Don't listen to the many many reviews and impressions from *influencers* that are majority disappointed?
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Anthem Review Thread
- Thread starter Earvin Infinity
- Start date
Don't listen to the many many reviews and impressions from *influencers* that are majority disappointed?
After watching this thread for a while, I've seen people bring up that they think Bioware did not want to make this type of game and that EA is forcing them. But honestly, I think this is the type of game Bioware has been wanting to make. We have seen that Bioware likes adding onto their worlds with Mass Effect and Dragon Age. In the past, that required sequels and DLCs. But nowadays, you can theoretically just build one game and keep adding onto it. I imagine that original vision was a brand new world where Bioware can make and deliver new stories on a frequent basis. I think a living breathing world that is constantly evolving is a dream for many developers, even ones who primarily make single player games. Now execution is another think entirely and we'll see how Anthem keeps itself updates over the next few months. But I don't see this as a situation where a single player developer was strong armed into making a mulitplayer live service game. I think this is a case of studio renowned for its stories and world building hoping to take things to the next level.
My only guess is that most of the development time was making more tech for Frostbite so it could do things Frostbite doesn't do. And by the time they wrapped up third-person animations and the open world, they didn't have time to do less glamorous but necessary things like allowing weapon switching on the fly, teleporting the player without reloading the map, smoothly loading an interior space while entering from the overworld, making stat overviews that make sense, etc. If they had a purpose-built engine for games with massive open worlds, smooth transitions, and ARPG mechanics -- like, say, AnvilNext (Assassin's Creed Origins/Odyssey) -- I can only imagine what this game could have been.
It's true that doing the tech side of things takes a lot of work, but when it comes to a major developer like Bioware there's really no explanation for the state the game released in after a 6 year development cycle other than that there was some kind of major development shakeup late in the process. Nothing else explains things being so barren and basic functionality missing and the game in general lacking cohesion after 6 years.
My strong suspicion is that there was a major shakeup with like a year left (if not less) before release and they had to scramble to salvage what they had into some kind of game
On the one hand this might be a reasonable point to make. It wouldnt be the first time that a studio branched out into another genre( see Guerrilla Games).The live service model may in theory provide an ever evolving landscape were stories could be told better than in linear single player titles, and moving to this model might even bring in some extra money for the studio while alleviating investment risks.
Unfortunately even given the advantages, you'd still have to be very convincing to make people believe that EA did not have a hand in shifting the studios direction. This isnt even something we haven't seen before. Dead space 3 stands as a testament to how EA's influence turned an horror/action title into a action/coop title. EA's internal strategy has not included single player titles for a while now and the fact that Bioware, a prolific single player developer chose to essentially develop a title similar to destiny which was arguably the hottest gaming software for a time, well its not hard to see why people are sure that this was an EA mandate.
I recall that Visceral games were adamant that a lot of their design decisions were their own creative choices(I might be mis-remembering) which is why Im always sceptical when a developer under EA defends them. This isnt to say EA studios cant fuck themselves over. To my knowledge Mass Effect Andromeda was Bioware's complete fuck up and EA had to step in to help(Again might be mis-remembering).Either way a retrospective after 2 years usually reveals all and Anthem wont be any different.
Now that you put it this way, I find it hard to disagree with any of your points.
I liked ME3 at the time, perhaps I was just too swallowed up in the culmination of the story in my favorite setting that I had no distance to objectively judge the quality of the game.
Lol you know in your heart of hearts you shouldn't be bringing that game up as comparison
from my PSN friendlist (many Destiny players) there are more and more people playing the game. doesn´t exactly speak for the Destiny community imo, seems like a case of low standards "loot and level ups is all i need in mah game" so, at least in this community it seems to have sold copies.
but there were also many people who played FO76 at launch on my FL so i don´t know if this is a good metric.
but there were also many people who played FO76 at launch on my FL so i don´t know if this is a good metric.
I think you're right.
But as someone who isn't enamored with the freeplay at all, and been doing all the available contracts and side quests up to Tomb quest, I barely have any objectives completed in the trials.
This basically forces you to do several hours of freeplay - if you did it on your own before this point, great, but if not, the game insists you do it now before you can progress. It's not a good decision by a country mile and it's not overblown as a design problem.
I played ME3 about a year after release - I did a full playthrough of the trilogy, importing saves, and including all DLCs (except Citadel, which was not out yet) - and ME3 was my favourite and solidified ME trilogy as the scifi Witcher equivalent, i. e. some of the best stuff gaming has to offer. Although it is true that without Javik, extended cut and Leviathan, the overall impression would have been weaker, there were still lot of great moments in the game itself.
I hope EA stops being fucking moronic and releases a proper trilogy remaster with all DLC and controller support included because I want to replay it someday, but do not want to faf about with the DLCs and mods again.
Oh lol, should've known it was from something else earlier.
Never forget.
I never saw an answer to this question and I really have to know.
Did Bioware ever produce a version of this novel that wasn't hilariously stupid?
ME3 was a hugely flawed game, but It's not bad
It was such an ambitious idea, 3 huge AAA games with choices that carried over. By the 3rd game they had to reign in a lot of the scope to ensure everyones choices in previous games carried through. Tying it all up at the end was always going to be a hugely difficult task
At least they were ambitious then. Anthem is another GaaS online looter shooter co op insert buzzword here, and because it's been rushed out the door it's reviewing poorly
I played Inquisition last year and actually really enjoyed it, and I only played the ME trilogy in 2017, and those were great
If they were able to make a SP RPG in Anthems world, with the same combat, but have it essentially be like ME1 with a home base and several worlds and NPCs and story and towns, it would probably have been a much better game
A good GaaS MP game will make a lot more money though, so time will tell with Anthem. A bad start doesn't mean it won't get turned around at some point
Mass effect died because of a rushed final trilogy entry with bizarre writing decisions that clearly werent greenlit by all the writers and a terribly mismanaged spinoff that had 0 soul
My list continues to be Apex+Fortnite, with the occasional PubG (on PS4).
Thank you for reading it, and I'm happy to hear it helped in your search for a particular perspective! I could've gone on about the loot system/customization/etc, but those are things other reviews cover very well--especially since I don't much care for those things, so my writing would surely reflect that.
Our site covered those bases in a fab post-campaign impressions article written by a fellow staff member, so if anyone gravitates toward those bases as well (or wants to get a perspective on things I didn't cover in mine), I def recommend the read!
Hey there! Just read your review and I found it to be really well-written, covering as many bases as possible. I fully agree with it. \o/ It's no easy task to go over all those areas, since this game has so many aspects to it. The 6 feels a bit high for what you wrote on paper, haha, like I can Feel your disappointment and frustration through the text, but review scores in this industry can be tricky considering a 7/10 tends to be viewed as a bad score. Thankfully, people don't seem to take negatively to the low scores for this game since they're seeing it's the general critical consensus.
As for the current convo re: whether BioWare wanted to make this game...I really feel like they didn't, at the risk of generalizing. But I tried not to include that belief in my review because that's just an assumption on my part. Personally, none of the game feels inspired enough to elicit that specific feeling you get when you know something is a labor of love. I'm positive it's more complicated than that, but...yeah. BioWare evolving is good but this doesn't feel like an evolution.
The problem with this type of guessing is that the two scenarios aren't mutually exclusive. Maybe they wanted to do various things and EA suggested they think Anthem as it is makes most sense. Maybe various people at BioWare disagreed on what they should do next. It's not an either-or. Same with engine, really. Say BioWare could use Unreal but then EA would give them 10% less budget to offset the 5% EMG cut and lack of Frostbite improvements... how does one qualify it in binary?
Thanks for checking it out! I know what you mean re the score, I guess it felt weird to backpedal and say "there are a few moments that are alright" when there's so much wrong with the game. I think subconsciously I do have the idea that 7 is average so below average must be a 6.
EDIT: just read your review and I echo what others have said, it's really good and you can tell that it comes from someone who cares about what makes bioware, bioware.
That tomb thing sounds so fucking bizarre.
Like for all that people complain about Metroid Prime 2's Sky Temple Key hunt, at least the game puts a bunch of effort into contextualizing that pace-breaking element. The Sky Temple is protected by a lock because it has the Ing's original planetary energy, the keys are inside invisible enemies because the Ing want to hide them, the keys' locations are learned from the corpses of Luminoth that failed to steal them, the game already was defined by a system of "Get keys, reach boss" for each individual world. Does it work? Hell no. But there is a clear effort to make this padding feel like part of the game world.
But the tomb thing? Why did the people who made the tomb doors decide getting 15 random treasure chests is something worthwhile? It's so artificial and arbitrary. Who thought, "man, players will be so psyched to discover they need to do a dozen mundane tasks to open a fucking door!"
Like for all that people complain about Metroid Prime 2's Sky Temple Key hunt, at least the game puts a bunch of effort into contextualizing that pace-breaking element. The Sky Temple is protected by a lock because it has the Ing's original planetary energy, the keys are inside invisible enemies because the Ing want to hide them, the keys' locations are learned from the corpses of Luminoth that failed to steal them, the game already was defined by a system of "Get keys, reach boss" for each individual world. Does it work? Hell no. But there is a clear effort to make this padding feel like part of the game world.
But the tomb thing? Why did the people who made the tomb doors decide getting 15 random treasure chests is something worthwhile? It's so artificial and arbitrary. Who thought, "man, players will be so psyched to discover they need to do a dozen mundane tasks to open a fucking door!"
Thank you for this, I feel the narrative that ME3's only problem was its ending makes me think we've played completely different games.
Also;
Random turret sections, even at the very end between saying goodbye to squadmates
Random red Telephone boxes in London just to let you know that this is England that you're in
That little annoying kid
Making humans be the thing that should be tugging at your empathy for how high the stakes are rather than, you know, ME1's message that all species mattered (or even simply your squad mates)
The broken quest log that didn't tell you anything and you had to go online to figure out which planet to travel to to scan some obscure item
There were many other flaws of ME3 that I think people overlook or ignore because the ending was such a big controversy at the time.
The Tomb thing is the single biggest 'what the fuck' game design element in the game, and there's a lot of competing questionable decisions (eg the UI, having to leave the game to look at inventory etc etc etc etc).
One of the Tomb objectives is 3 "Multi Kills". The game doesn't explain what those are. After 14 hours I have 1 multi kill.
I've been keeping an eye on the Xbox achievements and fewer than 3% of the player base have completed the Tomb quest. Which is only a few hours into the game, and in the main story.
One of the Tomb objectives is 3 "Multi Kills". The game doesn't explain what those are. After 14 hours I have 1 multi kill.
I've been keeping an eye on the Xbox achievements and fewer than 3% of the player base have completed the Tomb quest. Which is only a few hours into the game, and in the main story.
To be fair, the worse mass effect has better reviews than this.
The tombs were apparently built by an ancient civilization entirely populated by FPS multiplayer announcers.
Seriously, it's so fucking bad.
I just hate these characters so much.
It's like Bioware thought "what if we made every character Peebee?"
It's like Bioware thought "what if we made every character Peebee?"
They're the worst. They sound like they're from a quippy live action commercial for the game.
Say what you will about Destiny and The Division's launches, they at least felt very polished.
I just booted up the Xbox version this morning, and it crashed to dash at the title screen. I'll try again..
Edit: worked 2nd time today. Hoorah.
Nope, they just let it die and I suppose never re-printed it.
