Recap: Remember the run-up to Anthem's launch in February 2019? Electronic Arts had hyped the game as being a revolutionary, Destiny-like multiplayer loot shooter, but, as we've seen so many times before and since, the final product never lived up to the promises. According to a new report, EA will decide the future of its title this week.
Anthem arrived two years ago with a slew of problems: repetitive missions, long loading times, unsatisfying mechanics, clunky UI, lack of end-game content, and so on. Problems made all the worse by the bugs and performance issues. All of which contributed to the game's Metascore of 59---and a user score of 4.0.
But EA was determined not to give up on Anthem. In November 2019, we heard that the company was planning to revive it with a massive overhaul that would give players the game initially promised, with a revamped loot system, Javelins, Artifacts, and more. The update was referred to internally as Anthem 2.0 or Anthem Next.
Things weren't looking rosy for Anthem Next when Executive Producer Christian Dailey, who had been posting updates on some of the planned changes, left the team as part of a BioWare management shakeup last December.
According to a Bloomberg report, EA execs will this week decide whether Anthem Next is worth the resources being poured into the project. BioWare previously revealed that the team consists of 30 people, but the publication's sources claim a complete overhaul of Anthem will require at least triple that number.
Many game companies now look at No Man's Sky as an example of how an overhyped game that disappointed at launch can be turned around in time, but Anthem's core design might be too broken to fix.