According to a new report from Bloomberg, EA will officially decide the future of BioWare's RPG, Anthem, this week. The third-person adventure game was one of the most anticipated titles of 2019 but failed to deliver, leaving a bad taste in the mouths of many. EA and BioWare committed to improving the game but very little has materialized from that promise.
BioWare's Anthem was a one-two punch of disappointments for the acclaimed developer. After Mass Effect: Andromeda failed to impress, Anthem was meant to be a fresh new IP that BioWare could manage for years to come. It was essentially the company's version of Destiny, with cool Iron Man suits and aliens. The game lacked in content and story, and while it was praised for its largely strong gameplay, that wasn't enough to save it. BioWare's core teams have since moved on to work on a remaster of the Mass Effect trilogy, Mass Effect 5, and Dragon Age 4.
Now, Bloomberg is reporting that the fate of what is essentially a "reboot" of Anthem, dubbed Anthem 2.0, will be decided by EA later this week. A small team has been working on overhauling the game since it launched but some key people leading the charge have left since then. EA will review the team's progress so far and decide whether it should abandon the project or expand the team to keep working on it. The project reportedly has about 30 people on it but those numbers will need to triple to meet the game's ambitions.
Games like No Man's Sky have had substantial turn arounds after catastrophic launches before, and that game managed its turnaround with a small indie team. Anthem comes from a renowned AAA developer and so far, has nothing to show for it. Is it possible EA will be impressed with what it's made and continue to move forward with it? It's possible, but it's also unclear if there will even be enough of an audience for the game if it does make a comeback.
Given BioWare has three different announced games in the works at the moment, it may be best to just leave Anthem behind. It has been two years since release and there's still very little to show for its supposed redemption arc. Many people have moved on and other games as service titles like Destiny have grown as industry titans. At this rate, it's better to cut the losses from Anthem and just double down on games like Mass Effect 5 and Dragon Age 4.
Source: Bloomberg
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February 09, 2021 at 05:44AM
