BioWare Talks Anthem, How EA Learned From Mass Effect Andromeda

When BioWare first introduced Anthem, it was during a time when many die-hard Mass Effect felt the pains of Andromeda. Many felt that the latest addition in the phenomenal ME-verse was set up to fail in favour of the new online action-RPG and the reception to the upcoming title was mixed, to put it politely. With EA's declared commitment to online games over single-player narratives, many were not only worried that Anthem would be a "Destiny clone," but that their other major franchises would be feeling the burn as well. Luckily, it seems that the mega publisher has learned from their mistakes when handling the Mass Effect Andromeda release and are applying that feedback with BioWare's latest title.

BioWare's Casey Hudson recently sat down with GamesBeat to discuss the game and how the developer/publisher relationship changed since Mass Effect. "One of the big ones—there were people that wanted some specific DLC around the Quarians. We wanted to be able to do that as well, and we weren't able to. That's something we've applied directly to Anthem in that we want to be able to respond quickly to things that people want. Whether it's something people want fixed, or even more important, when people are excited about something and we have the ability to build it, we want to be able to get that out to them," Hudson told the site.

Hudson also mentioned that Anthem is incredibly ambitious and that with constant post-launch support and new content, both players and developers alike will have reason to stick around, "We're designing Anthem to do that, and we're keeping people on the project for many months. The plan is to go for years creating content to go into this game."

"I think of it as something—we try to keep as much of a sense of real time as possible. We do that through a whole spectrum of features and content, from literally almost being able to, in real time, change things like weather and creature spawning. We can say, "Oh, it's going to get really cold this weekend, so that's why there will be more of these creatures." We can build some narrative around that."

He then added, "That's on the fine-tuned end. Then we come up from that to get into longer world and character arcs, bigger pieces of rich content, or new feature-oriented things like a season approach. "Here's what's happening in the world. Here's why the world is changing in a way that you want to come back and see all these changes to the world itself." That's built into the premise of the game, this idea of a world left unfinished by the gods. It can really shift and change."

From what we've gotten to play of the game this past week when ComicBook covered E3 and EA Play, it was incredibly enjoyable and very smoothly ran. Anthem exceeded my expectations in multiple ways and I would be interested to see how they plan to address post-content updates.

What are your thoughts on Anthem so far? Are we feeling it, or nah? Sound off with what you think in the comment section below! You can also follow the author of this piece over on Twitter @DirtyEffinHippy - you won't find a bigger BioWare fangirl.