Bioware spoke about how Anthem should gain “a certain spice” after launch through events. In doing so, the developers took inspiration from Fortnite.
Something is always happening in Fortnite: Events are always in the community’s focus. They are surrounded by secrets and create excitement.
At the moment, a giant, purple cube is rolling across the map, burning runes into the ground. No one knows exactly what its purpose is yet, but the world is talking about it.
This is what BioWare wants for Anthem: In a interview with PC Gamer, Executive Producer Mark Darrah explained that BioWare wants to take a page from this. The community experience is particularly important to the studio. The events would also help to avoid large content gaps.
Players should experience the events together so they can talk about them
“One problem that we have with BioWare games is that there is a certain reluctance to talk about what they’ve experienced, because there is fear of spoiling things. But when you look at something like Fortnite, there is this shared communal storytelling principle, like with the purple cube or the rocket or the meteor. Players share this experience because they know everyone has seen it,” said Mark Darrah.
BioWare wants to avoid the mistakes of other live games: BioWare will follow a “Games-as-a-service” approach with Anthem for the first time, continually developing the MMO shooter and supplying it with fresh content.
It takes more than just a big update: Efficiently keeping up with the players’ content thirst is not an easy task for studios with these live games. Darrah assured that BioWare will take a different approach with Anthem and wants to avoid exactly this mistake:
Many developers do not have this second level of content. They have their seasons and do that in a certain rhythm. ‘We do five things a year, six things a year.’ But they do not have this little extra spice, and that is what Epic has figured out.
Anthem will have seasons but also something for the content hunger in between
In Anthem, there will be large content seasons where bigger things happen. However, Darrah is convinced that Anthem needs more than that. Here, the Executive Producer referred again to the approach Epic follows with Fortnite.
BioWare plans even more than Fortnite: There are these 10-week-long seasons in Fortnite, and in between, a thick, purple cube rolls in, offering players a cherry on top of the content. Anthem aims to potentially have this “live storytelling” even more often than in Fortnite.
Hymn of Creation as a foundation for dynamic world-building
How will that work? The developers did not want to discuss details yet. That would spoil the core game of Anthem. However, the main story of Anthem would be a perfect foundation for introducing these events.
Anthem is built around world-building: In Anthem’s core story, it is about a “Hymn of Creation”. This is a mysterious and ancient technology left behind by a people in the past. The hymn is an unfathomable power that can literally tear the world apart and change it. These rifts can bring forth terrible creatures and other things.
The “Hymn of Creation” would be perfectly suited to spontaneously start live events that the players should marvel at and discuss. The developers can implement this without players having to wait weeks for a new update.
Anthem is not Dragon Age or Mass Effect
This shared story of players will be completely different from anything BioWare has done before. The developers emphasized in the interview that Anthem will be its own thing in BioWare’s DNA.
Players will experience Anthem differently: It will no longer be possible for players to push a certain button and suddenly a mountain explodes. The world must work for a shared community story.
The actions of players can have a collective consequence: The developers can decide to blow up the mountain themselves if the players have not managed to kill a certain number of enemies. In that form, there will be a consequence for everyone that also strengthens the sense of community.
Players will experience their individual stories only in the hub Fort Tarsis. Here, an NPC might die on them. Outside the hub, that does not count, only the shared experiences matter.
