Anthem (Bioware's new property)

I’m pretty sure Anthem won’t ever go that route because it won’t ever get the opportunity.

This game’s development cycle is a gargantuan mess & I won’t be surprised if EA pulls the plug sooner rather than later.

I was talking about Destiny as a whole. Both games followed the same basic pattern of okay to decent base game, two very weak DLC modules, and one strong DLC that fixes everything. Or least, I heard Forsaken was good, by that point I had no goodwill for the franchise and I haven't bothered to get it.

And sorry I derailed the thread into Destiny talk :P

I greatly preferred Destiny 2's main campaign. It had far more polish, could be beaten from beginning to end with virtually no points that required you to suddenly grind levels, and the story was not only tons more coherent, but interesting, with a few stand-out levels (namely, that one mission where you're raiding the Cabal spaceport with a tank). Lots of fun stuff to do and explore on the side in the form of the hidden sectors, something Destiny 1 again sorely lacked.

If anything, Destiny 2 was ironically guilty of being TOO newbie-friendly; it didn't take long to reach lvl 20+, and getting your hands on the rarest gear and the more obscure missions were more matters of grinding and time instead of challenge. Probably why the game initially received so much critical praise, but suddenly sloped downwards in opinion due to the Destiny hardcore base quickly running out of stuff to do.

Yeah, that was another criticism of it, but it's also fixed now; Bungie is putting out things for you to do with every season and it's constantly evolving.

Also, I bit the bullet today. Soon as I set up my PS 4 I ejected Anthem and took it back to Game Stop. Even told the clerk "I liked the setting and stuff, but it was just...not good."

Edited by theLibrarian on May 18th 2019 at 5:06:11 AM

You wanted to say "Bungie is pulling money out of your pocket every season and most of what they introduce is half-assed". I mean, everyone and their dog is whining about how every cool gun from before the Black Armory thingo got nerfed into oblivion, yes, including Whisper of the Worm.

Compare this debacle to Anthem. Sometimes, dead is better.

No, because I don't subscribe to the Destiny microtransactions and genuinely enjoy the game. Plus I would rather have three minor DL Cs bundled in one package than have to pay three times for a thing every two months.

Edited by theLibrarian on May 19th 2019 at 9:16:46 AM

The outrage about the nerfs at its peak was nowhere near as bad as the Anthem community's been doing for the past several months, and it's already been dying down to a simmer. And only four guns got nerfed, two of which were from Forsaken- everything else was super-regen exotics that people had been complaining about for months (and Ursas, but that's another story). You're being disingenuous.

So we're supposed to see all the new content they were recording performance capture soonish. Of course, in case you forgot, the performance capture sessions involved all the primary NPCs along with Vule and the mouse, I mean the Dominion scientist involved with the fall of Freemark and the Sunken Cell (played by James Kyson Lee).

Which would explain what they want to bring to E3.

In other news, patch 1.2.0 is out, including such obvious fixes as fast travel on the Freeplay map, highlighting nearby collectibles on the radar and increasing the damage of non-combo skills.

For Bioware's sake, I'm hoping this is some sort of huge addition of content, and not just some event. Anthem desperately needs a beefy injection of new content ASAP to survive at this point.

The problem is that Bioware is splitting its time and energy between Anthem life support and Dragon Age 4 development.

TBH, they should be presenting DA 4 stuff at E3 and not Anthem stuff. It doesn't bode well that they aren't doing that.

Edited by M84 on May 31st 2019 at 12:51:55 AM

1.2 patch notes, Cataclsym to be shown next Thursday, not being "rushed out the door."

I thought Bioware Edmonton was concentrating on Dragon Age while Bioare Austin were given Anthem to deal with.

Anthem's project leads moved to Dragon Age 4. The problem with that is that salvaging Anthem really does seem like an undertaking that would take all hands on deck to work.

And it still doesn't change the fact that Bioware's E3 showing really ought to be "check out our cool upcoming new game!" and not "see, our game is not a piece of shit anymore!"

Edited by M84 on May 31st 2019 at 6:05:34 PM

Considering the apparent lack of any form of project management or leadership, i'm worried we'll ever see any DA stuff. Or if we do, given Anthem and Andromeda being rather lacklustre, that it'll just be rushed mechanics with nothing to really recommend them.

I'm sad we won't get that political espionage DA... I bet instead they'll have a "Make something cool happen" button.

The way they called it "Anthem with dragons" didn't exactly fill me with confidence either.

I know I'd feel better about it if they showed us some progress or even a trailer. Like at E3.

Edited by M84 on May 31st 2019 at 6:12:23 PM

Cataclysm is not looking great, you guys...

Its not a great look, no.

What Bioware and EA ought to do is pull the plug on Anthem entirely and re-release it ala Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn style. Most of the initial playerbase for Anthem has left the game anyway.

But then again, Squeenix only did that because the FF brand is too important to them to fuck up.

Edited by M84 on Jun 1st 2019 at 7:58:43 PM

EA already gave the middle finger to their hugely successful Mass Effect brand. Andromeda was profitable, but a memetic joke, so they canceled all DLC and put the whole series on indefinite hold. EA does not care about brands.

Especially not Anthem, which wouldn't be a particularly important brand even if it was profitable. Certainly not enough to basically rewrite the entire game from the ground up like with Realm Reborn. At this point, their best bet would be to admit defeat on Anthem, apologize to their consumers, and move on. Throw everything behind Dragon Age, hopefully revive Mass Effect.

Yeah, EA definitely doesn't care about brands. Who cares if Dead Space was popular even for a niche game, it didn't sell a stupidly high amount of copies after being deliberately sabotaged so they killed the series on a cliffhanger and then killed Visceral years later.

Come on, guys, EA is great to their brands, as long as those brands happen to be FIFA. If a brand isn't on the level of the most popular, mainstream sports organization in human history, that's definitely a fair reason to kill it, right?

Edited by IniuriaTalis on Jun 1st 2019 at 11:01:20 AM

The issue is that those brands aren't EA's brands. At least not in the way the EA sports games are. EA Sports games have been a part of EA for decades.

Edited by M84 on Jun 2nd 2019 at 1:04:45 AM

I know there's a remaster of the first C&C game coming next year but it's EA.

I just, regardless what they said there wouldn't be mtx or lootboxes, they're gonna do something.

Instead being excited for remaster, I'm just cautious and waiting for their bullshit.

Petroglyph is the studio handling the C&C remaster. That being said... Petro isn't that great of a studio these days either: they've released several RTS titles over the years, but every title after Grey Goo has been purely mediocre or barebones.

So, Bioware has finally made a raid. And, just not to make anyone too happy, they made it a time-limited event, the dumb motherfuckers.

The Cataclysm mechanics aren't bad. Vara is still a dumb Damage-Sponge Boss (and one of her attacks is cheap bullshit I would expect from a PVP griefer), but the Forge and Britteheim puzzles are a little more ambitious than the stuff we saw before, plus there are loads of minor riddles scattered all over the map.

They got rid of that dumbass Luck perk on gear and replaced it with an Armor (this means health) bonus. Which is good for survivability. And they added a new Melee Weapon slot, with each javelin getting a trigger and detonator melee weapons in all tiers (I have a Legendary Interceptor detonator which is an absolute motherfucker due to a) absurd damage, b) masterwork passive that heals me for 40% of my health on each kill, and a Masterwork Storm detonator that chucks a guided fireball akin to a smaller, non-triggering Living Flame as its passive). If you want guaranteed masterwork melee weapons, they drop from this week's War Chests, that can be bought for the event currency. We did the Cataclysm at GM1 level about three or four times today and farmed enough for three or four War Chests each. Plus, there are Challenges that get you a Javelin-specific Melee War Chest if you complete the Cataclysm three times with a given Javelin.

There are Shaper Storms in free play, but they're nowhere as flashy as in the trailer. Those play out similarly to the melding storm events in Firefall: a portal opens up, you're punted into a separate instance with no respawns, and you're supposed to survive against three increasingly hard waves of enemies. Each wave gives a reward chest.

And we get some more dialogues and cutscenes, including the new character, Doctor Harken.

Edited by NotSoBadassLongcoat on Aug 11th 2019 at 2:29:09 PM