The development of Anthem does not look good at all. Two people were primarily responsible for pulling it out of the dirt since May. However, they have resigned.
This is the situation: A few months ago, it became known that the original team of Anthem in Edmonton had completed the game’s development and had largely turned to new tasks. They have since been working on a new Dragon Age. This was planned from the beginning.
The development of Anthem should now take place primarily in Austin, Texas. There is the studio for BioWare that has already worked on Star Wars: The Old Republic. With the change of location, the heads of development were also supposed to be exchanged.
According to a report from Kotaku, the team in Austin was really excited about the task and thought they could approach it with fresh ideas.
When fans expressed concerns, one of the new executives reassured the fans.
This was the announcement in May: On May 3rd, Chad Robertson tweeted: He and Ben Irving were working together with a large team to improve Anthem. They felt 100% committed to Anthem. However, they wanted to reveal details only when they were ready.
- Ben Irving was the lead producer for Anthem at the time, thus responsible for organizational matters.
- Chad Robertson was the head of live service at BioWare, so he would have been responsible for the content.
This is what happened next: We reported on August 16 that Ben Irving is leaving BioWare. He had previously made vague statements about future intentions regarding Anthem at E3.
Now Chad Robertson also announces that he is leaving BioWare after 14 years.
Thus, the two people who were primarily responsible for the further development of Anthem are gone.
Robertson states in his farewell that SWTOR, Anthem, the Austin studio, and BioWare are in good hands. Fans should expect great things from them.
How things will proceed at the moment is not entirely clear. BioWare has canceled specific future plans. This was taken care of in September by Chad Robertson through a blog post. However, he could not say much about the future.
