I’m going to talk about a game I haven’t played outside of two different beta sessions. It’s also a game I certainly have no intention of playing anytime soon, as well.
Anthem is having issues. Lots of them. The game cannot catch a break in the gaming press. Every single article posted is another strike against it and it’s hard to find anything good to say about it. And it’s also kind of sad too given the long, and nearly spotless, history of the developers. Yeah, they’ve stumbled, but here it is, round 2, and they’ve stumbled again.
I don’t blame EA, but I could. As we’ve learned from interviews with Amy Hennig, EA pretty much forces the developers they own to run the same engine with everything they do (the Frostbite engine). It was one created for FPS, and Anthem is a 3rd person shooter. So there’s an excuse there. Sort of. Other problems with the game have absolutely nothing to do with the engine and just the overall design choices. Then there’s bugs, loot issues, lack of eng game, and everything else that plagues what games like Anthem are trying to do.
Almost everything that’s broken in the game can be fixed and things that aren’t broken but otherwise just…odd choices, can be changed. We know this. We’ve been through it with Destiny. What’s out there now doesn’t have to be and probably won’t be what’s out there a year from now for Anthem. But EA isn’t known for being patient. If they can hold, I honestly feel that Bioware can right the ship. At least I want them to.
Still, it was good to hear from at least one person enjoying the game despite its faults.
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