Long-time BioWare veteran Mark Darrah discusses the development of Anthem in detail once again. This time, the focus is on the period when he served as the creative lead for the project.
What does Mark Darrah reveal this time? In the first part of his video series “What Happened on Anthem”, which covered the years 2011 to 2017, part 2 focuses on the years 2017 to 2019. This is precisely the time leading up to the release on February 22, 2019, when Mark Darrah actually held the creative leadership for Anthem.
The lead developer can now report in much more detail from first-hand experience. Accordingly, the new video is almost 2 hours long, despite only covering a comparatively short time frame of 3 years.
Who is Mark Darrah? The experienced developer worked at BioWare for almost 24 years and was lead developer on Baldur’s Gate II and Jade Empire, as well as Project Director for the entire Dragon Age series and Anthem.
The biggest advantage of Anthem is also its biggest weakness
What does Darrah refer to as the worst feature? When thinking about the biggest strengths of Anthem, flying and the related dynamics of exploring the world and fighting certainly come to mind quickly. It was just cool to clear whole hordes of enemies in Iron-Man style or to take in the beautiful world from the air.
However, for Mark Darrah, flying is a prime example of what went wrong with Anthem. Furthermore, the many problems that flying brought with it make it, in his view, the worst feature of the entire game.
What does Darrah mean by that? In the first part of his video series, Darrah already explained that there were significant communication problems within the Anthem team for many years. These were further exacerbated starting in 2014, as there was no one to take over leadership and make decisions following Casey Hudson’s departure.
Rather than pursuing a clear direction and defined milestones, the teams constantly tried the same things in different ways. For flying, this meant: sometimes you could fly, sometimes you could only glide, sometimes not at all.
This is downright absurd when considering how much influence this feature has on large parts of the rest of the game – such as how the world must be built, whether cover is necessary or irrelevant, what the mission requirements are, how enemies behave…
You can watch the second part of the video series yourself here:
Additionally, there are technical challenges such as memory management or asset streaming… when a character can quickly move from A to B while flying, the objects in the game world naturally need to be rendered quickly and smoothly.
In short, according to Mark Darrah, many elements of Anthem were planned, developed, and tested without flying enabled. When flying was added back in, it felt foreign in many ways.
This not only affects the functionality of other things but also means that other aspects do not get undermined – that they have no own consequences and are not consciously integrated into the overall structure of the gameplay as a whole.
I believe flying is the best feature of Anthem, but one could also argue that in many ways it is the worst feature of Anthem – because the consequences of flying were not adequately considered.
Mark Darrah on YouTube
What else does Mark Darrah share? The lead developer also admits to many more mistakes made during the development in the video. For example, he acknowledges that he spent too much time in the offices in Edmonton instead of being on-site with the team in Austin to ensure clear communication and structure in a timely manner.
Similarly, he criticizes the release plan at that time sharply, with going live with numerous different versions and dates instead of focusing. The pressure from publisher EA would have been so great that there were hardly any opportunities to influence it.
How and when will it continue? The third part of the video series will discuss the time after the release in 2019 and what mistakes were made in the following months and years. When exactly the video will go live is currently still unknown.
Since we have some Anthem enthusiasts in the editorial team, you can expect us to keep you updated on every new anecdote on MeinMMO. By the way, you won’t be able to play the action MMO for much longer; those who want to indulge in nostalgia should hurry: EA wanted to create the perfect MMO with Anthem, but instead of salvation, the finishing blow follows now
