After years of teasing it, BioWare’s next big game, Anthem, was shown off during Microsoft’s E3 press conference in LA today. In the world of Anthem, you are a freelancer who lives within the walls of a city that is protecting humanity. It looks awesome.
Players will don suits called Javelins, which are customisable to look and play however you want. There are different types of exosuits: for example, the Ranger is balanced and all purpose, while the Colossus is a tanking powerhouse.
During the footage, we saw the main character jet around on his suit, and then use it to swin underwater. Enemies look robotic, and the landscape almost looks like a post-apocalypse. BioWare is calling this a “shared-world action-RPG,”
Last month, we reported that the project had a code-name of “Dylan,” as in Bob Dylan. The aim was to make a game that would “would be referenced for years to come,” as our news editor, Jason Schreier, put it. Yesterday’s brief glimpse stated that Anthem players would be able to “explore a landscape of primeval beauty.”
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60 responses to “BioWare Shows Off Six Minutes Of Stunning New Shooter, Anthem”
I’d be kind of excited for this if it wasn’t Bioware. They’re coming off two utterly mediocre games, and also the last thing I want is a multiplayer-only action game from them. It looks stunning, but I don’t have any friends.
http://i.imgur.com/vUDAvtu.png may be of interest? Depends how much you’re willing to trust an individual dev.
Apparently they’re going for drop-in coop optional, but with a ‘Bioware RPG story’. Given that they’ve compiled the A-team for this (robbing every other team), I’m cautiously optimistic.
Besides, it looks like it plays a lot like Firefall. The colossus guy had a gatling gun. And jetpacks. And Force Smash.
Bungie said the same thing about Destiny and technically you can play that single player. I won’t believe it until they actually show it.
I’m half expecting to get a Destiny or Division style ‘story’, too.
You know the type… Blank slate characters that will have story happen around or to them with minimal to no actual dialogue choices or branching plot input, with no reaction from NPCs as to the different types of personality your character might display.
“These brave Freelancers,” will be the replacement for Destiny pinning all your efforts on, “brave Guardians.” Because OBVIOUSLY you played this with a team, right? RIGHT? Why else would you be playing this very clearly multiplayer experience?!
Destiny and Division both had god-awful stories that were hamstrung by the fact that they didn’t have the BALLS to make your character an actual character, but had to leave the player character completely open-ended, projecting nothing that might even hint at shattering the players’ self-insertion fantasy. You could have been running around with pants on your head and screaming obscenities or making terribly unfunny pot-smoking references every other word and it wouldn’t make one fucking lick of difference so long as you killed the baddies that let the REAL characters get on with emoting at the mute-ass expressionless fucking wall that you play.
If Bioware follows their lead, I’ll be utterly disgusted.
…And then I’ll totally still buy and play ‘Bioware’s-high-rez-Firefall’ with my GF. But I’ll be groaning the entire way and only be playing it for the skinner box effects of your average co-op loot-shooter. And the pretty.
Yeah I don’t want to give into the hype either but I’ll still be getting it too. 🙁
Transientmind; Fucking nailed it. Comment more interesting, incisive and entertaining then many articles. Thought about writing for a living?
do you even Bioware?
i honestly dont know, of course its all hope, but Bioware are THE guys in my opinion especially if its true that they pulled all their big guns in for this one.
it could be absolutely amazing, but yes, it could also stink and flop.
You can very happily play destiny by yourself (doing so right now as i bought ‘the collection’ a couple weeks ago), everything except the raids are very solo-able and still great fun by yourself
I played a lot of Destiny solo and I don’t disagree that it’s possible. It’s just not much fun IMO.
Im having lots of fun playing it, decent story (with all DLC at least) and good gameplay so im liking it. Would i like it more if it were designed as a singleplayer game, yes. But is it still good fun how it is, also yes. I figure thats what anthem will be like or with luck even more towards single player design.
Andromeda was made by their C-Team though, aren’t the ones making this the A-Team? hopefully it will be good.
A-Team also made Inquisition so… yeah. Most the folks who made original ME trilogy are like, long gone. Legitimate concerns with anything Bioware puts out from now on and we should all be cautious.
Yeah fair enough, i haven’t actually played any dragon age yet but i have heard it was meh. Yeah i agree with you on being cautious with bioware. I sure as hell wont preorder, i will wait for reviews and gameplay vids on youtube to see what its like.
Same people as Inquisition and that was incredibly mediocre.
Yeah, im definitely going to wait and see reactions to it before considering buying it, but it does seem like they tried to get all their good people working on it so im hopeful.
Same people as Inquisition!
I liked it 🙁
TBH Bioware have been off the boil for years now. Mass Effect 2 was the last game by them that I loved, and before that, whilst their games were good… they weren’t great. Jade Empire was okay but a timewaster in retrospect. Dragonage was okay but I never had the energy for the sequels. KOTOR was amazing but how long ago was that now?
Destiny meets the Division? Mate, this is straight up high-rez Firefall.
So… I’m sold.
I was about to say Destiny meets Horizon: Zero Dawn.
so can we expect some sexy javelin on javelin romance?
Looks amazing, I just wish they didn’t make it multiplayer-only :(.
It’s not multiplayer only, you can probably still solo it, it is just that there will be a bunch of other ppl running around in your world…
Apparently you can solo the entire story of The Old Republic too, which is an actual Bioware MMO, whereas this is a “shared-world” game, not an “MMO” supposedly. SO it should be even lighter on the need for multi?
See this? This is what an A team can do, not the bloody dlc team.
You mean, ‘this is what you get when you plunder team members from every studio you have, no matter what they’re working on’?
This looks way more interesting than Andromeda ever could have been.
Boo! Hiss! Tell’im ‘e’s dreamin’!
Haha I am more just a sucker for coop these days, I get to bored with single player (no matter how much I enjoy the gameplay).
As I got older I played less pvp games and more co-op games.
So this is the reason ea and bioware decided to screw over it’s mass effect fan base and leave andromeda to rot…
ea and bioware can go fuck themselves i ain’t touching this shit
standout game from e3 so far, love shared world looter shooters
Which Bioware Studio is the lead?
Looks absolutely gorgeous. Hope this IP does well.
Edmonton
Edmonton, I believe. The original studio which made all the previous ME games (and KOTOR, etc.)
Getting some strong watch_dogs bullshot trailer vibes off this one.
Looks gorgeous but I really hate scripted conversation between “players”. It’s like whoever has written it has never actually been online and played with other people before.
This was the highlight of the show for me. Looks amazing. Just hope the game actually looks like this and its not just a heavily processed fake demo like The Division had.
The scripted conversation makes me cautious.
The post-mortar-fire “Heheheheh,” was the only genuine line in the whole godawful script.
Reminds me of The Division reveal, real goofy player chat trying to sound tac-team.
Was thinking the same thing. As good as it looks I have become increasingly sceptical over the many years of “in-game” showings that actually look better that what we get. Pretty sure I’d trust the main Bioware studio to not do this, but still I’ll remain hesitant.
Well it might look like this if you have quad Titan XP SLI and a 5ghz overclocked intel core i9. otherwise no it will not look anything like this.
Not trying to be mean and I normally find these types of comments pointless.
But if this was first person, it’s exactly what I wanted from the Destiny 2 reveal. Even if it turns out Destiny 2 has bigger, better open-world places to explore (than Destiny 1) they chose to not show them at the reveal and instead showed (from what I know) a couple of cutscenes and a scripted linear story mission.
Even if the rest of Destiny 2 is a bit more like what they showed of Anthem, the fact Bungie/Activision chose to reveal what they did really makes me concerned that my interests and Bungie/Activision’s intent don’t line up any more. Which I thought they did based on Destiny 1.
I’m also trying to avoid “We all want X” and “Everyone knows Y” style comments and just try and speak for myself.
Destiny has made me very wary of these mmo-lite games but I have to say the gameplay looked stunning. Definitely got my interest.
I just hope they put some content in there and dont make it a horrible grindy mess like Destiny was.
Looked pretty and scripted. Tell me when its been out for a week, and ill have a look then.
Hmmmm… Not a big fan of the bit at Scar’s Ambush “Oh, c’mon! Be something good! Yes! JARRA’S WRATH!”
That exchange sort of pulled me out of the game by being all LOOTY LOOT LOOT LOOT!!
I mean, YOU know it’s a game. But the people in the game shouldn’t treat like it’s a game…
I think they were supposed to be player voices, not game character voices. It was confusing considering the filter they put over the voices (and that the lead character was “talking” direct to an NPC at the beginning, but that was how I read it. Especially when you consider she’s like “hold on a sec, I’ll call some mates” and “we should explore that area with Kim later”.
Doh! Sorry…
I dont think all that was the game characters talking, it was a simulated version of what you’ll be talking like with your friends when you play
With my what? You mean with your momma hur hur hur. People ruin multiplayer games.
Yeah i don’t disagree. But this looked like an opt in multiplayer. Only team up with people you want to or play alone if you have no one to play with just like borderlands, the division and destiny, where its “better” (subjectively) with friends but still fine without.
I was about to walk away from bEAware after the me3 bs and what was messy andromeda .. BUT I think I’ve just preordered xbox one x and this game is at the top of my list so far!
Damn you bEAware 🙁
This looks like Warframe, dressed up, “story”, and not in space. Melancholic now, thinking of the BG2 Bioware days…
I’ll wait until I see real people playing it. This was so scripted; in real gameplay the underwater reveal would have killed most players with diving into shallow water.
the only negative from this is that BW just showed what they can do with proper project management a decent manpower. maybe if they didn’t skimp on ME:A it could have been even better.
oh well I guess time will tell if Anthem turns out to be more like Destiny or more like Wildlands
Now we know what Andromeda should have been. Apparently, Bioware in their wisdom thought Andromeda wasn’t worth throwing decent resources into. Watching the Anthem preview just pissed me off even more as a long time ME fan.
I’m sorry but, this isn’t real. No game can look that good and run smoothly. Especially when it’s supposed to be an ‘open-world’ with jetpacks.
and if it can look that good then expect crashing every 5 minutes.
Notice how they never strayed off the obvious paths, and fights were in clearings surrounded by tall barriers? Its possible to look like that if the transitions between areas are on rails.
Sure it can, on a high-end modern PC.
Pretty sure we had the same opinion when The Division’s first gameplay trailer was released.
i did laugh when one of the people started aiming at a location and then the bad guys appeared.. done this a few times before have we haha