It may still be early to talk about Anthem, but hell when a game looks that good there’s no reason to put the conversation off especially when BioWare just dropped a new stream showing off the gameplay. Christmas has now officially moved from the 25th December to the 22nd of February and I’m happy to wait a couple of extra months to start celebrating.
BioWare’s fandom isn’t always the nicest place to be. Andromeda was roundly trashed despite being a decent game, and when BioWare switched its focus to Anthem because nobody liked Andromeda, they got hated on again. From the looks of things, even though I adore Mass Effect, I’m more than happy for it to take a backseat to Anthem because the game already sounds and looks incredible.
Sure, there aren’t going to be romances immediately but …that’s good? The ass effect jokes got kind of tired and I’m not particularly in a rush to see what romantic or sexual jokes people come up with during this title. I can definitely wait to find out. The best element of Dragon Age and Mass Effect was the platonic relationships. Anthem, whether intentionally or not (although the former is plausible given the writing team), has managed to promote platonic relationships to the same level or romantic and sexual ones by this choice. The game is telling the world that sexual and romantic relationships aren’t necessarily needed or inherently better and that friendships can be just as emotional and important. Asexual and aromantic representation has a long way to go but a game in the mould of Anthem sounds refreshing.
BioWare are the best at character writing so there likely won’t be any shortage of good content. Despite being a multiplayer game, people can choose to stick to solo playing and BioWare have firmly stated that they still want a game that tells a story. Repeat after me: there will be a full story campaign. Overwatch and Fortnite are great, but we also need first person shooters which are online and have story content too. Anthem could bridge that gap.
Anthem just looks cool. Getting to explore the ruins the gods left behind after they fled is a hell of a concept. We get to fly, and shoot things and choose amazing armour which even includes an N7 tribute paint job. Yeah, it looks a bit like Destiny but the best thing about destiny was its aesthetics so that’s a major positive. It’s difficult to predict how a game will do when we have so little information on it but right now, it’s ticking every single box.