By Andrew Dodson on June 11, 2017 at 6:14am
At EA's conference this weekend, they announced a new IP being developed by Bioware called "Anthem." The initial teaser trailer was pretty but didn't really give any details about the title or seem to offer anything that looked new (though that seems to be the nature of teaser trailers). Check it out below:
The next day, they gave us a gameplay trailer and that's when people started drawing similarities between "Anthem" and "Destiny," "Titanfall" and the anime Attack on Titan. See the full gameplay trailer below:
While "Anthem" has already been promised to work as a single-player game, it seems obvious to me that it's been designed to be a social experience - one to play with friends or strangers that you run into within the Wall.
The game itself looks incredibly beautiful. Watching the Javelin's jump from the walled city and into the jungles below was amazing, and using the jetpack to get around looks like a lot of fun - especially when diving from the air into the water, I thought that was a particularly nice thing to show off. Even the Javelins themselves looks interesting, and are likely to be highly customizable.
When "Anthem" got to combat is when I thought it started to look a little bit like a "Destiny" clone. Being a "Destiny" clone isn't a bad thing, it is a very popular game and "Anthem" seems like a valid response to it but I've yet to see anything in this new title that separates it as something that I have to play. Jetting through the jungle like Ironman will only hold my interest for so long and I'm not sure I want to play another game with a loot system like what "Anthem" seems to be offering.
Back to the combat, I will say that I liked how the weapons that were fired seemed to have weight to them. That's something a lot of games set in the future seem to neglect.
It is way too early to pass judgement on this new IP. Hopefully, EA and Bioware start to release more details on the world of "Anthem" and the story that players will be able to jump into. Even if the gameplay has been done before, if "Anthem" reveals itself to have a deep, interesting story that can set it apart from "Destiny" and help carve it's own niche in the 'robo-suit-shooter' market. Given that the executive producer behind the original "Mass Effect," Casey Hudson, built the team for this project, I am hoping to be delightfully surprised when the final product launches.
"Anthem" is set for release in Spring of 2018 on Xbox One, PC and PS4.
