Anthem

“The world of Anthem is a dangerous place. Chaotic. Unpredictable. A world left unfinished and abandoned by the gods. As a freelancer, you are one of the elite few chosen to fight against the chaos. To wield the power of your javelin and bring order to the madness.”

Metaphors are often comical in their unintended symbolism.

The quote above is the opening text meant to tease “Act 01 – Echoes of Reality” for Anthem, a game released in one form on February 15, another form on February 22, and will continue to evolve until BioWare stops updating it at some point in the future.

After playing most of what Anthem has to offer, I wonder at what point did BioWare or some marketing entity concoct those lines of text? At what point did art begin to imitate life? Even more so than its digital world, the actual game of Anthem is a dangerous place. It is both chaotic and unpredictable. Worse yet, while it has not yet been abandoned, the gods at BioWare have certainly given us the world of Anthem in an unfinished state.

Anthem, in many ways, feels like an impossible game to succinctly review… not that I’m often succinct when writing. There are so many odd choices, questionable issues, and technical problems that cannot be overlooked, not by anyone. Yet there is an engagingly fun product here, with a core gameplay loop that can frequently become irresistible. With this game, nearly every positive comes with a caveat, as do many of the negatives.

From story, to gameplay, to endgame, to user interface, to loot drops, Anthem mystifies me. For every missing piece, I could go on for pages. For every bombastic explosion, I could go on for pages. A forward-thinking mechanic is often held back by a years-old one.

Chaotic. Unpredictable. That has been Anthem in a nutshell. If you have played it, looked into it, read about it, or even considered it, you likely know part of Anthem‘s narrative as an interactive experience. You know of the bugs, the loading times, the incomparable flight, the Tyrant Mine, the promise of more, the detonation of combos, the voice acting, the crashes, the endgame… everything. But with chaos and unpredictability there needs to be some kind of order. And in this review I hope to show Anthem for what it is, piece by piece, rather than in a swirling broth of thought. Honestly, it is one of the few ways I can think to properly critique the game while not becoming lost in the positives and negatives and how they play off each other in such hamfisted harmony.

In the words of Good Charlotte–and yes, I am going there–“This is the Anthem (review) throw all your hands up.”

Soaring High

The hours players spend darting around the world of Bastion in their Javelins is one of Anthem‘s defining pillars of joy. Infrequently referred to as an Iron Man simulator, above all else BioWare has mastered vertical movement across a vast terrain. With a tap of the jump button and a click of the left thumbstick your Javelin’s thrusters will burst with fiery life and jettison you in any direction. For the bulk of my time in Anthem I played as the Interceptor Javelin, its lithe frame capable of triple-jumping and dodging. I would swan dive off cliffs and ancient structures that stretched to the sky, activating my flight at the last minute and throttling back up towards the heavens like an action movie star. Even the bulky Colossus maintains an amount of grace and speed while barreling through enemies, brandishing its shield in flight.

Flying in this game never felt old. When I had to take flight–sometimes for a minute or more–just to get to an objective, flying sliced through the tedium. At least I could gleefully dodge left and right, pretending like I was a kid behind the controls of a fighter jet. However, flight is not infinite in Anthem. At some point, a Javelin’s engines will overheat and gravity will take over, crashing the mass of metal to the ground. Thankfully there’s no fall damage.

When flying for too long, a semicircle underneath the Javelin will eventually start to turn red, indicating a rapid fall from grace. Naturally, to keep something from overheating it must be cooled. A Javelin fully submerged in water will be instantly rid of its overheated status. During flight a shower of rain or close contact with a body of water will slightly cool the engines, allowing for longer periods of uninterrupted propulsion. A sharp dive towards the ground is another effective method of staving off the heat. Expert players wishing to traverse the jungle biome of Bastion will no doubt create optimal routes for bathing in waterfalls and skirting along creeks and lakes to stay in flight without ever having to touch the ground.

In a way, Anthem‘s flying is a method of distancing yourself from nearly every other aspect of the game. Soaking up such a brilliant traversal mechanic is so rewarding because it is immediately approachable and requires little mastery. But reflecting on the entirety of my playtime, I can think of few instances in which BioWare artfully implemented one of the best parts of its game.

Players soar around in the Javelins primarily to rapidly close the distance between two points. That point can be many things. It can be the next point in a mission, a cave far off in the distance, an enemy turret sitting on a high-up perch, or a rock to hide behind after taking too much damage. The second most common use is to collect floating orbs dotted around the landscape that will be placed into a objective.

The opening cutscene of Anthem shows us, the “Freelancer,” flying through a crumbling valley towards something called the Heart of Rage. Dragon-like wyverns threaten to stop the Freelancer until we begin shooting them in midair, even grabbing onto one and blasting it at close range. At no point when the controls are handed over does BioWare ask players to engage in aerial combat. Sure, some enemies fly but most float a few meters off the ground. There are no flying bosses, no crumbling ruins we must bob and weave through in a desperate escape.

Despite Anthem‘s flight being something that should separate it from the pack, it feels by-the-numbers. Players cannot shoot their guns mid-flight and will instead begin to hover once aiming a weapon. Outside of the Ranger Javelin’s ultimate ability, skills are only really used while hovering. But hovering is finite and also quickly overheats non-Storm Javelins. Being hit by an enemy’s fire attack will instantly drop you and prohibit take off until cooled. While traversing, both feet must be planted on firm ground before the heat meter will dwindle. As an Interceptor, this was frustrating because I could dodge in the air three times while not using my thrusters and would never cool me off. You could fly to the limits of Anthem‘s playable area, click the stick to turn of flight, and fall to the ground and the heat bar will only reduce when you’re standing still.

I speak first of Anthem‘s flight because I believe it is unparalleled fun. Unfortunately, like many of the fun things in Anthem, there is always a barrier in place impeding you from fully enjoying something that should be so simple. As seamless as darting around Bastion is, there are multiple annoyances that begin to stack on top of each other. Flying is barely a viable option in combat and is mainly delegated to traversal and collecting. Even tasks that require a player to fly their Javelin through glowing green balls to activate a node are conducted in small arenas, leaving no room for spectacle.

As you further begin to dissect Anthem, the concept of impeded fun begins to creep into other aspects of the game.

Fantasies of Power

One reason I believe that Destiny and its space magic have maintained such an avid player base is because the interplay between flashy abilities and powerful guns keeps instilling players with a “power fantasy” that Bungie often touts. Most games allow players to feel powerful, especially in fantastical settings. Pushing two buttons on a controller and being able to launch crescent moons of fire from a blazing sword in midair is meant to be outrageous. Flashy attacks are meant to make the player grin because they can feel power coursing through their veins after making a desperate gambit to save the team or melt through the health meters of trash mobs and raging bosses.

In addition to its deft agility, Anthem excels at executing a power fantasy. Each Javelin can equip one support ability and two offensive abilities from a pool exclusive to that specific Javelin. Storms conjure ice, fire, and lightning from their palms and the sky while the Ranger shoots laser beams and tosses grenades.

On their own, Javelin abilities would feel standard when tallied among the many methods of death players have been given across the years. But BioWare understands that strength is only fun when it can be continuously wielded. When I first piloted a Javelin, I was shocked at the frequency with which abilities recharge. Most take between five to ten seconds, with support abilities sometimes edging around thirty. This means that in a looter shooter, Anthem‘s abilities often take precedence over guns because players are meant to string together combos to bombard opposition with bonus damage.

Abilities act as either a primer or detonator. Whether fire, ice, electricity, or acid, primer abilities coat enemies in a status effect. Ice freezes while acid weakens and so on. On their own, primer abilities can affect a single target or a mob depending on type but don’t do a lot of damage. That’s where detonator abilities come into play. These abilities are mainly elemental as well and, when inflicted on a primed enemy, will explode on screen in a bath of particle effects and an immensely satisfying “ding” as the word “COMBO” cracks over the afflicted enemies. One caveat: BioWare barely explains these systems in-game. In fact, there is very little tutorializing and players who want to understand everything would be best served by heading to the internet.

Combo attacks are the anchor which much of Anthem‘s combat is attached to. Because my Interceptor’s melee attack by default was a detonator, I would equip acid or ice primers to inflict a status effect on an enemy, slice them with my melee for a combo, be bathed in an aura of that status effect which pulsed that specific damage type to nearby enemies, allowing for teammates to clean up. In a group of four, every Javelin will play a role in doing burst damage on enemies. Harder difficulties require the use of combos to not only drop enemy health faster, but to do crowd control. Frozen enemies can’t go anywhere, which allows focus to shift to something more dangerous.

Anthem‘s combat is fun because it is fast. The chunky weight of the Colossus means little when it can spread flames across a map or use a shield to plow through enemies while running. Having abilities on such a small cooldown means that players are intended to experiment and dive into combat to engage and disengage nonstop. Yes, there are powers that feel underwhelming in both solo and group settings but coordinating with a team on how to approach an arena of enemies will yield surprising results.

Further capitalizing on Anthem‘s own power fantasy is the gear system. Like most games of its type, the loot earned before achieving max level (30, in Anthem‘s case) will be constantly scrapped and replaced by something just strong enough to boost damage output and gear score. Each gun and piece of equipment has a level attached to it and players will slowly raise the quality of their Javelin–from Common to Uncommon, Rare, Epic, Masterwork, and Legendary.

At level 25, players start having a chance to acquire Masterwork gear. These pieces of powerful gear come with better inscriptions (i.e. stat bonuses to damage, luck, increased magazine size) and an inscription unique to that Masterwork. These Masterwork inscriptions are meant to evoke more power for the player, whether it is granting bonus damage after a dodge, giving an extra ability charge, causing a small explosion after use, or boosting the recharge rate of ultimate attacks. The joy of collecting a Masterwork is that players will immediately want to test it out in the field (they can’t, but more on that in a bit) and it instantly boosts shield and armor capacity, allowing Javelins to take more damage.

So begins the true gear chase in Anthem. And with it, a host of problems.

Shoot, Loot

Anthem is a looter shooter but I think somewhere along the line, BioWare lost the plot of what that actually means. In the early game of playing Destiny or The Division, when I kill an enemy and see the bright color of a piece of loot drop, I’ll often risk my life to run past a hail of bullets to grab it. After all, that piece of gear could give me just enough bonus damage or defense to make the rest of a mission slightly easier. Diablo 3, which Anthem seems to share the most in common with, spews fountains of loot that can be immediately equipped or scrapped based on its usefulness.

These were games released upwards of seven years ago, well before development on Anthem started. And much of the problems stemming from Anthem are rooted in the fact that it comes across as a game released in an industry where the hobbled (yet successful) launches of Diablo 3, Destiny, The Division, Warframe, and several other games had not happened. After spending time with Anthem, one could almost argue that the development team at BioWare working on Anthem never played another looter game after 2012, while ignoring any news of failures and successes.

After killing an unknown amount of enemies or opening a chest in Anthem, players will see a colorful, glowing octahedron containing loot. To the right of the HUD, right above the equipped guns, a notification will pop up informing the player they received a “Common Item” or whatever corresponding rarity. Nothing else. Want to know what you received? Well, too bad.

Players must wait until after they finish a mission before their loot is revealed. There’s no equipping gear to boost your stats through the remainder of a mission, no way to see what you received until the game decides you can. I recall a member of BioWare claiming this choice was made because they did not want players sifting through menus while the rest of their team either had to wait or decided to carry on. Maybe with a team of random people matchmade together, this philosophy makes sense but it is still one held together by a thread. The joy of acquiring a new weapon or a new skill should be instantaneous, players should want to stop but they are doing and feed into that urge of trying out a piece of new gear that has been gifted to them by the gods of luck. Instead, acquiring loot feels joyless outside of the reveal of a Masterwork or Legendary item which receive their own fanfare at the close of an expedition.

I have to assume that part of the reason for this inability to swap gear out on the fly is due to BioWare’s clunky interface. To change gear, players must go to the Forge, a separate instance that requires its own loading screen to access. Once the Forge is loaded into, players can see their Javelin in the same way you might see a Guardian in Destiny. Hovering over a tooltip for a gun or gear slot brings up a menu that shows every applicable piece that can be applied to the slot. The menu on its own is passable, though its angled displays leave up a lot of negative space where nothing is placed.

After fiddling in the Forge, the only way for players to test out their gear is to start a new expedition. But what if the gun or ability you use sucks and doesn’t mesh well with your build? Tough. You have to back out of the expedition and repeat the process over. It makes little sense outside of the fact that parsing through the actual Forge mid-mission would feel like a chore until players wrapped their head around it.

Though accessing loot in Anthem is a questionable process on its own, so is the loot itself. Again, this is where BioWare shows a lack of understanding as to how these kinds of games should reward players. As of the time of writing this review, BioWare released a patch to address a major oversight with the inscription pool of gear in Anthem. Before the patch, players could acquire a flamethrower that would have an inscription that boosted the damage or the ammo pickup rate for machine pistols. However, that bonus would only be applied to the flamethrower and not the Javelin gear pool as a whole. Worse yet, inscriptions were underwhelming or often broken. The patch fixed inscriptions for newly acquired weapons but did not apply retroactively.

I also have to call out BioWare on their lack of creativity with weapon skins. Suffice it to say, weapons do not look special. Most gun classes have three different types and a boost in rarity mostly means that it will be draped in a different kind of fabric or look slightly shinier. Masterwork and Legendary items have a nice decal or coat of paint but little else to make them feel distinguished.

One must then come to the understanding that over the course of development, BioWare never saw any of this as an issue. Masterwork gear would drop with these worthless stats, effectively making the item feel less special. For 11 hours, a bug or something caused loot to drop at an increased rate and players were showered with drops. BioWare spoke up and said it was unintentional and soon fixed the “issue.”

Bungie faced this same problem in September of 2014. When Destiny 1 launched, purple engrams would often decrypt into blues. Players stood in front of a cave for hours shooting a constant stream of Hive to boost their chances at getting gear. Though most looter shooters have their own loot cave because, let’s be honest, players will use exploits that get them ahead, that option should not be the most viable way to improve your character. It’s simply not fun. Somehow, BioWare missed that memo when developing Anthem and its loot system. In a matter of days, another patch will be released that stops white and green loot from dropping for level 30 characters. Will this mean more Masterworks and Legendaries will drop for players? Who knows.

Quality of life improvements are common practice for a living game that is constantly evolving. However, BioWare seems to have missed out on the prime examples of what not to do. They should have seen the paltry days of Diablo 3 and Destiny loot and said, “Our game won’t be like that.” Frustratingly, there are also so few avenues of understanding how gear actually affects your Javelin. Currently, no stat page exists to show a Javelin’s total health and shields, recharge rates, weapon damage, or anything else of consequence. Inscriptions, while improved, have no tooltips or are confusing. In fact, BioWare employees created a Reddit post to explain what inscriptions do. But players should not have to access an outside resource to understand the basics of a game.

Loot also becomes a problem when it ceases to become rewarding. My Interceptor is nearly fully equipped with Masterwork gear, except no Javelin currently has access to Masterwork or Legendary versions of their support skill, though BioWare claims they are looking into possibilities. Right now, my task is to grind for better Masterworks that will compliment specific skills so I can begin working on builds for different Javelins. With the thrill of using even stronger abilities that can be complimented by unique guns, I see a lot of players investing their time into further boosting that power fantasy.

The payoff for grinding out better and better gear? Increased difficulty levels. At level 30, players unlock Grandmaster I, II, and III difficulties which drastically increase the health and damage output of enemies. Until players have earned a couple of Masterwork components, Grandmaster I is a grueling lesson in pain. Slowly and surely that curve begins to turn in your favor and with the promise of increased Masterwork rewards, Grandmaster should be an increasingly rewarding difficulty climb. It should be. Right now the consensus from both players and BioWare is that Grandmaster II and III are not rewarding. Players feel that jumping into both non-Tyrant Mine strongholds are hour-plus encounters with little payoff for the time invested. While Legendaries, which are boosted versions of Masterworks, should be the next step, they do not drop at a high rate. Additionally, Masterwork inscriptions only provide incremental boosts and don’t drop enough to allow for significant gains.

But before I get to Anthem‘s endgame, there’s one last thing I want to touch on.

Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing

Mass Effect. Knights of the Old Republic. Dragon Age. These have become hallmarks of storytelling in games. They have made BioWare one of the most beloved developers in the industry. There are only small glimpses of that pedigree with Anthem.

Much of Anthem’s storytelling suffers from poor structure. A single player narrative is wedged in between an online, multiplayer experience. The overarching story of Anthem tells of the Shapers, an unseen collective of god-like beings who created the world using the Anthem of Creation. For an unknown reason, the Shapers left before their job was finished. Imagine thumbing through the opening chapters of Genesis and it merely read “On Thursday night God said, “Peace!” and bailed.” But the Shapers left behind relics both sprawling and small that are capable of unknown power. They can tap into the Anthem of Creation to spew forth new and dangerous life, possibly create new landscapes, or wipe out cities. Much like the Reapers and the Protheans from Mass Effect, the lingering presence of the Shapers is always felt. We see Shaper constructs dotting Bastion and are only left to wonder what their purpose may be. It’s an intriguing premise.

As the Freelancer, we are a small pawn in a bigger game. Our journey starts on a suicide mission to silence a Shaper relic at the Heart of Rage, which is responsible for decimating an entire city. Soon after, we are palling around with our cypher Owen, a charming guy with psychic abilities that supports us in our quest to scrape by. You see, after the Heart of Rage incident, two years pass and people aren’t fans of Freelancers. Why? Because they risked their lives and failed? I guess?

Anthem makes little effort to fill in the details for players. White text across a black screen informs us that two years have passed. We don’t get to earn that time in between with narrative beats that are actually playable or shown in cutscenes. We see the events that caused the Heart of Rage through a cutscene, not a potentially epic, exciting mission. Much of Anthem‘s story is told, not shown or even played. As much as I love the game’s extensive codex and the deep lore it alludes to, there are pieces of it that would have been so much better when included in gameplay as a mission through some underground crypt or booming Shaper structure.

On the third mission we meet Tassyn, a member of Corvus, which is a spy agency, who tells us that the Dominion, our militaristic main group of bad guys, is up to no good. While I never felt tossed around Anthem‘s critical path, I was always left with the impression that I could have been given more story, more missions, and more conversations. The main bad guy? His name is The Monitor. Why is he trying to power up a Shaper relic called the Cenotaph? Well because he wants to harness the Anthem of Creation for himself and maybe be the kind of bad guy who uses evil methods to accomplish something “good.” Did you know that The Monitor is both a Javelin pilot and a cypher? Well did you know that “The Monitor” is actually a name given to Dominion agents that are actually both a Javelin pilot and a cypher? Well read the codex! Ironically, after I read the codex entry for The Monitor it made him even more vapid of a villain because he’s literally one of many with that name.

The motivations of characters that drive the story are baseline heroic. The bad guy wants to rule the world with little explanation as to what caused him to become such a jerk and little exposition on how his grab for power will actually do any good. Our good guys just want to protect the world and keep the people safe. It’s pulp fiction at best and poor writing at worse. There are very bright spots during the course of the 15-ish hour campaign where the story actually tries to draw you into the world but those moments are spread out so far between each other. It also doesn’t help that during missions, players are given the most remedial tasks (silence a Shaper relic, stand on a point, kill the bad guys) that fill in the holes between dialog. This structure then stretches into every other part of the gameplay.

Where the narrative really begins to clash with the player is in the online interactions with others. Anthem is a much better game when played with friends but not when you are trying to tune out your buddies while listening to lines of dialog in the middle of flying and fighting. Anthem‘s propensity for crashes also means that me and my friends would sometimes crash when loading into a cutscene or a mission. If one of us managed to get back into the action, there’s missed dialog that won’t be heard again because story missions can’t be replayed as of right now. In the worst case scenario, a friend crashed as a cutscene started, loaded back into Anthem, and started at a black screen when joining our group because they had to wait until the cutscene was over. This happened multiple times at different points in the story. So even when it is no fault of your own, BioWare doesn’t seem particularly interested at hooking you into what’s actually going on.

While the critical campaign path is a feeble attempt at crafting a world on a grand scale, BioWare’s habit of incredible characters pokes its head out from time to time. After completing a story mission or an expedition, players can go back to the safety of Fort Tarsis, the Citadel-like hub where NPCs are ready to chat you up. Keep in mind though, you may want to talk to everyone you can because the game does not inform you if conversation paths will be lost as the main story progresses.

In most instances, I loved talking to the characters around Fort Tarsis. I hated slowly walking to them. I hated having to feel like I was holding my friends up and muting chat so I hear what someone had to say. Ultimately, though, I was glad I did. Ranging from the goofy to the emotional, a few dozen characters populate Fort Tarsis that have a small story to tell. As the Freelancer, players are not given Paragon and Vanguard levels of dialog choices. Instead you can respond to someone and be mostly supportive or kind of a jerk. Your choices will sometimes decide if a character sticks around Fort Tarsis or if their lives are better off for having met you. I’m sure everyone will bond to the old woman with PTSD, awkward Sentinel Brin, and the two clothing designers with thick accents. Characters in Fort Tarsis are written well enough that you may become invested in their conversations and the well-being of Bastion as a whole.

Which is why I don’t understand why BioWare chose to have most of these characters cease to exist outside of Fort Tarsis. Only three of the characters inside the Fort act as contract givers who will talk to you during missions. A person inside the Fort who has a problem will never ask you to collect something during the course of your gameplay except Prospero, the microtransaction vendor, who at the beginning of the game asks for three embers to start selling you things. Players would feel more invested in the outcome of a woman who wants to start her own bread shop if they had to somehow find a grain-giving plant tucked away in a far corner of Bastion. The same goes for literally every character you interact with. Outside of the Fort they serve no purpose. And once you exhaust their conversation tree, they only serve as just another NPC who stands there, repeating the same line over and over again as you pass (sorry Zoe, you’re nice but I’ve heard you make the same comment on “that girl in the market, Sayrna” a hundred times as I exit my Javelin).

This leaves Anthem‘s story a husk of what it could be, a husk of what BioWare is capable of. You may wish to invest your time in connecting the dots between the codex, trying to learn about the Legion of Dawn and the Urgoth, but there is little reward. You may want to shut your friends up to hear what cheeky thing Owen will have to say next. But is there any real reason?

It’s frustrating to see such a capable studio rush through a narrative that is ripe with possibility. Then, I suppose, the question must be asked: What is actually possible with Anthem?

Means to an End

Right now, Anthem‘s endgame is not in a healthy place. In the uphill battle for a decked out Javelin with Masterworks and Legendaries, players have few options to obtain power. Grandmaster I strongholds are the best option and with only three currently available (a fourth will arrive in April, maybe), repetition will soon set in. While these larger, longer dungeons have their moments, they still are packed with the familiar objectives found in the campaign. Higher difficulties don’t change the enemy AI in any significant way and don’t throw new tricks at players to master. There are no mission modifiers to make the gameplay loop feel different and little incentive to further push the limits outside of readying up for future content drops.

On Wednesday, March 6, before this review went live, two members of BioWare got on a livestream to address a patch that will release on March 12. This patch is meant to address a significant number of crashes in Anthem, especially crashes on the PlayStation 4 which will power down the console and have caused many to want to stop playing until it is fixed. When the game launched early on February 15, players were plagued by a number of bugs and glaring issues that should not have existed. Load times were horrible, players were not getting credit for kills when downed, and a laughably dumb story mission halted progress for many. Players were required to complete a laundry list of tasks to open Tombs that would allow the story to progress. That progress only started tracking when the quest was obtained, not when you began the game. It’s a decision that seemed to be in place to halt players from progressing too far too fast. Also discovered within the last 24 hours? The level 1 gun players get when creating a new character is bugged and kills enemies faster than Masterwork or Legendary weapons. Avoidable mistakes such as this only weaken the reception of a product and don’t instill much faith in its creators.

Right after the game’s full launch on February 22, BioWare released a roadmap outlining the upcoming content for “Act 1” which stretches into May. March would bring cosmetic rewards at the end of strongholds because they currently have little fanfare upon completion and the game severely lacks cosmetic options for improving Javelins (though cheers to BioWare for letting us use a rainbow of colors to customize without charge). April would bring a new stronghold and a Pilot Mastery system, which no one knows about. I was told after beating the campaign that I could grind out a challenge that would help with those Mastery levels and I assume they will add more power to assist in Grandmaster II and III. Then May would come and drop the Cataclysm. That’s when I became disappointed. May? That’s when Anthem‘s “aspirational” endgame content would arrive, two months after launch? Hell, at least Vault of Glass came to Destiny shortly after launch. Why was the game allowed to release without these significant pieces of content in the first place?

The immense number of bugs and starved content have left me feeling like Anthem is a game that was not ready for a full release. Those who buy the game during the first month or so are getting an early access build with a more ironed-out product coming soon. Even during the March 6 stream, BioWare said they are hoping the newer content they promised will be ready for a patch before the end of March. So at this time, the developers are not even sure if they are on an achievable timeline.

Anthem is so frustrating. BioWare even more so. I justify Anthem‘s current existence because I have had a lot of fun with it. I’ve also taken the game a lot slower than I usually would because I know there is a hard stop coming, especially with the allure of upcoming titles. But Anthem in its current state should not exist. The blueprints for what not do to have already paved the way for Anthem to release as a game with a robust endgame and wonderful story and no dumb bugs or reasons to find loot exploits. Yet here we are.

I call upon the master lyricists of Good Charlotte from their 2002 album The Young and the Hopeless. In their song “The Anthem” they say:

“It’s a new day
But it all feels old.
Its a good life
That’s what I’m told.
But everything
It all just feels the same…”

Anthem was supposed to be a new day for looter shooters. Years have passed since Borderlands and Diablo. Why then, does it feel so old? There is so much good in Anthem. Much like The Division, the foundation is there for an enjoyable game that can hook players for hundreds of hours. But yet again, that famous phrase with a looter shooter comes into play. “It will be good in time.” Who cares if this is a living game that will go through numerous changes? It should be good, if not great, right now. Because of that I do feel the need to revisit this review, test out the waters, and see if there is more than just simple fun to be had. For now, though, “everything it all just feels the same.”