22nd of Feburary 2019, that date saw the release of Bioware's 'Magum Opus', 'Bob Dylan' of-a-game; (Whatever that means) Anthem. That means that right now we are sitting only a week and some change after the grand anniversary and at the time of writing I can see 7 Twitch steams for anthem with a collective total of 37 viewers, 38 including me. (To be fair, early morning for me is late night for North America, but this still isn't the greatest numbers for a live service that is but a year old) To compare, Destiny 2, a game that is over 2 years old, currently has more Streams than I care to count on it and a combined viewer count of 3,538. (Not including me because I still haven't forgiven Bungie for what they did.) All this paints a dour picture of the Sci-fi 'Epic' that Anthem was sold as, but it is by no means the end of the world, because there is a new hope on the horizon.
I know that I've mentioned it before but that was all the way back when this information was still rumour and speculation, but now we sit in the enlightened state of official confirmation; Anthem will be getting a full re-launch. A full 'hit the breaks and restart' that will scrap the mess that the studio have been trying to make work for the past year and start fresh with something better. (Proof that sometimes the awful cannot get better. Guess there goes any hope for the like of me then, huh?) Whatsmore, this relaunch will be coming 'soon', which translates to "We have no idea when it will launch but we'll tell you 'soon' so you'll get off our backs." We don't even know how much the team intend to change with this relaunch, or what form it will take. (But judging from the wording, we can assume that this won't just be an Anthem 2. Which makes sense.) The only concrete piece of info I can dig up is the fact that the studio will be 'moving away' from the seasonal content that everyone rolled their eyes at when it was first announced. (oh really, Bioware? Only 1 year in and you're listening to fans? The mile long boat starts it's pivot.)
But even when you acknowledge the good, you still have to stop and consider the absolute state that this game is in and wonder how it got there. Go to any reviewer of the game or die-hard fan (all 12 of them) and you'll hear the same praise over and over; "the game is fun!" "The combat and movement is great!" "The attention to detail is insane!" "This game perfectly delivers on the 'Mech Suit' fantasy that we all have!" (I guess that makes me the freak for never really caring about Mech Suits. Or Ninjas, for that matter.) But with such a solid foundation of gameplay that is considered 'decent' to 'Quality', why is this game still a black sheep amidst gaming circles? Well, it's everything else really. Those who remember the launch will recall how much of a buggy broken mess the game was in, the storyline was some of the most pedestrian Sci-fi trite that you could ever hope to stumble into and the actual missions that players were sent on were awful, to put it mildly.
The game just felt like one huge tech demo that was marketed and sold for a full retail price, and people didn't appreciate being scammed so roundly. And when you think about it, that was what Anthem was, a huge pricey scam. For evidence of that just look to that infamous E3 footage which we later learnt was put together in a last ditch attempt to sell the game to the current EA head, before getting haphazardly thrown up for the public in order to get them excited for a game which, crucially, didn't currently exist. (And never really would.) In that trailer we saw diverse bustling crowds, 'dynamic' wildlife and even contextual events that were cinematic and impressive; none of which ever made it to the full game despite being some of the cornerstones of the marketing. So when you realise that Anthem was essentially a scam, it really sorta makes sense that practically no one is still playing, or watching, it today. (Fallout 76 has more viewers, incredibly.)
So there is now an important question to be asked by the community; How acceptable is it to do this with your game? Are we, as a gaming populace, willing to accept a game that was sold upon the premise of a lie, killed with months of ineffectual support and then repacked and resold to us. For the moment, I feel it's necessary to entirely divorce this prospect from the hypothetical scenario of the re-release being excellent, because even if it is that will do nothing to amend the history books. Not so long ago Todd Howard found himself under fire for claiming that "It's not how you launch a game, it's what it becomes", and right now it seems that Anthem is shaping up to be the final boss of that mindset. Should we allow this to happen and reward Bioware and EA for doing so, then aren't we saying that we're happy to be sold broken buggy abortions-of-a-game as long as we're promised that it might get good at some point? How many unscrupulous publishers and developers will take advantage of that to swindle their playerbase? Heck, how many already do?
Of course, when probing such lines of thought it's often helpful to remember the other examples of games that pulled off such a re-launch and weigh-up the pros and cons of them. Final Fantasy XIV famously launched to considerable troubles until 'A Realm Reborn' hit and completely changed up the fabric of the game. The Elder Scrolls Online was ugly and shallow to start with, but several renovations later it's one of the most popular MMO's of the time. Even Destiny started out with a fairly empty first title before a packed sequel that has been supported for years now. Every one of these games disappointed the player base initially before coming back with some grand re-envisioning, so why do so many people bawk when they hear of Anthem doing the same? For me, I think it comes down to intent.
Of those three games that I mentioned, they all share a commonality in the sense that there was considerable initial effort put in by the studios involved to create something good, despite what ended up. Perhaps the efforts were misguided or the ideas were lame, (Or you already spent half a billion on the game and had to get it out; Destiny.) whatever the case the end result was trash despite good intentions. One could say that the same is true with Anthem, but it certainly doesn't feel that way. When you look at the product, Anthem feels like several good ideas that were thrown together into a product that no one ever really believed in. Take that 'great combat' that everyone always commends, it's just a reworked version of the 'Mass Effect: Andromeda' combat, likely in the middle of being transformed into the combat of the next Mass Effect title. The flight that people love, a minor aspect that was expanded upon by insistence of the EA head who was in charge of the product. The world that looks so luscious but is criminally empty, conceptualised and designed before the game had a name, let alone a genre or a gameplay loop. At no point in Anthem's life did it ever have a single person with a clear vision of what the game could be, so why should we believe the studio when they say they can retrofit a vision into this lifeless husk? How would that even be possible?
Perhaps the revamping and relaunch of Anthem will be a rags-to-riches story to rival that of 'The Ugly Duckling'. Maybe in a year's time, having 'the relaunch of Anthem' on your resume will be a truly impressive medal of honour. But right now it feels like Bioware is attempting to perform the Hiemlich on a body at the Wake, all out of some misguided attempt to prove their worth to EA. (They've just finished draining the blood out of one studio, Bioware. I'm sure their vampiric thirst has been stated for another 12 months at least.) Personally I think that the most basic requirement to mount a successful revival is a solid foundation, and I've never seen Anthem as anything solid. Fingers crossed that I'm wrong on this one, but I'm willing to put money on the fact that even if Anthem is revived into the greatest looter-shooter ever conceived, the betrayed public won't bite the bait. Fool me once shame on me, fool me twice- you can't get fooled again!
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