'Anthem's' Casey Hudson Discusses the Current State of the Game

BioWare's Casey Hudson recently took to the studio's blog to tease some pretty incredible Dragon Age and Mass Effect news while also delving into what fans have to look forward to with Anthem. Hudson spoke a little bit about what this fresh direction means for the creative team, but he also touched on the current state of the game ahead of its February release.

"First, Anthem," Hudson started. "Now that we're past our Alpha milestone, we're at the part of the project where we're doing final tasks and changes, and doing a ton of testing and bug-fixing. And we're able to do one of my favorite parts of game development: the Play From Home build."

The developers are hard at work to make sure that the new game is ready when its release date rolls around. Hudson added, "It's a tradition at BioWare. Late in a project, when the game is good enough and finished enough to really enjoy it as a complete experience, we enable it to be played at home by our developers. It's an incredibly important step, because it allows us to get out of the mindset of being at the office, and just be at home experiencing the game like a player instead of a developer. Everything that prevents you from loving the game becomes a task or a bug, so we know that when we finish that work, we'll have something really special."

Anthem is new - very different from their Dragon Age franchise and with an entirely different play style to their Mass Effect series. But because it's so new, the team had a chance to be creative and explore other avenues of design that were previously closed off.

Hudson closed out his message about the newest IP by saying, "And, since what you get with Anthem isn't just the launch game but the ongoing story, features and content that will follow in live service, there are teams already working on entire seasons of post-launch content. It's scary and exciting to work on something on this scale and complexity, but we're doing everything we can to make sure it's an amazing experience for you."

Anthem officially makes its debut on February 22, 2019 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC players.

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