It’s been nearly a year since the release of Anthem, BioWare’s looter shooter, which struggled to find an audience at launch. Ahead of the game’s first anniversary, BioWare published a new blog post outlining plans for the game’s future, which will include a full, long-term overhaul.
BioWare general manager Casey Hudson explained that the game won’t only receive standard updates, but also fundamental experience changes.
“We have also heard your feedback that Anthem needs a more satisfying loot experience, better long-term progression and a more fulfilling end game,” Hudson said in the blog post. “So we recognize that there’s still more fundamental work to be done to bring out the full potential of the experience, and it will require a more substantial reinvention than an update or expansion.”
Hudson describes the updates as a “longer-term redesign of the experience,” which will focus on retooling the game’s progression system, adding new challenges, and adjusting the main loops. A focused team will dedicate their time to testing and iterating on the new gameplay changes, which Hudson says was not done enough in the game’s original development cycle.
While the blog post stresses that this is a large project that will take place over the next several months, Hudson also assures players that Anthem will receive regular updates in the meantime. These will move away from the game’s current season structure and will instead focus on adding events, refreshing the store, and revisiting past content.
BioWare has had a hard time retaining players in Anthem’s first year. The game received a disappointing critical reception and failed to meet publisher EA’s commercial expectations. It barely made an appearance at E3 this year, leaving fans to wonder how much effort would go into the game moving forward. That question lingered when Anthem players noticed that BioWare still hadn’t taken down its in-game Christmas decorations as of last week.
Late last year, rumors swirled of a complete Anthem overhaul involving substantial changes to the game’s world and loot. A total reinvention would put the game in line with Fallout 76 and No Man’s Sky, two service-style games that saw major refreshes since their launches.
