The end of this week spells the final gasp for BioWare’s Anthem. I suspect most people won’t think too much about it – that’s why, almost seven years after it first launched and five since EA pulled the plug on development, the Anthem servers are due to be shut off on Monday January 12. But I can’t help feeling a real pang of sadness; Anthem as it launched wasn’t the game it needed to be, and ultimately it never got there. But for me, it was so close that I could taste it – and now all that’s left are the bitter memories of my favorite mech RPG that never quite was.
Like many, I grew up with Knights of the Old Republic, and I loved Mass Effect and Dragon Age. BioWare were the undisputed champions of their field. When Mass Effect: Andromeda came out to a rather damp reception, there was always that caveat in the back of your mind that it was the next original project that was getting the real attention. That was Anthem, and when I first loaded up its beta I was immediately smitten. Despite BioWare’s struggles with transitioning to the Frostbite engine that had been mandated by EA, it was stunning.
I still hold those early hours in my mind. Its javelins felt weighty and momentous, and each of them served purpose. The Ranger was your run-and-gun all arounder, the Interceptor leapt deftly between foes in true cyber-ninja fashion, and the Storm detonated elemental combos like a robotic Asari Adept. It was the bulky Colossus I loved most, however, a true tank that was capable of soaking up huge amounts of enemy fire, or obliterating mobs by crashing bodily through them shield-first.
Rich put it best in his review: “Anthem makes a hell of a first impression. It then smothers its strong start with a burdensome campaign, before showing a final glimmer of potential in its endgame. It’s quite the rollercoaster.” The feel of taking off in your javelin and soaring across its beautiful open world felt unlike anything I’d played before. I spent hours skimming across clifftops, plummeting down waterfalls, or blasting into (and out of) lakes at high speed just because doing so felt so good, every single time.
The combat itself had the potential to be the next evolution of Mass Effect 3’s best-in-class action RPG approach, which carried me through hundreds of hours of ME3 multiplayer sessions. It brandished a tight mix of gunplay and tech-magic, and delivered on my favorite aspect – skill synergies, and in particular those satisfying combos where one ability would prime opponents to be detonated by another. Despite typically not being a big mecha fan, I started to believe that BioWare had built the successor I’d been dreaming of.
So if the core was that good, what happened? It simply didn’t have enough. Not enough mission types, with the vast majority of your tasks simply boiling down to zooming from battle to battle. Not enough equipment to deliver on the combat variety that even Mass Effect 3 brought to the table, let alone to sustain a longer-form live-service offering. And not enough story; despite a strong setup and a handful of character moments with flashes of that BioWare magic, having to trudge slowly around the hub of Fort Tarsis killed any vague hope of momentum.
If you managed to make it through Anthem’s campaign despite all that, then there was some promise in the early endgame, with the introduction of a scaling difficulty system and Masterwork weapons that hinted at the potential for a little more build diversity. In many ways, I can track those opening weeks of Anthem against the hundreds of hours I poured into Destiny back in its relatively dry first year. It felt so good to play, and I loved being in its world so much, that I could forgive the sheer repetition of what I was doing.
Unfortunately, by the time Anthem launched there was far more competition in the field, and I couldn’t convince enough of my friends that it was worth sticking with until BioWare was able to flesh out the endgame with those larger-scale encounters and raids that would really let the combat system sing. And they were right; in February 2020, just one year after launch, BioWare halted seasonal updates to plan a “substantial reinvention.” One year later, it confirmed that Anthem was dead.
Now, with the server shutdown, you won’t even be able to play it. Perhaps that’s for the best. I knew that I had a deep-rooted affection for the game Anthem almost was, but digging back through old trailers and screenshots to write this has only reignited the profound melancholy in my soul. It doesn’t help that, while the likes of Warframe and Armored Core 6 are keeping the mech-and-powersuit genre going strong, nothing in the years since has felt as good to play as Anthem did.
The Anthem servers will shut down on Monday, January 12. We may not mourn it for long, but I’ll always miss the game I know it had the potential to become.
