Mark Darrah said that even though the game no longer exists, Anthem should not be reviled.
Last week, Electronic Arts shut down the official servers for BioWare‘s unsuccessful live service game, Anthem, as announced in July. Recently, Destin Legarie interviewed Mark Darrah, a BioWare veteran who has worked on virtually every game the studio has released, from Baldur’s Gate (1998) to Dragon Age: The Veilguard (as a consultant after leaving the company), except for the Mass Effect series. This includes Anthem, on which Darrah worked as co-producer.
The developer acknowledged several shortcomings. The game was originally inspired by Diablo; however, according to Darrah, as a looter shooter, the team should have drawn much more inspiration from Destiny. This is partly why the loot, endgame, and player retention all failed. The flight mechanics were by far the most enjoyable for players, but they also caused several problems. For example, virtually all enemy units had to have ranged attacks; otherwise, players could simply fly away. In co-op mode, three experienced players could quickly rush a new player through the story, which disrupted the narrative flow, according to Darrah. BioWare tested a version of Anthem without flight before E3 2017, though the intention was to reintroduce flight in the final version.
Darrah wondered if the developers should have suggested a nine-month public beta so the whole team could collaborate on live iterations. This would have involved releasing the game as a beta and doing what they did in the first year before the official release. Darrah believes that BioWare Austin, which has more experience with live service games (they developed Star Wars: The Old Republic), should have taken over much earlier. They were working on Anthem Next, which was intended to introduce new game modes, cataclysms, missions, events, and other content. However, the team was struggling with understaffing, and Anthem Next was ultimately canceled in February 2021.
“I think it’s easy to blame Electronic Arts. Certainly, they deserve some blame for Anthem, but it’s not all their fault. One thing worth mentioning is that some people loved coming out of the woodwork at the time to say, ‘See, I told you so,’ and that BioWare should never have made Anthem because they’re a single-player RPG studio. But my feeling is that BioWare has always been changing. By that logic, we should never have made Neverwinter Nights because we were a 2D RPG developer. We should never have made Mass Effect because we were a tactical RPG developer, not an action RPG developer. So, I don’t know that that argument holds much weight for me. Studios evolve and try new things. Was Anthem too big of a reach? Yes, definitely. But could you tell at the time? I don’t know. I don’t know that you could,” Darrah added.
It offered some hope for BioWare‘s future, which was in greater danger after Dragon Age: The Veilguard fell short of the company’s financial projections. The future of BioWare depends on the next Mass Effect game. However, according to the developer, there is a glimmer of hope. BioWare is now a single-project studio, focusing entirely on this title instead of dividing its attention between multiple projects, as was the case with Anthem, Mass Effect: Andromeda, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard during certain parts of their development.
Source: WCCFTech
