EA will decide Anthem's fate this week

[XsjadoBlayde]

It was nice knowing ya, Anthy Banthums. A good laugh, maybe not a guffaw, but a mild chuckle every now and then between the death and despair. Alas, from whence you came, you are where you're destined to be. *Pours drink on...* no wait, drink's too good to waste on this.

 

[Xprimentyl]

I bring news

Anthem Update

Friends, In the spirit of transparency and closure we wanted to share that we’ve made the difficult decision to stop our new development work on Anthem (aka Anthem NEXT). We will, however, continue…

blog.bioware.com

It's over.

Edit: Beaten to it ol

Yet we're to believe perpetual "live services" are the inevitable future of gaming. They should leave it to the pros who specialize in perpetually supported games like WoW and such and quit trying to shoehorn their "services" into every fucking game on offer. Christ, Anthem would likely have been just fine with a self-contained, single-player story with multiplayer components had they not spent 90% of their time trying to engineer ways to wallet-fuck the players.

I'm seriously about done with [new] gaming. I've got plenty of pre-wallet-fucking-era games I can enjoy without worrying about the brand new wallet-fucks they'll shitcan when they deem it's not worth it to try and wallet-fuck us with it anymore.

 

[CriticalGaming]

BioWare Says It’s Giving Up On Anthem

Further development on Anthem has been canceled, BioWare Austin studio director Christian Dailey announced today.

kotaku.com

Yep, kind of expected the hammer to fall on this thing. Hopefully EA doesnt shut Bioware down.

 

[laggyteabag]

Hopefully EA doesnt shut Bioware down.

Doubtful.

At least not yet.

If EA was going to shut down BioWare because of Anthem, they would have done it about a year ago.

BioWare has got a few more eggs left in it yet - or at least 2 more failures.

Im very interested to see how the new ME and Dragon Age games turn out.

 

[Gyrobot]

If Dragon Age 4 fails it may be shut down, but they haven't acquired another rpg producer to replace it and not everyone is gonna risk greed consuming their company in hope of replacing Bioware

 

[CriticalGaming]

Doubtful.

At least not yet.

If EA was going to shut down BioWare because of Anthem, they would have done it about a year ago.

BioWare has got a few more eggs left in it yet - or at least 2 more failures.

Im very interested to see how the new ME and Dragon Age games turn out.

Yeah here is hoping. But we have no idea what the next games will even look like in a post-Biowaresucks world.

 

[Chimpzy]

 

[FakeSympathy]

Not that surprised, but still disappointed with the news.

I mean the game had really solid concept. It could've been so much more. But no, they just HAD to follow the live service gaming trends.

 

[laggyteabag]

Yeah here is hoping. But we have no idea what the next games will even look like in a post-Biowaresucks world.

A lot of people would argue that we have been living in a post-Biowaresucks world for since... what? 2011?

I mean, the last BioWare game to release with widespread acclaim was Mass Effect 2, and that came out over 10 years ago.

I've certainly enjoyed my fair share of BioWare games since, but every single game after ME2 has contained at least 1 critical flaw which has soured more than a few opinions.

So probably something something big open world. Something something boring story. Something something technical issues. Something something missed opportunities and potential.

Any combination of/all of the above

 

[CriticalGaming]

A lot of people would argue that we have been living in a post-Biowaresucks world for since... what? 2011?

I mean, the last BioWare game to release with widespread acclaim was Mass Effect 2, and that came out over 10 years ago.

I've certainly enjoyed my fair share of BioWare games since, but every single game after ME2 has contained at least 1 critical flaw which has soured more than a few opinions.

So probably something something big open world. Something something boring story. Something something technical issues. Something something missed opportunities and potential.

Any combination of/all of the above

I mean, I dunno about that. ME3 got people upset because of the ending but I don't recall really hearing much about it being a bad game as a whole. And People also liked DragonAge Inquistion IIRC. It's only fairly recently that they've been really under floppy water with ME:A and Anthem.

The shitty part is that we can't even blame EA for this, because we know that Bioware fucked up Anthem all by itself without any influence from their Evil overlords.

 

[laggyteabag]

I mean, I dunno about that. ME3 got people upset because of the ending but I don't recall really hearing much about it being a bad game as a whole. And People also liked DragonAge Inquistion IIRC. It's only fairly recently that they've been really under floppy water with ME:A and Anthem.

The shitty part is that we can't even blame EA for this, because we know that Bioware fucked up Anthem all by itself without any influence from their Evil overlords.

I didn't say all of BioWare's recent games were bad, only that they each had at least one massive issue - one critical flaw - that really put a lot of people off.

Dragon Age II was criticised for... well, just about everything
ME3 had the ending catastrophe
Inquisition was largely criticised for its bland MMO-like sidequests
Andromeda was was criticised for its story and technical issues
Anthem was live-service bullshit, with bad loot, and poor quest design - among a whole host of other issues

I've personally enjoyed all of the BioWare games that I have played, even the "bad" ones - with DA2 and ME3 being my favourite games of their respective franchises, for example - but I know a fairly large chunk of people have sworn off BioWare because of each of the above games. I can't ignore the issues, either.

The BioWare car may have finally crashed with Andromeda, but they have been swerving for years.

 

[Xprimentyl]

The shitty part is that we can't even blame EA for this, because we know that Bioware fucked up Anthem all by itself without any influence from their Evil overlords.

How do we know this? Not challenging you; actually asking.

As a publisher, EA has been no stranger behind some fairly notably fucked games and also that they're fans of quantity over quality. I mean, Mass Effect to Anthem shows a massive decline in quality that feels at first blush to be evidence of a higher priority placed on the immediate satisfaction of stakeholders over creation of memorable, generation-defining experiences. As I understand it, Anthem went through a massive overhaul mid-development that contributed to the clearly rushed final product; sounds like someone upstairs handed out ultimatums that might otherwise have been mitigated had artistic vision and integrity been considerations.

 

[CriticalGaming]

I didn't say all of BioWare's recent games were bad, only that they each had at least one massive issue - one critical flaw - that really put a lot of people off.

Dragon Age II was criticised for... well, just about everything
ME3 had the ending catastrophe
Inquisition was largely criticised for its bland MMO-like sidequests
Andromeda was was criticised for its story and technical issues
Anthem was live-service bullshit, with bad loot, and poor quest design - among a whole host of other issues

I've personally enjoyed all of the BioWare games that I have played, even the "bad" ones - with DA2 and ME3 being my favourite games of their respective franchises, for example - but I know a fairly large chunk of people have sworn off BioWare because of each of the above games. I can't ignore the issues, either.

The BioWare car may have finally crashed with Andromeda, but they have been swerving for years.

That's the thing when you look back on it though. You see that each game seems to have more and more problems and if you go way back and look, maybe Bioware was never good, or at least never as good as we pictured in our heads because we were all young and dumb when those "classics" like KOTOR came out.

I mean everyone says KOTOR was awesome. But when was the last time someone played it? Was it still awesome as you remember back in the day, or do you notice a bunch of problem you missed as a youngster because you weren't aware? Look back on ME1 and 2, Mass Effect 1 was janky as fuck. Poor combat, poor driving, with only a decent story and a very cool world to hold it together. ME2 is basically the same game but the combat is a little better and now you can spend hours scanning planets without having to drive on them.

Don't get me wrong, Mass Effect is a fine enough series, but I wouldn't put any game in the series on a Top-RPG of all time list. Maybe that's me, but I was always kind of under the impression of Bioware being over-rated.

 

[CriticalGaming]

How do we know this? Not challenging you; actually asking.

As a publisher, EA has been no stranger behind some fairly notably fucked games and also that they're fans of quantity over quality. I mean, Mass Effect to Anthem shows a massive decline in quality that feels at first blush to be evidence of a higher priority placed on the immediate satisfaction of stakeholders over creation of memorable, generation-defining experiences. As I understand it, Anthem went through a massive overhaul mid-development that contributed to the clearly rushed final product; sounds like someone upstairs handed out ultimatums that might otherwise have been mitigated had artistic vision and integrity been considerations.

That big Jason Schierer article spelled the entire development of Anthem out. In that article he sites from multiple sources that the disaster of Anthem was entirely caused by Bioware and it's complete lack of direction.

How BioWare's Anthem Went Wrong

It wasn’t even supposed to be called Anthem. Just days before the annual E3 convention in June of 2017, when the storied studio BioWare would reveal its newest game, the plan had been to go with a different title: Beyond. They’d even printed out Beyond T-shirts for the staff.

kotaku.com

 

[laggyteabag]

That's the thing when you look back on it though. You see that each game seems to have more and more problems and if you go way back and look, maybe Bioware was never good, or at least never as good as we pictured in our heads because we were all young and dumb when those "classics" like KOTOR came out.

I mean everyone says KOTOR was awesome. But when was the last time someone played it? Was it still awesome as you remember back in the day, or do you notice a bunch of problem you missed as a youngster because you weren't aware? Look back on ME1 and 2, Mass Effect 1 was janky as fuck. Poor combat, poor driving, with only a decent story and a very cool world to hold it together. ME2 is basically the same game but the combat is a little better and now you can spend hours scanning planets without having to drive on them.

Don't get me wrong, Mass Effect is a fine enough series, but I wouldn't put any game in the series on a Top-RPG of all time list. Maybe that's me, but I was always kind of under the impression of Bioware being over-rated.

I actually played KOTOR for the first time in 2013, and KOTOR II for the first time in 2018! I thoroughly enjoyed them both.

Sure, they were both fairly clunky compared to today's standards, but at least I actually finished the games, whereas I got bored of Mass Effect Andromeda half-way through, and moved on. I also struggle to get past the Hinterlands in Dragon Age: Inquisition, each time I have tried to replay it, and the Jaws of Hakkon DLC bored me out of my skull, even the first time through.

What im saying is that, yes, we have the benefit of hindsight, but even when these games were coming out, people weren't happy.

When Mass Effect 2 came out, there was nothing but positive praise, and excitement for 3.
In comparison, when Dragon Age 2 came out, I heard nothing but complaints about how inferior it was to DA:O
When Mass Effect 3 came out, I heard nothing but complaints about the ending
When Mass Effect Andromeda came out, I heard nothing but complaints over its technical issues
When Anthem came out, I heard nothing but complaints about the loot, and the live service bullshit

I would go back earlier, but I was too young to be aware of the discussion surrounding ME1 and DA:O, let alone anything before.

The only game that really had people change their minds out in hindsight, was Inquisition. It was fairly celebrated when it came out, and it won its fair share of awards, but then as time went on, I heard more and more people criticising the game for its quest design - particularly after The Witcher 3 completely showed the game up, about 6 months later.

I suppose the common theme here is storytelling.

Its easy to excuse poor or aged combat, when you are at least enjoying the story that the game is telling. If the story has problems, a lot of people just aren't as happy.

KOTOR 1 and 2 had good stories, and are remembered well
ME 1 and 2 have good stories, and are remembered well
DA:O has a good story, and is remembered well

Dragon Age 2 had a much smaller scale
ME3 had the ending
Inquisition had the side-quests
Andromeda had the whole main quest
Anthem had basically nothing

Maybe that is just it?

 

[CriticalGaming]

KOTOR 1 and 2 had good stories, and are remembered well
ME 1 and 2 have good stories, and are remembered well
DA:O has a good story, and is remembered well

Dragon Age 2 had a much smaller scale
ME3 had the ending
Inquisition had the side-quests
Andromeda had the whole main quest
Anthem had basically nothing

Maybe that is just it?

So basically a 50/50 track record. 5 good, 5 bad with all 5 bad coming back to back.

Maybe it is it?

Or maybe Bioware's storytelling hasn't evolved with the tides of the games industry. There seems to be a fairly clear dividing line in which games on one side were great, and games on the other side weren't.

Either something in Bioward changed, or something didn't.

I suppose we'll never know what really went wrong with the studio on the whole. Perhaps it's all just a result of a creative team being bought by a big bad publisher and basically being squished until they lose all sense of what they once were.


Kinda like Blizzard.

 

[laggyteabag]

So basically a 50/50 track record. 5 good, 5 bad with all 5 bad coming back to back.

Maybe it is it?

Or maybe Bioware's storytelling hasn't evolved with the tides of the games industry. There seems to be a fairly clear dividing line in which games on one side were great, and games on the other side weren't.

Either something in Bioward changed, or something didn't.

*Googles "What year did BioWare get bought out by EA?" *

Okay, maybe that is unfair.

Under EA, we got DA:O, and Mass Effect 2, as well as Mass Effect 3, which is a "bad" game, that I thoroughly enjoy.

That said, EA instructed BioWare to develop Dragon Age 2 (again, another "bad" game that I enjoy) in 14-16 months, and the problems that BioWare has had with EA's Frostbite Engine - which I understand was forced upon them - are also well documented.

Maybe it is unfair to say that all EA/BioWare games have had problems, but I certainly wouldn't rule out publisher meddling, to explain why they have had a massive amount of issues over the past few years.

Hopefully EA will have learned their lesson, after 2 proper BioWare failures... or they will just beat the last eggs out of the Golden Goose that is BioWare, before shutting them down.

 

[CriticalGaming]

*Googles "What year did BioWare get bought out by EA?" *

Okay, maybe that is unfair.

Under EA, we got DA:O, and Mass Effect 2, as well as Mass Effect 3, which is a "bad" game, that I thoroughly enjoy.

That said, EA instructed BioWare to develop Dragon Age 2 (again, another "bad" game that I enjoy) in 14-16 months, and the problems that BioWare has had with EA's Frostbite Engine - which I understand was forced upon them - are also well documented.

Maybe it is unfair to say that all EA/BioWare games have had problems, but I certainly wouldn't rule out publisher meddling, to explain why they have had a massive amount of issues over the past few years.

Hopefully EA will have learned their lesson, after 2 proper BioWare failures... or they will just beat the last eggs out of the Golden Goose that is BioWare, before shutting them down.

That is all entirely possible.

And after the failure that was Anthem I wouldn't be surprised to see most of the top "talent" from Bioware spread out to other studios. In fact, I think a lot of that has already happened.

This, again, is something we saw with Blizzard. Activision bought up Blizzard, then suddenly game directors, head writers, and even the fucking president of Blizzard all GTFO. The CEO of Blizzard has started his own gaming company, and many of the other top talents from old school Blizz have basically gone off to do their own thing with other companies or form their own.

What actually interests me the most, and this will tie into what i said in the Techland thread about miserable companies to work for, is that it genuinely does seem like the AAA-space always seems to yield a place where the truly talented developers bail on as soon as possible. Then they ultimately move onto smaller studios or start their own. Sometimes, like in Kojima's case, they leave their shitty AAA-job only to establish their own terms with other sorts of AAA funding.

Kojima started his own company and then immediately did some sort of negotiation with Sony to get a deal worked out to fund Death's Stranding. And I find that really heartwarming in a lot of ways because he left this shitty Konami situation and built a studio for himself in which he can create under his own terms.

I wonder if there is any chance the AAA-published space will shit itself and be forced to rebuild itself by reconnecting with the art of game making. WE've seen signs of this happening already right? Ubisoft for example has released basically copy-paste shit for the past few years and it seems like people are getting less and less receptive of it. EA has pulled back so far from the Battlefront and Battlefield V fiasco's that their only handhold of scumfuckery is the sports game world, hell we've not even seen a HINT of Battlefield 6 and for the time being EA does seem to be trying to correct the ship somehow.

Activision is the only 3rd party company that I can think of right now that hasn't put it's foot on the break of being a bunch of shit fucks. Or at least hasn't suffered backlash enough to force them to stop. CoD still comes out every year, Blizzard isn't showing any signs of improvement or course correction, and Activision's other properties are just kind of.....ok? Activision is a strange one because they are the most mixed bag of publishers I think. With the most leeway between great games and WTF-is-this-bullshit-games.

One thing for sure. I think a lot of studio changes are going to come out of the Covid thing, and i think the lockdowns and forced work from home may end up fundamentally changing the way they develop games and it might be for the better. Because you can't have a toxic work environment if you work from home right?

 

[thebobmaster]

I think what made Bioware change more than anything wasn't directly EA related. Basically, all of the people who made KOTOR, Jade Empire, the original Mass Effect trilogy? They're gone now. Who we have now at Bioware is a different staff. That doesn't mean they can't still make good games, mind you. I have hopes for DA 4 and especially the new Mass Effect. I'd be naive, however, to hope that we return to the days of KOTOR and Mass Effect, because the people who made those games are gone.

ETA: As for Anthem, I played it for a bit. You know those games where you feel like you've been playing for an hour, and then you look at a clock and you've been playing for 4 hours? Anthem was about the opposite of that. I hate to be cliche, but it was the first Bioware game I played that didn't feel like Bioware. I'm hoping it was a one-off mistake. As for who to blame for Anthem? Well, from the sound of it, the most involvement EA had was sending in an executive to basically tell Bioware to stop waffling on features and bring the game into focus. Whether Anthem was good or bad is almost irrelevant as far as EA's involvement is concerned, because without EA, we almost certainly would not have any form of Anthem.

As for the design, forcing in Frostbite was a problem that can be tied to EA, but the biggest issue with the game comes from Bioware forbidding the devs from making comparisons to, or taking inspiration from, Destiny...which resulted in a game that made all the same mistakes as Destiny did without the benefit of time to fix them before someone came along to do it better. Because if people didn't like Anthem...Destiny 2 was a thing.

 

[CriticalGaming]

I think what made Bioware change more than anything wasn't directly EA related. Basically, all of the people who made KOTOR, Jade Empire, the original Mass Effect trilogy? They're gone now. Who we have now at Bioware is a different staff. That doesn't mean they can't still make good games, mind you. I have hopes for DA 4 and especially the new Mass Effect. I'd be naive, however, to hope that we return to the days of KOTOR and Mass Effect, because the people who made those games are gone.

Well I think the crux of my point above isn't that any AAA-publisher scooping up any of these beloved developers is directly related to them falling apart. But I do think that we can safely see that the "old guard" of all of these companies quickly end up leaving the moment the developer is bought-out.

While it might not directly be publisher influence. The publish does act like a cloud that these "star" devs simply do not like and end up leaving.

None of us are behind the scenes so it's hard for us to say for sure, but it certainly looks that way based on what i've been seeing over the past decade or so.