Over the next two years the team continued to support the game with smaller patches, eventually hitting a point where they envisioned a more formal restructuring of the game which they called Anthem NEXT.
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Unfortunately this is not the first time that Anthem has had issues. In the same blog post that announced this change to content plans, BioWare’s Head of Live Service, Chad Robertson, also stated, “As I’ve said previously, we want to be transparent with you that we know more work needs to be done to make Anthem better. We also want to ensure we’re backing up our words with a great game you can play. So I don’t have any news today to share about the long-term changes we are bringing to Anthem.“
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Before getting into the near-future for Anthem, let's talk about the update and what's changed (full notes can be found here). There are a number of tweaks and balances to different things, but the more noteworthy changes are as follows:
There are moments where Anthem shines. Jumping off a cliff and then hitting your rockets/boosters at the last possible moment so you fly up into the sky feels really good. Comboing enemies with your abilities is satisfying and provides a lot of synergy between the different javelin classes. Working as a team to flank certain foes and take them down is fun. The "Strongholds" are great to play in co-op, particularly on harder difficulties that require you to strategize a little more and work as a team to make your way through. Running around as a Colossus with your shield up and just steamrolling dudes is THE BEST!
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One of the biggest issues when it comes to these kind of open/shared world games, which includes MMOs and Destiny, is that if you don't have enough friends for some of the activities then you're a bit out of luck. Different titles have found different solutions, such as the "Dungeon Finder" in World of Warcraft, so players don't have to spam General chat with "Looking For Group" requests, but the ideal solution is to have matchmaking readily available for anything that requires a group of players. With this Tweet from Sunday, it appears Anthem will be going down that optimal path and automatically pairing you up with additional players for whatever kind of trouble you're attempting to get into (i.e., missions, dungeons, world events, free roam).
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The Open Demo will be available on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One starting on Friday, February 1, and ending Sunday, February 3. There's also a "VIP Demo" that kicks off in a couple weeks.... but if you want access to that, not only do you need to pre-order the game, you'll also need to have an active subscription to EA Access or Origin Access. That's a lot to throw down for a demo considering you can check it our for free just a couple weeks after that.
All the details and answers to a variety of questions around this can be found over on the official support page, while the sign-ups are done through the EA Community Playtesting site. It's first come first served, though, so if you're interested, I'd head over there now. Finally, it's also worth mentioning that there is a very strict NDA on the Alpha and you really don't want to break those. The alpha will be available on the PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, so at the very least you'll have your platform of choice.
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While many of these have been relatively brief, BioWare's recent Twitch stream showed a pretty lengthy portion of Alpha gameplay. Most of the stream's contents were relatively unsurprising: numbers popping up over enemies, questing, and an oddly familiar military sci-fi theme, but it's nice to see everything in action. As previously mentioned, though, the game is still in an Alpha state, so expect much of the UI and text to change significantly once the game hits full release.
You can check out the complete ‘Our World, My Story’ trailer below, unfortunately the video shows very little in the way of co-op, barring the jump cuts of combat that feature multiple players. As Anthem is currently set for a release on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC come February 22nd 2019, it is likely more details will continue to emerge as the date approaches.
The first time we got a glimpse of Anthem was at last year's E3. The announcement/reveal of the title was an important moment for BioWare after everything it had gone through the past few months with Mass Effect: Andromeda. What was teased then certainly sounded promising, and it was hard not to draw some comparisons between it Destiny. Since then, however, things have been relatively quiet.
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This news comes quickly on the heels of a report from Kotaku that, according to sources familiar with the project, the original fall 2018 window that was given during E3 was "never realistic," and that EA won't let the game slide any further into 2019 than March at the latest (end of the fiscal year). The title has been in development in some form or another since 2012, and it sounds like much of that time has been trying to make things work within the Frostbite engine. EA did not provide any reasons for the "it's not a delay" delay during the quarterly call, and the only statement about it came from Blake Jorgensen, EA's finance chief, via Sarah Needleman at the Wall Street Journal:
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While there are some similarities in the overall action RPG/loot shooter idea that one could draw between Anthem and Bungie's Destiny, the few minutes of gameplay that was shown also had some Mass Effect vibes to it in the way the combat plays out and the overall player mobility (players have jet packs and can boost run). Players will don exosuits - called Javelins - that come in a few different class types, each of which can be customized with abilities and gear of varying degrees of rarity. The "balanced" Ranger and "heavy-hitter" Colossus are specifically mentioned and shown off in the footage, but we also catch a glimpse of another exosuit that seems to be a little more "magical" (for lack of a better descriptor) towards the end. In combat, players appear to have three abilities that are mapped to the bumper buttons in addition to their guns.
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