Unsurprisingly, Anthem’s Upcoming Demo Will Be Different From the Final Release

This Friday, 25th January, people who have either pre-ordered Anthem or who subscribe to EA/Origin Access, will get a chance to play some of Anthem in the comfort of their own homes before anyone else.

The demo will be available on PC, Xbox One and PS4 and comes a week before a public demo is made available. It’ll feature a section of gameplay from somewhere in the middle of the game’s plot. As such, Anthem executive producer Mark Durrah has put out a couple of Tweets, trying to put players expectations for the demo in check.

Below are some of the differences between this week’s upcoming demo, and the full game which releases later this spring.

Players will be dropped into the middle of the game, with no character creation, pilot selection, or tutorial. There may be additional bugs present, and the game balance and economy have been tweaked considerably to allow players a chance to experience as much as possible during the demo.

Players will also only have access to a single story arc, PC controls will be different from the final build, and some in-game items will be renamed, presumably so that it’s easier to understand them without existing knowledge of the game world.

All of these are unsurprising revelations. To create a demo for a game, you have to stop working on the main game and focus on closing off the demo experience and locking it down to a specific set of content. As such, updates made to the main game cannot always be included in the demo, even if they exist in the final build before the demo releases.

So, if you play Friday’s Anthem demo, expect to be dropped in without a huge amount of training, choice, and with an unbalanced version of the game designed to work better for a shorter experience.


This post originally appeared on Kotaku UK, bringing you original reporting, game culture and humour from the British isles.

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