The team behind the infamous “Anthem,” EA’s answer to games like “Destiny,” has made a statement saying that they are currently working on a redesign of “Anthem”’s gameplay.
On Feb. 10, 2020, the “Anthem” team through Casey Hudson, the general manager of the whole project, told the public exactly what they’ve been working on and why they have been silent for a considerable period of time.
The team intends on doing a complete redesign of the game from progression, loot-drops and improved moment by moment gameplay. Many point to the potential release of the next-gen consoles as the reason why they are potentially working hard to perhaps port to the new systems and gain a new fanbase that way.
While the intent behind the post was surely sincere, it would be difficult to tell whether or not this will bring the success they wish it will when they release the redesign. Any person curious about the game could do some quick, non-committal research on the title to be flooded with the suspect and rather shocking bad press and history of the game.
From the game being flooded with bugs, the story’s startlingly low quality and the extremely unrewarding progression, you could infer from the flood of stories surrounding the negative side of this game that it has a rather difficult history. That doesn’t even mention the rather massive exposé Jason Schreier made about BioWare’s extremely troubling development methods, with developers leaving due to stress to a level equivalent to post traumatic stress disorder and the poisonous mentality of the higher-ups of the company, that have said that the first few years of development doesn’t matter because you can simply crunch during the last few months of development – which is exactly what happened for “Anthem,” causing even more burnout.
It’s difficult to say whether or not this redesign will cause any more sales, or frankly even happen at all, considering “Anthem”’s track record of making promises and very quietly forgetting to keep them, like their roadmap that was not kept despite the massive push of publicity using it.
That is not to say that the game did not have success; it was one of the best-selling games of last year, after all. The big problem with “Anthem” had to do with its ability to keep people playing. When there was a bug improving the drop rate of higher quality items, people began to protest to Bioware that the bug should be put back in the game because what it did was massively improve a problem that many within the community had regarding progression. The game’s low quality and unrewarding progression was so bad that BioWare somehow fixed their problem by accident. Then they made a “fix” that many within the community saw as a downgrade, considering it patched out the loot drop bug that made everyone happy.
With that said, it is yet to be seen if these changes will truly go through with the game. The history of “Anthem” is murky and the only way we can see what will happen next is to wait.
Edward Park is a third-year student majoring in English education. EP909756@wcupa.edu