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Anthem is getting rebooted to maximise the “full potential” of the live sci-fi role-playing game, and BioWare has given us an update on the progress of this undertaking (via Eurogamer).
In February, general manager Casey Hudson broke the news that the Anthem team would be “reinvent[ing] the core gameplay loop with clear goals, motivating challenges and progression with meaningful rewards.” It is a lofty goal, because it essentially requires the game to be broken down into bits, adjusted, then brought back together again. Like baking a red velvet cake, then realising you might not have heard the head chef’s instructions quite right, and trying to make a fruit cake from the red velvet cake.
Now, studio director Christian Dailey has supplied an update on where the team (said to total around 30 people) is on the project. Presently, the order of the day is “experimenting/prototyping to improve on the areas where we believe we fell short and to leverage everything that you love currently about Anthem” as part of the incubation phase.
“Spoiler—this is going to be a longer process,” admitted Dailey. “And yes, the team is small but the whole point of this is to take our time and go back to the drawing board. And a small team gives us the agility a larger one can’t afford.” Dailey also stated that BioWare wants to maintain communication with Anthem players, to be “open and honest with where we are at.” These communications may take the form of a blog post, like this one, or it may be a live stream of the process, or it may be sharing of concept art on social media.
“The reality is you will see things that look awesome but end up on the cutting room floor or things that you might think suck that you feel we are spending too much time on—but in the spirit of experimentation this is all OK,” explained Dailey. “We really want to provide you all the transparency we can because of your passion and interest in Anthem.”
Anthem is out now for PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4.
