Anthem was supposed to be a big success for EA. According to a former employee, it was even more important than the failure of a popular role-playing game.
What is Anthem? Anthem is a loot shooter by BioWare that was released on February 22, 2019, for PC, PS4, and Xbox One. With Anthem, BioWare ventured into the successful concept of Destiny: brave heroes fight against dangers threatening humanity in a sci-fi setting. To have a chance against these dangers, players don armored suits.
Anthem originally aimed to deliver content for 10 years, but shortly after the release, it became clear that the game did not meet the expectations of many fans. BioWare then announced it would rescue Anthem with a major overhaul, but just 2 years after release, the death of the shooter was sealed.
BioWare developer reveals how much EA wanted a successful Anthem
In a video on YouTube, Mark Darrah, a former developer at BioWare, talks about the year 2017 and how he experienced it at BioWare. He discusses the development of Mass Effect: Andromeda, the work on Anthem, and the fate of the “Dragon Age” team.
What does the developer say about Anthem? Darrah was part of a team responsible for Dragon Age in 2017. However, in the final development phase of Mass Effect: Andromeda, this team was supposed to assist in the work on the role-playing game.
Mass Effect is a legendary role-playing series in which players fight for the salvation of humanity as Commander Sheppard and are supported by various companions with individual traits and stories. However, in Mass Effect: Andromeda, players do not take on the role of Sheppard anymore and experience a different story, independent of the decisions made in the original trilogy. The game was not well received by fans of the series because both the story, the protagonist, and the game’s technical state were disappointing.
Darrah explains that the failure of Mass Effect: Andromeda barely bothered EA. Instead, they wanted to move on directly to the next project:
A project that they weren’t particularly interested in was Mass Effect: Andromeda because they had little to gain from its success and little to lose from its failure. I think one reason BioWare quickly moved away from Andromeda is that the group we reported to was very little invested in the success or failure of the project, and they saw a much greater incentive for BioWare to turn to the next project they could influence.
From Darrah’s subsequent narration, it becomes clear that the aforementioned next project was to be Anthem. The developer hoped his team could continue to work on Dragon Age after the completion of Andromeda, but that was not the case. A significant percentage of the “Dragon Age” team was transferred to Anthem and tasked with turning the sci-fi shooter into a live service game.
However, EA’s efforts to make Anthem a successful game were unsuccessful, and the company abandoned the shooter after just 2 years. And this decision can be viewed negatively in hindsight: EA’s decision to let the MMO Anthem die looks even worse today than it did in 2021
