Anthem Does Not Feature Any Romance Options

If you've played a BioWare game -- whether Mass Effect or Dragon Age or its earlier titles -- you will know character romances are a staple throughout the developer's work. A staple that will be broken with Anthem.

That's right, if you were looking forward to meeting your next Liara or Cullen, it's not going to happen.

Word of no romances comes way of lead producer, Mike Gamble, who confirms that there won't be any smooching or falling in love, though there will be "friendships."

"There are no romances," said Gamble. "There are friendships. Some of the stuff we did with Mass Effect – the Citadel DLC specifically – there was a lot of friendship moments. You and Garrus sitting up, shooting – that kind of stuff, we want to lean into that. The romantic stuff, we're moving away from that for Anthem."

It's interesting that Gamble references the beloved Mass Effect 3 Citadel DLC, which was pack full of fan-service and some of the series' most memorable moments from a characters perspective. However, it only worked because you had the option to build friendships with these characters through dialogue choices and decision making. You could also romance many of them as well. And in that way they felt like real friends, real moments, and that was the draw of the Citadel DLC. But if Anthem just has these moments without the proper build-up, it probably won't have the same impact.

Anthem doesn't seem like the type of game you would have romances in given its multiplayer angle, so this news isn't very surprising. But that doesn't mean it's not disappointing. For BioWare's biggest fans, the romance system is part of what defines the BioWare experience, so its absence gives further credence that Anthem is a new direction for the studio.

Anthem is in development for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. It's scheduled to release on February 22, 2018.

For more on Anthem, be sure to peep our recent coverage of it right here. As you may know, today was EA's E3 press conference, or in other words, a dump of new Anthem media and information was released.

Source: Game Informer