Skip to main content

Anthem to receive a complete, long-term overhaul, BioWare says

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.

Related Videos

“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.

Editors' Recommendations

The best Bioware games of all time
Male and female Shepard fist bumping.

BioWare has been one of the most prominent Western developers of RPGs for decades now. They made their mark on the industry early on by crafting deep stories told with a level of writing that was otherwise absent from video games as a whole. Not only were they masters of crafting original stories, but they even managed to inject new ideas and twists on existing franchises. In those early days, BioWare was strictly a PC developer, but have slowly transitioned into developing more console-focused experiences and are arguably more known now for these games than their earlier works.

After so many years releasing dozens of games, BioWare has given us some absolute classics -- as well as some major disappointments. No developer is perfect, and BioWare is proof that even sequels to critically acclaimed games can fall short of their predecessor for one reason or another. We felt it was time to look over the entire BioWare catalogue and list their best games of all-time. The top spots in this list in particular were hard to put in order, and depending on the franchise, setting, or gameplay style, you will probably order them slightly differently, but for the most part the games at the top of this list are agreed to be among the best this developer has ever made.

Read more
WarioWare: Get It Together! coming this year with two-player co-op
A boy licks an ice cream cone in WarioWare: Get It Together!

Nintendo has announced WarioWare: Get It Together!, a new entry in the WarioWare series. The game will feature more of the microgames that the series is known for, as well as the ability to tackle some microgames with character-specific abilities.

The game will feature a two-player mode, though it's unknown whether players can party up online or whether the feature is couch co-op only. WarioWare: Get It Together! releases on September 10, and pre-orders open today.

Read more
Where to find Titans in Anthem
anthem where to find titans locations and missions anthemtitan

Finding Titans in Anthem can be a game of chance, but it doesn't have to be. Luckily, there are certain missions where you fight one (sometimes even three!) and locations that you can visit in Freeplay where your chance of spotting a Titan is far greater.

Further Reading

Read more