Nearly a year after one of the most gigantic flops of the decade launched, BioWare announced that it is giving Anthem some long-awaited updates. Rather than focus on new content and expansions, the studio aims to “fix” the game’s faults by redesigning core aspects of the game. This news had been previously rumored at the end of last year.
BioWare is reinventing Anthem
Fittingly, shortly after posting the blog post announcing the Anthem update, the website crashed. But once it was available, it revealed only a brief blog post. In it, BioWare’s General Manager Casey Hudson acknowledged what the players wanted from the game: “a more satisfying loot experience, better long-term progression and a more fulfilling end game,” thus precipitating changes.
Hudson also made sure to mention that while they aim to do a redesign of Anthem’s core experience, they will focus on preserving the fun of flying and fighting in the game’s science-fantasy world. In particular, he noted BioWare will be “reinventing the gameplay loop” with “clear goals, motivating challenges, and progression with meaningful rewards.”
But whether this means that the game will be completely overhauled is another matter altogether. All we’ve heard are buzzwords, and while Anthem would improve from the aforementioned changes, we’ve yet to see what exactly these updates entail. Anthem crashed and burned spectacularly, some might say beyond repair. In what was meant to be BioWare’s new flagship, they dropped the ball so hard it left a barren crater around the game, and many doubt that Anthem will be able to climb out of it.
No more seasons for now, but events will continue
To the handful of players still enjoying Anthem: fear not. The game will continue to have events, store updates, and past seasonal content, though no more full seasonal updates are planned. There will be something to do while BioWare takes a step back to “test and iterate” as they refocus their efforts.
