BioWare has recently shared its first inside look at what players can expect to see when the 2.0 update comes to Anthem, but while BioWare’s upcoming 2.0 edition will be taking new approaches to major game mechanics, the developer shouldn’t lose sight of the initial positives that drew players to the game in the first place.
If there really was nothing worth saving in Anthem, then BioWare would have simply dropped the title entirely and wouldn’t be putting the extra effort into trying to revive the rapidly dying game. In truth, it’s the basics that sold players on piloting the Javelins in the first place, with bugs and a desperate need for quality of life fixes on launch that quickly bled out the player community in the months after release.
Of course, there was certainly more wrong with the game than a simple glitch or two; however, as Mass Effect Andromeda‘s Steam success has proven, BioWare does have the potential to redeem poor title launches. This could mean that the Anthem 2.0 update doesn’t even need to go quite as far as some players might expect, given that a relatively glitch free release of the revamp might be enough to bring early fans back to be consistent players. Most importantly, fiddling with the basic foundation that the game is built on will need to be delicately tended to by reinforcing the positives instead of trying to dig too deep into the core mechanics.
Any breakdown of Anthem‘s mechanics and gameplay loop is unfortunately always going to rely on comparisons to Destiny‘s looter shooter success, due to overlap of how the two games work at their core. However, in one way that the two games are similar is that the basics of gameplay remains each title’s highest quality, keeping players returning even after long periods of content drought. This hasn’t quite been the issue for Destiny 2 since it launched, and Anthem‘s drought is somewhat intentional as BioWare moves towards the revamp, but Bungie has dropped the ball in the past and still managed to hold onto its players.
Gunplay is the cornerstone of any shooter, where if the weapons don’t feel satisfying to fire, the enemies don’t feel satisfying to kill, or the weapon variety doesn’t give satisfying customization, then a game is doomed to fail from the outset. Anthem‘s current equipment and loot has at least two of these factors accounted for, with variety being one of the game’s biggest issues that BioWare needs to address. The game itself is fun to play on its own thanks to the gunplay and Javelin abilities like ground-slamming, and especially the flight mechanics, with the reward system and lack of varying content that drops players off as the game world offers little excitement.
One major mechanic in Anthem that sold most players on the game in the first place would be the Javelin flight controls that allow players to roam freely around the world while soaring through the air. Early gameplay footage showed off some of the game’s beautiful locations and the living breathing world that players couldn’t wait to dive into when they first booted up the game. Even though Anthem‘s Javelins can be improved, they are still easily the best aspect of the game for both combat and exploration of the unfortunately empty world.
Tweaks here and there to the flight might be useful, but it may be too easy for BioWare accidentally ruin this core aspect of the game. Things like additional fast travel locations, while much more convenient to use, could wind up chopping the world into multiple separate pieces, instead of allowing Javelin flight to create the feeling of a sprawling, world. That being said, filling that world with unique, rewarding experiences is the main step towards reviving Anthem with the revamp, as the lack of variety still remains one of the game’s most glaring weaknesses.
A kneejerk response to reworking the weapons in Anthem might be to either start digging in and tweaking every single weapon’s base stats, or throwing everything that players know now out and starting over. Some screw tightening here and their might be a good idea to bring time-to-kill down to a more satisfying level, especially for new and returning players jumping into early combat encounters. However, as mentioned above, the foundation of Anthem‘s gameplay is solid. The major issue with the game comes down more to a lack of variety, making the addition of new weapons a better path forward than messing with what is already present.
Leaning into the science-fiction setting of Anthem could give BioWare the same freedom that Bungie had when it came to developing variant weapons, like charging snipers and shotguns, or sticky-grenade launchers. It really is a situation where the only limit is imagination, and the budget required to develop a suite of new weapons to give proper variety within each new weapon class. This continues to harken back on the fact that the basics of the game are fine, but a lack of variety is likely even more responsible for the hemorrhaging of early players than the lack of additional content updates ever could be.
From what BioWare has shown of Anthem 2.0, it doesn’t look like there is any intention to address any of the issues present in the main storyline of the game, and it really shouldn’t. Looking again to Destiny for a comparison, the story that launched with the game was almost universally dismissed as being too short, boring, and repetitive, especially when compared to Bungie’s previous games. This repeated almost verbatim for the original launch of Anthem, with some characters standing out, but very few reaching anywhere near the heights of any of the Mass Effect, Dragon Age, or Knights of the Old Republic character BioWare is known for.
All of that being said, BioWare shouldn’t do anything to Anthem‘s main story, not even at the base level like rerecording dialogue performances or removing lines like the “Get glitched” quip. Making these kinds of changes would be more trouble than they’re worth, and it’s often better to lean into things that players turn into jokes than trying to paper over them, since everything lives forever online and the cracks still show. Instead, the Anthem 2.0 revamp should be followed quickly or arrive alongside a new campaign that continues the story of the original, in order to better establish characters and build a better lore foundation moving forward.
Anthem is available now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
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