'Star Citizen' Director Offers Advice for Improving 'Anthem'

It's no secret at this point that BioWare's Anthem had a seriously rough start, with bugs and [...]

It's no secret at this point that BioWare's Anthem had a seriously rough start, with bugs and issues affecting the experience that the devs tried to deliver. Since the game was released back in February, the team at BioWare has been doing their best to implement fixes to improve the journey, but not much has changed the minds of players. That said, Star Citizen director Chris Roberts recently spoke with Newsweek to touch on how BioWare might be able to improve Anthem as well as his thoughts on the massive Kotaku report that was released.

Right out of the gate, Roberts likened Anthem to Hello Games' No Man's Sky, which also received a considerable amount of backlash after it was released. "There was 13 of them and they built something amazing," he said. "They should not have taken the amount of abuse and flack they had when it came out. As a technical challenge, to build something that big with that much stuff and such a small team, I am hats off very impressed by their talent."

According to the Star Citizendirector, a big problem for No Man's Sky was players' expectations, with many people expecting something that simply wasn't there. The same could be said for Anthem, according to Roberts. "I've played it, so I know there's plenty of nice stuff in there, stuff that works, and then there's some stuff that doesn't work," he said.

As for how the developers can make Anthem better, Roberts' advice is that BioWare just needs to accept what has happened so far and continue to improve the game moving forward. "It's like what we're doing on Star Citizen," he said. "It's just iteration. I hope EA and BioWare don't give up on it, that they get their heads down, roll out and improve things to make it work."

Regarding the Kotaku report, Roberts conveyed that "game development is messy" and how "people don't really get to see how games are made." When it comes to Anthem, however, "it's the result of friction between the needs of a public company and development." If it didn't come down to a company holding a deadline over the developers, they would take their time to polish and "release it when it's ready," said Roberts.

Anthem is currently available on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. For more on the controversial game, here is a snippet from our official review:

"Anthem really seems to honor its promise of feeling entirely new, but with BioWare fans in mind. At first, my impression was that it didn't particularly feel like a BioWare game, but as time went on, I realized that wasn't quite true. It both feels similar to a BioWare game in terms of interaction, but mechanically, it feels very new. As a hardcore BioWare franchise fan myself, that isn't a bad thing. It's new, and a little buggy, but it works."

What do you think about all of this? Will BioWare be able to turn Anthem around if they just keep their heads down and grind away at improvements? Sound off in the comment section below, or feel free to hit me up over on Twitter @anarkE7!

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