Anthem: Bioware's next Mass Effect-like IP

[Coldkil]

I don't think at this point after all this time makes sense to actually resuscitate this dead horse. The market is already full of games like this and while the gameplay may be good, it lacks any form of substance to make it last.

As someone else said before, it's a brand new IP with basically no community, no core playerbase, no hype left. The name is associated with the image of a failed project, so nothing really good can come out with good investment. Maybe i'm worng and EA sees potential, but. it looks a remote chance.

[minteK917]

Heres an idea, dont waste money or time on this shit. Just put the mech flying idea into a single player story focused game instead since you already have that part down. Maybe make it a mass effect game. There salvaged what little you could from anthem and, if you have a decent writer, made a new mass effect game.

[Huntaer]

If they do decide to keep going they'll make an Anthem 2 so we can all buy it again.

[Makabreska]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...?sref=P6Q0mxvj

So it may not get the full reboot, apparently EA is deciding the games fate this week. I hope they do, it'd be a shame for the groundwork to go to waste given the potential for some rad as shit Iron Man nonsensen.

This game has been abandoned with all but an official announcement. This is the fate of these "live service" games. If they don't kickstart from the beginning, publishers often simply abandon them and don't risk pumping any more money. GL with DA4 Bioware, it's your last chance.

[bloodwulf]

I was hugely hyped for this game but when in with caution and played via origin (or gamepass cant remember) so i had little investment. Fast forward to now, I have not thought of this game in literally months, it should just be put to rest and bioware focus work on one of their main IPs until they get community confidence again.

[Makabreska]

So...force BW to rework the game with a vision they may not have to get a second release that's underwhelming as well?

This is the risk of buying games at launch. This is the risk of seeing the beta and saying, "Yeah, these GLARING issues will surely all be fixed soon." This is the risk of looking at a studio working well out of their depth, one with a team that had most recently released a pretty poorly received game, and just snapping it up. It's not even as if the reviews were glowing right outta the gate, it was pretty obviously a bit of a stinker in need of some serious work.

Sometimes you just buy into the marketing and end up with a lemon you didn't want. Learn from it.

It's not unreasonable to expect devs to fulfil their promises they've been spouting with straight faces. But oh well, yet another cautionary tale of buying early-acces games for full price.

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Outside of some leadership moves, what drama am I missing? It's in Tevintor or whatever, the mage city, but that's about all I know.

But if they handed this off to BW Austin completely and let them run with it while Edmonton leads DA4 I'd be fine with that. Austin seems to actually know what the fuck is up when it comes to working on online games, SWTOR seems to have given them considerable experience. Still a shame that Edmonton didn't listen to them during the development cycle.

I think the main issue is how little they had to show AGAIN. Their last video (not the one from like 2 weeks ago) was just bunch of guys talking to camera and some concept arts. Plus we already know that entire project got scrapped and restarted like 2y ago or so (basically similar production pains like with Anthem) and we had some recent big names leaving the studio. Plus there will be MTs, of course. I don't imagine morale being high at BioWare, knowing this game may be their swan song.

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Heres an idea, dont waste money or time on this shit. Just put the mech flying idea into a single player story focused game instead since you already have that part down. Maybe make it a mass effect game. There salvaged what little you could from anthem and, if you have a decent writer, made a new mass effect game.

But here is the thing. It's much harder to monetize single player games.

[dope_danny]

It's not unreasonable to expect devs to fulfil their promises they've been spouting with straight faces.

By 2021 it should be. Anyone at this point should have learnt companies will absolutely sell a lemon knowing its a lemon hoping the day one "they said we can do anything!" techboomer crowd who early adopt and defend their sunk cost to the last will be a volunteer defence force for them.

My Grandad used to say "respect is a rare commodity that is earned, not given freely" and theres definitely a truth to that when it comes to trusting companies who want to sell you a product. I can buy in day one to FFXIV expansions because the team behind it has proven themselves time and again for over 8 years. Thats earned. Can i see a new product from EA and say the same? absolutely not. Being wary should be a rational baseline because thats what they have taught you to expect.

Don't trust a developer until they have earned it, don't take any footage as concrete none bullshot until the game is out and people have experienced it.

Case in point CDPR not allowing people to show footage of their own gameplay in cyberpunk reviews. Devs will promise the world but until you can see it it does not exist and is more likely than not overexaggeration at best baseline expectations and its up to them to prove it with output not promises.

Trouble is people love selling themselves on an idea. Its why companies pay streamers to advertise to the "get hype" culture crowd. People want something so bad they convince themselves without evidence or trust in the creator. Look at all the people still saying "anthem had so much potential" but they can't tell you what that means beyond "more could exist than does now" which means something about as concrete as a new ager describing "energy". Its sentiment treated as fact because anything else means on some level admitting you fell for empty promises and hype and are in some way seeing yourself as being taken for a fool and thats impossible! so people tell themselves "b-but its just a beta!" or "B-but they'll patch it!" or "b-but it has potential!" without having any reason or evidence that anything will change or be better. Just wishful thinking.

and at the end of the day the people who bought anthem or fallout 76 or no mans sky day one? wishful thinking was all they had to go on.

[Gaidax]

*snip*

Well I mean... It was Bioware, not some random ass no name studio. The creators of Mass Effect, Dragon Age, NWN, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate and what not.

They surely earned a shitton of respect with me over the years, just like Blizzard. Yes, there were failures and mistakes along the way, but holy hell - they aren't going to lose my respect because of those last 15 minutes of ME3 or Andromeda being undercooked.

So yeah, I sure bought into Anthem and it had some good stuff in it - but the game frankly was a glorified tech demo to me - beautiful and empty. So yes, I bought into hype, but hell with Bioware's record over all these decades of gaming? Yeah, I'd say you could let it slide with hindsight 20/20 talk.


So yes, what they should do is put a bullet in it and absolutely reuse the mechas part in future ME game, because that was actually frikkin' good, but actually get ME grade story and attention to the next game too.

And yes, despite Anthem failure - watch me, I'll be preordering DA4 day, frikkin', one, because it's Dragon Age from Bioware, even if Anthem was a letdown.

[dope_danny]

Well I mean... It was Bioware, not some random ass no name studio. The creators of Mass Effect, Dragon Age, NWN, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate and what not.

They surely earned a shitton of respect with me over the years, just like Blizzard. Yes, there were failures and mistakes along the way, but holy hell - they aren't going to lose my respect because of those last 15 minutes of ME3 or Andromeda being undercooked.

But it wasn't that Bioware thats the trouble. Its the Andromeda Bioware, the Inquisition Bioware. Take it from a diehard Silent Hill fan, sometimes the names stick around but the people making the games you loved aren't there anymore. You can't expect someone hired two years before Anthem who worked on Anthem to be representative of another game the KOTOR people made who mostly dont even work at the company anymore. Thats the other side of the coin. When the brand name earns your trust but then the people who worked to earn it leave and its just the brand recognition trying to sell you different quality content from different people going "but you liked this name, so expect the same without evidence okay?" and i learnt that the hard way when Team Silent broke up and a bunch of western studios kept making jacobs ladder rip offs with the silent hill name on the box. We have to get burnt to learn it the hard way but its the reason you get dev hero worship of people like Kojima or Hennig. Even the name you trust isn't always going to be the people you trust over time.

[Makabreska]

And yes, despite Anthem failure - watch me, I'll be preordering DA4 day, frikkin', one, because it's Dragon Age from Bioware, even if Anthem was a letdown.

Some people will never learn, especially when DA4 production follows Anthem shitshow.

[Stormwolf64]

Some people will never learn, especially when DA4 production follows Anthem shitshow.

Stands to reason they're not willing to make the same mistake twice though

[ati87]

My comment was a thinnly veiled "I'd be fine if they filipped some assets and some basic mechanics and tried again making a new game", because that is the best case happening here. Obviously I don't expect them to do an NMS or FFXIV here, in fact I blieve the game is beyond redemption anyway as the only thing I would "save" is a single mechanic..

It's also not like EA will give up on Bioware making a GaaS that easily, unless their next attempt will be a classical MMORPG again and I think their finanical controllers know by now that this is just a huge gamble and not the studio's strong point at all. It is probably more realistic to expect them to just drop the franchise alltogether and let them keep making games of the IPs they still know work, like DA. If Bioware fudges another one those like ME:A then they are in deeper shit than ever anyway.

I honestly think it's easier for Bioware to develop for DA than it's for them to build up a entire new game/IP.
Andromeda and Anthem both have the same problem of not knowing what direction to go and once decided being rushed to finish the game. It's really not that weird in both cases that they failed when the ambition didn't match the vision of the game. The same can be said about Cyberpunk if you want to believe some of the reporting.

DA doesn't really have to do anything new it can continue on what the first 3 games did but with just a new story and a larger world to explore.

[Sevyvia]

I'm just surprised it wasn't killed off already.

Looking at user graphs inside Bioware must've been a punch to the gut. I remember trying the much-hyped demo, playing for 2 hours, and resolving not to buy it because the gameplay was bullet-spongey and the flying was fucking weird and controlled I was trying to move through syrup. But hey, it was the final deathblow to my insta-buy Bioware products mentality, after both DA:I and Andromeda. It accomplished that, at least.

[Makabreska]

Stands to reason they're not willing to make the same mistake twice though

And yet they already did it twice, and DA4 production seems to follow suit.

[Dhrizzle]

Well I mean... It was Bioware, not some random ass no name studio. The creators of Mass Effect, Dragon Age, NWN, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate and what not.

They surely earned a shitton of respect with me over the years, just like Blizzard. Yes, there were failures and mistakes along the way, but holy hell - they aren't going to lose my respect because of those last 15 minutes of ME3 or Andromeda being undercooked.

So yeah, I sure bought into Anthem and it had some good stuff in it - but the game frankly was a glorified tech demo to me - beautiful and empty. So yes, I bought into hype, but hell with Bioware's record over all these decades of gaming? Yeah, I'd say you could let it slide with hindsight 20/20 talk.


So yes, what they should do is put a bullet in it and absolutely reuse the mechas part in future ME game, because that was actually frikkin' good, but actually get ME grade story and attention to the next game too.

And yes, despite Anthem failure - watch me, I'll be preordering DA4 day, frikkin', one, because it's Dragon Age from Bioware, even if Anthem was a letdown.

I thought I got my money so worth out of Anthem just with the story campaign. It wasn't quite up to the usual BioWare standard but it still had better world building and characters that most of the AAA dross that gets put out. The "games as a service" aspect that people like dope_danny get worked up over was a bit underbaked but it gave me something to do until I got tired of the gameplay (which was absolutely top-notch.)

[Aeluron Lightsong]

And yet they already did it twice, and DA4 production seems to follow suit.

We don't even know anything about DA4 outside of its in Tevinter.

[Makabreska]

We don't even know anything about DA4 outside of its in Tevinter.

We do know it was scraped an restarted around 2y ago. That recently BioWare's general manager and Dragon Age 4 executive producer both left the studio, among the other few. That we still got no gameplay videos, last vid they did was a cinematic trailer in December. This all does not look good, AGAIN.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

We do know it was scraped an restarted around 2y ago. That recently BioWare's general manager and Dragon Age 4 executive producer both left the studio, among the other few. That we still got no gameplay videos, last vid they did was a cinematic trailer in December. This all does not look good, AGAIN.

I still don't think thats enough to even worry and people seem to flip flop on Bioware all the time, nothing really new. Until I see something concrete I'm not worrying.

[Makabreska]

I still don't think thats enough to even worry and people seem to flip flop on Bioware all the time, nothing really new. Until I see something concrete I'm not worrying.

It's not like this is the same shit we had during Anthem development. Not sure how many burns people need to suffer to see that Mass Effect 1-3 and KotOR BioWare is long gone, and current BioWare is so close to EA's chopping block.

That's why they keep making pre-orders. Peeps still fall for them, regardless of past experience.

Oh and I just learned, that according to EA CEO, Anthem and Andromeda weren't failures, there were "blips in delivery". Ok.

[dope_danny]

It's not like this is the same shit we had during Anthem development. Not sure how many burns people need to suffer to see that Mass Effect 1-3 and KotOR BioWare is long gone, and current BioWare is so close to EA's chopping block.

That's why they keep making pre-orders. Peeps still fall for them, regardless of past experience.

Oh and I just learned, that according to EA CEO, Anthem and Andromeda weren't failures, there were "blips in delivery". Ok.

Brand loyalty is a powerful thing. Just go look at Destiny. A game that constantly has slip ups, attempted fixes that flop and once every other year a paid update youtubers claim "has finally made destiny the game it was meant to be" before the cycle starts again. Or modern WoW where every expansion is "fixing it for real this time" and sees a massive surge of players at release that sinks to below what it did the time before. People will give a brand they have fond memories of constant free passes which leads to the "gamers are the beaten wives of media consumers" line you hear so often. People will forgive and forget anything as long as they can clap because they recognised a brand and consume product while getting excited for next product.

But the people who made Anthem did not make KOTOR. The people who made Destiny 2 did not make Halo. The people who Made Warcraft Refunded did not make Warcraft anything. But its got a name on the box people recognise and so they clap and consume product. Gotta preorder day one because they promised they can change and this time in 2021 after 20 years of this shit they actually mean it this time so lets all preorder the ultra special edition day one and anyone questioning it is just part of the dark cabal of internet haters out to maliciously target my wise spending habits specifically!