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BioWare Studio Director Sheds Light On Anthem 2.0 Progress
Work on Anthem’s complete overhaul is still underway, and the studio director of BioWare Austin recently shared some hints of its direction along with new concept art. Once one of the most anticipated games of 2019, Anthem was a disaster at launch, forcing its developer to eventually abandon its plans completely and start a complete rework of the game.
Anthem looked extremely promising before launch, with BioWare’s proven talent behind it and a promise that the live service game would deliver a new kind of storytelling for the developer. Once reviews of the game started coming in, though, it was clear that Anthem wasn’t living up to BioWare’s promises, and the picture got even bleaker after its full release. Players on the PlayStation 4 reported the game shutting down their consoles, and even those who could actually play it found it lacking in content and riddled with bugs. Anthem became BioWare’s worst-reviewed ever game shortly after launch, and the developer responded by rapidly reconfiguring its post-launch roadmap before scrapping it entirely to focus on a relaunch that’s been referred to as Anthem 2.0 and Anthem Next.
BioWare officially confirmed that it was in fact taking Anthem in for emergency repairs in February 2020, and since then, there have been few updates about how it’s going. Despite the lack of formal announcements, BioWare Austin studio director Christian Dailey has quietly shared concept art for Anthem on Twitter a few times this month, along with some discussion of what else is going on with the game. Earlier in July, Dailey shared two pieces of concept art related to a new pirate faction - one of an actual pirate and one of their lair - along with a new piece of environment art this week. In replies to the initial tweets, Dailey has also been musing on other changes coming to Anthem, teasing “non-human npcs/allies,” reworked player classes, new regions, and “lots of work on the UI.”
Fixing Anthem after its catastrophic launch may seem like a lost cause, but it wouldn’t be the first time that an apparently failed game has been saved from oblivion. Now one of the most popular MMORPGs in the world, Final Fantasy XIV had a similarly disappointing launch, shedding players left and right before Square Enix relaunched it with the A Realm Reborn update.
It sounds like BioWare is taking its time to get Anthem’s relaunch right, which could be a double-edged sword for the game. The longer it takes to relaunch Anthem, the harder it will be for it to keep up with next-gen releases, but launching too soon will torpedo its chances immediately. Clearly it’s a title that BioWare cares about getting right; whether fans are willing to give it another shot could be a different matter.
