Why would they realize that now? They didn't realize it all those other times it's happened. Or rather they did, but they made their money off it and didn't give a fuck.

 

If Anthem is good, props to BioWare, but i hope every game EA makes from now on fails. The industry as a whole will be healthier without EA

 

@Shinysavage I will be extremely surprised if Anthem turns out to be a great game that will only get shit on because of EA/BioWare. I think it's just going to be a mediocre game that gets shit on because it's mediocre and because of EA/BioWare.

And in the miraculous case that Anthem is the Holy Grail of looter shooter RPG-lite action games, I still want it to fail. One great game is not worth the price of keeping EA and the shambling corpse of BioWare in business. In fact, a great game is a price I'd gladly pay to destroy EA.

Game studios are subject to the Theseus' Ship Paradox. If you change out all the talent responsible for the BW games of yore, all that's left is the name, which is exactly the case with BioWare.

 

Let's be real here. No matter how Anthem performs, EA is still gonna keep ticking along being the layer of filth coating the toilet bowl of the game industry. It could sell literally zero copies, and EA would still be solvent and churning out other games. FIFA, Madden, et al makes them entirely too much money off customers who simply are not aware of wider gaming, and wouldn't give a fuck if they were. They'd have to fuck up so spectacularly that even Chad Dudebro, who's never read or heard anything more about video games than what he gets from playing Madden or whatever, would swear off their games.

And I just don't see that happening.

Realistically, if Anthem totally flops, the primary consequence I'd expect would be to see Bioware go the way of Visceral, Bullfrog, etc and get shuttered. And really, that's more of an "it's about time" thing than anything else, so I wouldn't shed any tears.

 

I desperately want Anthem to be a good game and for BW to bounce back and give me a decent DA4 experience. Also, I'm a sucker for a good underdog story. EA sucks balls, no argument, but if BW rises from the dead and delivers against all odds, I'd be happy with that outcome.

 

I am openly rooting for Anthem to fail and BW to be closed down, I don't care.

 

this is just a question of time. People have certain ideas at a certain time and after they've explored them and reach a certain age the creativity isn't there anymore. Therefore studios, with or without their original founders have a limited timeframe before they're done or transform into something like EA/Activision/UBI.

IMHO UBI with its engineering approach to game design might not be the most creative company but has probably the best chance for long time success.

 

I have heard okay things from people playing it, which makes me happy. I just want it to do well enough to not flop monetarily so DA4 gets a chance.

 

There's too many good games around Anthem for me to give it my money...

RE2 into KH3 into Sekiro into DMC5 = rip Anthem.

 

Say what you will about ME3's storyline, the gameplay itself was pretty decent. So I'm somewhat hopeful Anthem might be a fun game to play if only for messing around.

Still probably not going to pre-order, will wait for reviews probably.

 

ME3's combat mechanics were solid. It's the level design in many spots in the campaign that suffered. Recall the endgame. A frantic fight against Reapers that was only frantic because devs just threw a bunch of banshees at you in place of attempting to design an actually interesting challenge, like the Derelict Reaper in ME2. Or the freaking turret section. Turret sections are about the most useless kind of padding there is. Yes please, I'd like to stand in place wielding an OP gun some more.

ME3 showed that the combat system, while not perfect, was very solid in the multiplayer, which btw is still the best horde more I've ever played. Gold difficulty was a perfect mix of fun (you could complete it with any kit if you knew what you were doing, so messing around with weird character/weapon combos was possible) and challenging (you had to learn the game to do well).

 

Yes, you’ve made that perfectly clear multiple times already.


Anyways, in somewhat constructive contributions, here’s my take on the state of Anthem from the perspective of an interested outsider.

The fact that this was labelled as a demo and not a beta worries me. We can debate on the nomenclature, but while bugs were present, people flat out not being able to play the game due to server problems loading screen issues in a restricted demo is highly problematic and makes me highly apprehensive of the launch period.

Now, apparently the demo was based on older code, and I expect a Day One patch to fix the worst of the issues, but the fact remains that publishing a demo in such a state can’t have been the smartest move to expect prospective buyers. Neither is the launch date, as @Gengar mentioned.

As far as gameplay is concerned, it looks fun and the freedom of movement the Javelin suits offer are certainly the biggest draw. However, in the reports and videos I watched, the gunplay was criticised, with the weapons lacking oomph.That surprised me, as the weapons were one of the biggest strengths of Andromeda for me. Granted, collaboration can’t be expected, but I had expected at least some carryover between studios, especially since both games are equipped with Frostbite and both games are built around a movement-based combat system.

Lastly, for the moment I have cursory interest in the game itself, but will be watching some gameplay videos and read some reviews when they come out after release, if only because it might help me determine whether we’re ever going to see another Mass Effect or Dragon Age game. I will decide then whether it’s a game for me – although I expect to be busy with DiRT Rally 2.0 at least until mid-March.

 

The one thing they've got going for them is that they're apparently not forcing PvP into the game, at least at launch.

Destiny is the best evidence that forcing PvP into a PvE game just results in nerfing the fun of the PvE because guns have to be "balanced", so any license to just have some fucking sweet OP shit to blast bots with is out. If Anthem just focuses on PvE and does it well (which, admittedly, BW has pulled off in the past) they've already got a leg up on Destiny, which is the most common comparison. I haven't played Destiny, but I always saw the raids (PvE) being hailed as the draw of the game, as opposed to the Crucible (PvP) which by many accounts was an exercise in misery.

Of course, this being EA, I expect the corpo-suits will lay down the law about PvP at some point (if the game survives this long) because console PvP people need to be catered to. As if that crowd is going to abandon Overwatch/BF/CoD to play a primarily PvE game, but does anyone really expect EA execs to not be idiots?

 

BioWare does not do PvP well.

See SWTOR.

 

Sorry but anybody who hasn't played Destiny and experienced its up and downs can't reasonably judge Destiny's PvE or PvP. The game has been a lifetime *experience*.

From somebody who has always avoided PvP before Destiny and even *loathed* to complete Exotic weapon bounties in PvP started to love it afterwards. Despite whatever flaws there have been with meta changes and lag it has been a game experience I would have never wanted to miss overall.

 

I don't subscribe to "your opinion doesn't count if you don't have first hand experience", but you do you. I could counter that if you avoided PvP before Destiny, then you have nothing to compare Destiny to.

 

Having put a depressingly large number of hours in Destiny 2, a not-insignificant chunk of which being the PVP, I can safely say that Destiny's PvP was alright. It did the job well enough, but was not exceptional in any way, for good or ill. PvE was pretty damn solid though, all the way through, even if the progression systems were pretty garbo until recently.

 

I hated how they forced you to pvp to get exotics in destiny 1.

 

I say that because my opinions with the game changed significantly over its time the more experiences I've made. Something you can't get from looking at some youtube videos and listening to reviews.

People who dropped out of the game after the first 2-4 weeks September 2014 because they didn't really understood what to do anymore I can fully understand because I was in their shoes once. But then they haven't really experienced the depth of the game.

 

Overall true as far as design goes, as far as battlegrounds go I reckon Huttball is the best battleground mode I've played on any MMO, being the only thing I miss about SWTOR. The rest of of BioWare PvP is shit.