Apparently you play as a Jedi.

Need to see more before anything else.

 

Considering it's a Star Wars game published by EA, we all know it's going to be shit anyway, so no need to get hyped.

 

Anyone else come away thinking Anthem looked mediocre as hell?

 

It's bioware's last death cry.

EA is ridiculous. Giving a studio like bioware (famed for single player RPGs) and telling them to make a destiny clone. Its absurd. And the final nail in Bioware's coffin IMO.

 

Anthem is shit and it's going to be Bioware's swan song. When it flops, EA's finally gonna give them the axe like they have to every other studio they've bought.

Which is depressing, because Anthem has a really promising core concept and if Bioware had free reign to work to their strengths on it, it could be something great. But EA would never let that happen; they're going to mandate a skinner-box Destiny 2 clone regardless of all other factors, and as a result, it's going to be shit.

I fully expect I'm going to be bullied into playing it, as most of my gaming circle are goddamn idiots who lack basic pattern recognition (most recently, "Bless Online, this MMO that's released 4 times and pulled itself off the shelves each time, is gonna be great!" ), so I really do hope it turns out that I'm wrong and Anthem is great. But I really, really doubt it.

 

Well it has one thing going for it, the in-game engine looks fucking gorgeous and being able to fly and explore in such a detailed world will be awesome. Whether or not that awesomesauce lasts longer than 5 minutes remains to be seen.

I think Bioware and by extension EA has to know Bioware is on it's last legs. EA has copped some hits lately in the PR department, the clusterfuck they made of Andromeda, the shitstorm that went down with Battlefront, their overall bad reputation etc. I am hoping Anthem is the one where EA is like you know what, we need to earn some good grace back, lets put some real effort into this and let Bioware do its thing.

It's not like they don't have the perfect example to learn from. I'm sure they have been keeping a very close eye on Destiny and its failings and adjust their game accordingly. They have huge potential with this, they have the guinea pig in Destiny 2 to learn from and improve on, there is hype for the game, a great opportunity. Hopefully they don't fuck it up.

It is EA though. :/

 

https://www.gameinformer.com/2018/06/09/anthem-does-not-have-romances

No romances?



Bioware is dead.

 

I'm all for more bromance.

 

Considering Bioware romance is typically canned as fuck with minimal depth, culminating in a scene of poorly animated softcore, that's not much of a loss.

As long as there's still people to talk to and room to let the writing shine, it'll be just fine.

 

Eh...maybe Andromeda and Inquisition, but the romances of the earlier Dragon Age and Mass Effects were quite good. Also Jade Empire romance was great imo.

 

They never should have targeted Destiny as a competitor, not because it isn't feasible, but because Anthem's concept would contribute far more to a continued service like Warframe. Warframe-esque mechanics in an open world with a story from Bioware? Hell yes. I'd be all over that. And as an evolving service they could have formed a decent long-lasting stream of revenue from cosmetics/new javelins/etc. much like Warframe does.

But EA is all about massive quick infusions of cash. Hype the fuck out of something, sell it despite it being broken as hell, abandon it slowly while milking whatever you can from the playerbase.

It DOES look beautiful, I'll give it that. But even as someone who plays a ton of shooters, I found it pretty difficult to discern what was happening in any sort of detail once bullets started flying. Even when things are at their most hectic in Destiny/D2, it's pretty easy to determine what's happening and where it's coming from, and whether they're supers, grenades, or even what type of weapon being fired.

In Anthem, once they actually got into real combat everything turned into a jumbled mess of explosions and muzzle flashes. It all sort of left me feeling like I had watched a Transformers movie.

Art style and sound design are important when it comes to gameplay.

Anthem's semi-realistic style doesn't contribute well to a close-quarters hectic shooter like this. It works for Battlefield because the areas are far more open and less likely to be clogged with mass explosions. It works for R6 Siege because combat tends to be far more controlled despite being in incredibly tight quarters.

Here it all just becomes a mess of fire and the roaring of explosions.

The two foot tall statue of Garrus next to me agrees wholeheartedly.

 

Morrigan in DA:O and debatably Garrus in ME 2 and 3 are top tier excellent romance.

The rest ranged from boring to trite nonsense.

 

Anthem has shown some sandbox gameplay. Admittedly, what they have shown, if it works as intended, looks dope. The moment in the gameplay trailer when the suit went smoothly from flying straight underwater left a tingle of curiosity.

That said, they're showing off a polished-looking TPS. We know they can do that and they've done it well and they've done it worse. It's BioWare. They haven't shown anything plot-related, and that's their brand, their main draw. So far, Anthem looks like Destiny in third person view, and I don't think that people play Destiny for plot.

I remain convinced Anthem will fail to meet EA's sales goals and BW will get the axe. I mean, it's EA, and it's one of their biggest studios (BW and Dice are EA's Big Two) and we've seen hardly any promo material outside of a few trailers. There's no buzz, no marketing budget, no parade of videos breaking down trailers frame by frame, the most it gets talked about is in the context of "BW is in deep shit" and then either "BW gon die" or "I hold out hope but it's a fool's hope", like in this very thread.

Edit: not to mention EA has shown they will tank their own shit to prop up a bigger brand. We all remember TF2, right?

Jesus, EA has Dice and Respawn for shooty-shooty things. BW should be delivering their God of Wars and thus EA could cover a huge swath of the gaming market. BW has the chops to compete with CDPR in RPG, though less so after old talent exodus. EA is intentionally cedeing the singleplayer market, convinced that there's more money in always online "live services", a market corner that is oversaturated. Like, fuck, RPGs not set in wacky anime aesthetic is a market ripe for picking right now. Bethesda is content still selling Skyrim at full price on the nth platform, Fallout 4 had a meh reception, it's been 5 years since GTAV, 3 years since Witcher 3, Cyberpunk77 is still a ways off. The only real competition EA would have right now is GoW4, but that's already past the initial sales boom, and RDR2, but gamers craving scifi/fantasy aren't exactly looking for a western, I imagine. GoW4 is fantasy, but after MEA, gamers want a good scifi single NOW, while Cyberpunk77 is still only a blip on the horizon. If EA wanted to, they could potentially have a huge hit here. Clearly, EA is thinking exactly what we are--let Anthem fail and go away, then quietly kill BW and dive fully into live services.

 

I was going to mention the water scene in the trailer but completely forgot about it. That one scene might be a teaser? Potentially they are hinting at massive water environments beyond just diving in a river. Doubt it very much, but one can hope and it would be another element to the game.

Bring on the water temple?

 

I mean, underwater shit would be lovely, but do you honestly expect EA to shell out the cash for it with an already extremely troubled development? It's just not realistic to expect that.

 

Yeah doubt it. Transition looks smooth as though, it's almost like just don't put swimming in the game with transitions that smooth.

 

The only possibly interesting game in E3 presentation wasn't even shown. And there is a high chance that it won't be interesting when they actually show it up. I had some hopes for Anthem, but it's so slow and unexciting. Bleh.

 

Something that hasn't been talked about here yet is Command and Conquer blindsiding and gutpunching me. A mobile game, really? Rest in Peace.

About Anthem, the thing that I noticed the most (beside that the graphics are great in the trailer) is the gigantic damage numbers. The moment they started shooting they just took over the screen and it was hard to see the enemy. That and the spastic camera switching to the other three suits/players at the drop of the hat.
So yeah, looks great, have zero confidence in it at all.

 

EA set C&C up with an impossible task, shot it in the back of the head when it failed, and just now decided to dig up and reanimate the corpse so they could make a few more bucks off its manual labor.

A fucking mobile game. Jesus.

 

Because Dungeon Keeper was such a roaring success. Sadly, EA correctly assumes that enough people have the memory-span of goldfish that they'll turn a tidy profit off of MTX.