Listen, I was one of the many people out there that supported the idea of Anthem. When we first saw the teaser trailer way back, it looked unreal. It like they tapped into something many gamers have yearned for so long. However, now it’s pretty clear that we were shortsighted to believe that Anthem could live up to what they’ve promised. All it does now is disappoint.
This isn’t even due to its insufficient technical prowess, although one could make a case for that. It’s about how the developers behind Bioware, and to extent EA handled Anthem development over the period of it conception. Time and time again, the guys behind Anthem have failed to address Anthem’s biggest problem aside from all the bugs and issues it had, which was the lack of content. It doesn’t matter how great the graphics are in Anthem, if there’s nothing to do in the game, then players will not play it. And that’s exactly what happened. No one is playing Anthem, and that’s gotta be soul-crushing for Bioware who put their heart and soul into this title to redeem themselves after Mass Effect Andromeda.
It’s funny because before the game was released, these guys would create regular dev streams to highlight the game’s progression. They kept it as transparent as possible and really got the fans engaged. They showed genuine passion for Anthem which made us believe that this game was going to be great. Their biggest downfall was releasing the game in an unfinished state. It clearly was not ready to be shipped, and the recent update proves that. They are fixing things that should have been ironed out before release. This is what killed the game.
Had they admitted to themselves that the game was nowhere near ready for public release and delayed it to work on the blatant issues that fans most likely may have highlighted to them, Anthem might have been a hit. Maybe.
In any case, Anthem is a reminder and prime example for future game developers to take note on, that being the shiniest, does not necessarily always equate to being the greatest. And being the first on the shelf, does not correlate to long-term success. Nintendo know this all too well and have strived to ensure that the gameplay takes priority. We can learn something from Anthem current circumstances as we head into E3, which is to always stay skeptic until the games out and in the hands of trusted reviewers who won’t hype it up to gain clout.
