bought it in the first place :messenger_pouting:

same like fallout 76 any day now :)
 

Boss Mog

Member
The core gameplay is pretty solid though. Especially the magician class, really fun to play. But yeah the problem is every other aspect of the game is severely lacking.
 
Last edited:
I don't necessarily agree. There's some good ideas at play within Anthem that could definitely be reworked into something much greater than what we got.

Ditch mechanics like overheating and implementing unlimited flying would be a good start. What's the point of making a big deal about the mech-suits if you're traversing for like 30 seconds max.

The whole hub does need a rework though, as do the loading times throughout the play-spaces they've created.

I'm intrigued to see whether BioWare can pull it back from the brink like FF14 or No Man's Sky, but I've lost a lot of confidence in that studio.
 

Dory16

Banned
It has exactly one thing going for it. It's the only (popular)video game where you can fly. Fly convincingly. The gameplay loop of taking off, piercing through the air like a rocket towards a mountain full of enemies , feeling the resistance and noise of the wind around you, landing with a realistic feeling of weight due to your metallic armor, they nailed that and it's unique in gaming. It also happens to be something that every human has dreamed of doing, soaring freely through the skies and it's the only video game where you can do it satisfyingly. I believe it's the only reason why that game hasn't been canned yet.

Everything else is the result of being forced to use the wrong engine for this type of game, having wasted lots of time patching the engine to adapt it to the game, not having enough time to make it the best it could be given the previously mentioned circumstances, a few bad design choices of course (like in every game), the least appealing story and characters that Bioware has ever come up with (that one is a puzzler for me to this day) and finally the limitations of this generation's hardware. This game has the absolutely worst loading times I've ever encountered and could greatly, really greatly benefit from being optimised for an SSD. That's why I still have hope that it can be salvaged on next gen consoles. With a graphical upgrade (may be make it look closer to the graphics of the original reveal lol) and some advanced I/O techniques, may be the whole thing becomes more enjoyable. Put out some expansions with a story worthy of Bioware. Some things will always suck, but provided that perfection is not expected, the game could be rescued.
 
Last edited:
The last time I played it it still had disappearing enemies and massive areas with great scenery but nothing to do. The gunplay and flight system are better than average but the lack of different weapons and slow upgrade rate coupled with the lack of things to do mean I'm not even thinking of going back. Maybe when the big rework drops.
 

cormack12

Gold Member
Destiny 2 wasn't exactly great to begin with. Remember the complaints about the three factions with 'The Taken' being a reskinned Cabal. Then there was the Fast update 6 months later and it never really recovered until probably just over a year. Division 2 is also in the same boat at the moment. The problem is they are trying to appeal to everyone instead of focusing on classes. It's basically an online MMO where most people really want to solo or have matchmaking on demand. Which means creating a game that's built aroudn synergy is hard. Everything needs to be viable, everyone needs to be able to complete all content alone etc.
 

Rikkori

Member
Nah, I disagree, and mind you - I said the game was gonna bomb since I saw the first footage they released, I knew what they were gonna end up with.

There are a LOT of elements of Anthem though that are VERY WELL done, things like the world, the atmosphere, the sound design, just the pure feel of the game controls and especially the flying. The game also looks great & runs well also. There's A LOT of things it does right, but also very obviously a lot of more important things it does badly - very badly.

What I envision for a proper Anthem is an actually open and explorable world, with none of this loading screen bullshit every 30s, none of this repeatable instance bullshit, and just much better UI overall, not just some shitty console mock-ups they threw on the board. And ofc total revamp of the RPG side and overall progression. They really needed to go properly open world with it and work on the tech for that.

Now, granted, I put the chance of it happening at 0%. First of all, Frostbite is absolute trash for such a project but they'll continue with it for obvious reasons. Secondly, Bioware studios, all of them, are utterly trash and have no direction and no one to steer them right either. They will keep making games by committee and bombing. Nothing less than a total purge of their studio leadership is going to right it.

So, I had no hopes for Anthem, and when I played the beta it was sadly proven more than right - it was an unmitigated disaster. Then I went back to it some months later and I could at least appreciate the things they did right. But reading about its development and knowing about Bioware, it's just a sad story with no happy ending.

It is what it is.
 

diffusionx

Gold Member
Didnt play enough of it the first time around to have an informed take. Unfortunately this time around i gave it enough playtime to form a real opinion. What a bad game it is though. Simply put.

I needed like 30 minutes in the open beta to know the game was a total piece of shit. I honestly was shocked at how bad it was, and how EA thought it was ready to go in that condition. They should have canceled it outright.
 

kraspkibble

Permabanned.
Im gonna go against it....I think is worth it.

There is a good game in there somewhere. It has potential.

Maybe it's not worth it financially and even if they do make it worth playing .... Perhaps the damage is done and it would be best to just move on.

It needs remade and relaunched on the scale of FFXIV and they need to redeem and support it on the level of No Man's Sky.
 
Based only on a morbid curiosity i thought id give this game another shot and just assume the first time was a bad nightmare and it wasnt as bad as I remembered. But boy oh boy was i wrong. It truly is as bad as I remembered and maybe worse than my first impression. Not necessarily the gunplay(passable) or flight mechanism(ok at best) but the game is just so damn uninteresting and outright clunky. Right off the bat it does a really bad job at masking the mundane tasks at hand almost shamelessly so. It feels like the devs just assumed itd be a success because destiny was. But god this is such a far cry from having the appeal destiny has on so many levels (world,characters,storyline, exceptional gameplay) despite both having a repetitive grindy nature to them.

The “hub world” gotta be the least inspired and just a clunky slow total bore to run around in with no aesthetic appeal whatsoever . The story at no point made me give a single shit about it nor did a single character manage to endear themself to me. The world in general feels soulless and uninspired despite the game graphically being rather stunning. Once the endgame rolls around there is literally NOTHING to do. And given the genre that is unacceptable. Hard to believe a game made by such talented devs(i know andromeda was meh) could put this out in this condition. Id love to know the story behind its development. Based on the active player base being as small as it is(im assuming) and how many very real problems this game has before it can reach a point of being even interesting enough to play... i just cant help but wonder why EA is so keen on trying to revive this disastrous pile of garbage. I think this will take such a drastic overhaul in pretty much every aspect to turn around and i cant imagine the reward being worth the risk. I think the task to make this appealing to enough people to invest themselves back into it will take much more effort than a no man’s sky or a battlefront 2 because at least those games at their core had something people could attach to long enough for them to see the changes made to them. Oh and it HAS to be free to play. But for me I just wish EA would move on accept the flop status and let bioware make more (good) mass effect starting with a trilogy remaster. Please. Forget this 🗑. Does anyone like this game ? And if so , why? Sorry for the long winded rant.
I was hyped before launch and played through the main game I Hope's itbwould improve but it was clearly a half baked(generous?) Game from the get go.
Having said that I think reworking the ip is the best idea. The world concept and lore was not only interesting , but fairly unique and had fantastic potential to allow insane enemy variety while keeping everything in sync with the story.
The flying mechanic was on point, ot worked great and felt great (I'm not sure what people are comparing this too when they say it's bad or barely ok). The gunplay was decidedly average but the combination with magic was interesting and the prime/detonate mechanic also had potential . Character control/actions were never the problem with this game and were in fact the highlights.

I'd love to see this get reworked but my god every system in the game needs to be re done from the ground up.
 

Silvawuff

Member
I don't think it's possible to save it. There are so many other games like it that do it better, there's no reason to play this.

Wasn't it in development hell for a while?
 

Mista

Banned
I don't agree. The game has a big potential but unfortunately BioWare fucked up

I don't think anyone that played the game actually disliked the gameplay because it was fun

Different classes combos, flying, and all that were good. The lack of content is what killed the game

So I'll be looking forward to the rework with hopes that they learned from their mistakes this time
 
I don't think it's possible to save it. There are so many other games like it that do it better, there's no reason to play this.

Wasn't it in development hell for a while?
It's certainly possible to save it, there is precedent for games coming back much stronger the modern prime example being FF14.
Again the IP is rather unique, for example what game does flying better(irons style) ? In my experience literally none.
Yes 9bv other games do looting and missions much better but that is what iswrong with anthem. Reworking those things can turn it around.

I 100% think the ip is worth saving, I think it got buried in so much hate (rightfully so) that people overlooked any merits it had. Plus it sounds like it was made in about 6 months, for 6 months work it's actually not horrible.

Fact remains I wouldn't trust EA to turn that ship around. Even if they did re release it, it would have to be so rammed with MtX to recoup the development that it would die on day one.
 

John Day

Member
They made this game with the main purpose of monetizing it. The cool flying was a sweet bonus.

Sad. I’m curious what they plan to do with it.
 

iorek21

Member
I never really expected anything from Anthem, the very first E3 demo, already gave signals for what it would turn out to be.

It always seemed to me that this game would flop hard, and it never really showed anything that would paint it as this revolutionary, masterfully written game
 

Griffon

Member
It's possible, a smart producer could take the already-made 3d assets and the general concepts (power armor free flying), and put together a quickly made but fun game.
It would definitely be quicker and cheaper than to start a whole new project from scratch, and could potentially lead to a fun experience. That is, if the game designers don't suck at their job and have the ability make something fun to begin with.
 
Last edited:

Hendrick's

If only my penis was as big as my GamerScore!
Good news, EA isn't reworking shit. They want this game to disappear as quickly and quietly as possible.
 

Quasicat

Member
I got it for $5 and it was a nice little distraction for a weekend. I haven’t played it since then (like 9 months) and seriously doubt I will ever pick it up again...but for $5, it was ok.
 

VertigoOA

Banned
They can’t just update it. The game has zero mind share amongst players. It never had a playerbase after its first few weeks.

We’re inching closer to two years where the game has had no real content updates or players.

They’re best served with a sequel at this point and leaving the first game dead.
 

FatalT1

Banned
Did the developers announce this. I was still hoping. I'ts looking like Avengers is just Anthem with the MCU lisense though so that should be good.
 

Hero_Select

Member
Anthems gameplay is literally a mix between Mass Effect 3 and Andromeda multiplayer just "expanded" into a more open-world.

I enjoyed the loop, shooting things felt fun as did flying around but everything else about the game is just.. below mediocre. In my playthrough when Owen betrays you glitched. He was completely invisible to me and I didnt even bother to look up the cutscene online because I honestly couldnt care less what happened.

There is fun to be had in Anthem... but it's going to need such a complete overhaul that I doubt they're going to have enough people behind the project to make a real difference.
 

MP!

Member
Anthem-Haluk-600x338.jpg

"Care about me!"
 

VertigoOA

Banned
Anthems gameplay is literally a mix between Mass Effect 3 and Andromeda multiplayer just "expanded" into a more open-world.

I enjoyed the loop, shooting things felt fun as did flying around but everything else about the game is just.. below mediocre. In my playthrough when Owen betrays you glitched. He was completely invisible to me and I didnt even bother to look up the cutscene online because I honestly couldnt care less what happened.

There is fun to be had in Anthem... but it's going to need such a complete overhaul that I doubt they're going to have enough people behind the project to make a real difference.

Yea Andromeda had a bunch of jet pack stuff. It felt like Anthem built on all of that. The combat and movement isn’t the issue. They didn’t have the endgame or content. I would imagine 95% of players dipped after campaign was done... because there wasn’t much else:messenger_neutral:
 

Amory

Member
Idk, I thought Anthem was ok. I finished the game back when it came out and had a good amount of fun with it. It could've and should've been better, to be sure.

I agree it's probably a waste to spend a bunch of time and money reworking it at this point. It's well out of the zeitgeist, especially with the new consoles coming out later this year. And there's not enough about it that's unique or interesting which is worth bolstering with some new features (like there was for, say, No Man's Sky)
 

PSlayer

Member
At this point is very likely that they will either release a sequel that is what this game was suppose to be or release a new IP to distance themselves from the bad word of mouth.

Even Bethesda is working to polish and adding content to Fallout 76 while this game got nothing.
 

manfestival

Member
Bioware had already been on its decline for a while. I could not help but feel uninterested in the game up until about release. The world and concepts of it are actually pretty cool. I played the game as part of a month of free Origin plus whatever that I got. The combat was very solid and satisfying, the world is beautiful, but that is where the strengths of the game end.
 

TheMan

Member
I dunno, earlier this year I went back to it and I had fun for a little while. I contend that the core game is fun, but you're right there is a lack of interesting stuff to do and the end-game content gets old real fast. I quit after I realized I was grinding for uninteresting gear just so I could repeat boring content while killing things just a bit faster just so I could gear, etc. I'll admit that some of the gear sets look cool but they require a lot of grinding. Most frustrating about that is that gear sets are only available for 3 days at a time before being rotated out, and you earn currency so slowly that if you're starting from scratch, it's nearly impossible to earn enough money before the gear disappears from the store.

A long way of saying that I still think the game has potential buried deep down but the flaws are obviously glaring. I don't think EA/bioware is going to invest the resources needed to fix everything and I don't think the audience is coming back anyway. EA didn't mention SHIT during their summer conference- that alone tells you they don't give two fucks at this point.
 
Last edited:

dorkimoe

Member
I actually enjoyed my time with Anthem. I got the game for 20 bucks, beat it and sold it. I dont do endgame in these MMO type games. But i agree..probably not worth a rework now, let it die. Lesson learned
 

Fbh

Member
I still think it's a shame the concept was wasted on a bad Destiny Clone.

The core mechanics of flying and combat were pretty fun (at least in the beta) and I enjoyed the visuals and art direction. If it had all been used to make a "traditional" Bioware style action RPG it could been nice
 

Hero_Select

Member
Yea Andromeda had a bunch of jet pack stuff. It felt like Anthem built on all of that. The combat and movement isn’t the issue. They didn’t have the endgame or content. I would imagine 95% of players dipped after campaign was done... because there wasn’t much else:messenger_neutral:
That's exactly why I stopped playing it. Nothing to do, no compelling loot and it was just way too repetitive with the stupid Titans.
 
Top Bottom