Anthem Took Less Than a Year and a Half to Make, Says Developer

Anthem, one of BioWare’s most recent games, was made in less than a year and a half. BioWare is one of the best developers in the business as it’s responsible for some of the greatest RPGs of all-time. Mass Effect, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and Dragon Age have all been courtesy of this great studio, but the team did have a bit of a fall from grace. After Dragon Age: Inquisition, BioWare moved on to make Mass Effect: Andromeda and an ambitious new IP known as Anthem which was essentially the studio’s answer to something like Destiny. However, it was a pretty big disaster.

The game was filled with issues at launch, lacked any kind of meaningful content, and was generally quite boring. Support for the game was dropped fairly quickly and player counts plummeted. Many praised the core gameplay mechanics such as the Iron Man-esque flying, but it was clear this game was not the franchise starter EA had likely hoped for. It turns out that part of this is because the game was made very, very quickly. A lot of AAA games nowadays take anywhere from 3 – 5 years to make, if not longer, but Anthem was made in less than a year and a half according to a developer. On Twitter, ex-BioWare employee Ian Saterdalen revealed that Anthem was made in about 15 months, which is a really short amount of time for any AAA game, let alone one from such a massive studio for a new IP that was meant to be a live service game. 

It’s unclear what led to such a rushed timeline, but it is clear that this is a game that could’ve been dramatically better with more time. It’s likely Anthem is dead and gone, especially since BioWare is now doing more Mass Effect and Dragon Age. The latter is expected to be releasing at least somewhat soon, but who knows when it will see the light of day.

What did you think of Anthem? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @Cade_Onder.