Glen-i Posted February 9, 2021 Posted February 9, 2021 7 hours ago, Cube said: Abandon it. Focus on Mass Effect and Dragon Age. You know, that's exactly what happened with Sonic Chronicles.
Ronnie Posted February 9, 2021 Posted February 9, 2021 I'll never understand gamers thirst for games, studios, conventions to "die". re: "all hands on deck for DA and ME", I'd be quite keen for something to play from Bioware before 2025 tbh. A rebooted Anthem would be nice.
Cube Posted February 9, 2021 Posted February 9, 2021 2 hours ago, Glen-i said: You know, that's exactly what happened with Sonic Chronicles. Sonic Chronicles was still in development, though. Anthem is almost 2 years old and seems to have had very little support in those two years. Destiny is Bungie's main IP and their main team continues working on the game to provide enough new stuff for a "live game", Final Fantasy 14 got a brand new version because it's Square's flagship franchise, if it wasn't related to Final Fantasy it would never have happened. Anthem is never going to get the staff and resources needed for a comeback. Even if they made a "fixed" version - not without taking staff away from other projects now, people would still be wary because they'll expect a similar treatment where it would be "released" and perhaps an event once a year. Pretty much the only thing that would interest me is repurposing it as a singleplayer focused game (perhaps with optional pvp or something). I feel like that should be the end fate for all MMOs TBH, a final "world state" that can be experienced after servers are down, so it can be preserved, because all games deserve to be playable in some form. 1 hour ago, Ronnie said: I'll never understand gamers thirst for games, studios, conventions to "die". I'm not sure what the first sentence is referring to, nobody here is saying anything of the sort. 1
Happenstance Posted February 9, 2021 Author Posted February 9, 2021 1 minute ago, Cube said: I'm not sure what the first sentence is referring to, nobody here is saying anything of the sort. I mean, Dcubed literally wrote “kill it dead” 1 1
Ganepark32 Posted February 9, 2021 Posted February 9, 2021 Schreier's story no doubt throws even more cats among the pigeons. If there wasn't already pressure on them to show that the game can be redeemed, then there is certainly even more. I feel for those working in the 2.0 build at the Bioware Austin studio. I understand leaving a skeleton crew behind to hash out what the vision is for a soft reboot but leaving 30 developers, programmers, etc. to essentially rework pretty much all of what was there for more or less 18 months speaks volumes to how EA felt about the IP. There's no doubt that the small team working on it has worked their asses of to bring something to the table but the writing is clearly on the wall if the decision next week is simply whether to bring on more people to push the idea forward a bit or bin the lot. I think like everyone else, its going to be cancelled and put out to pasture. There was just so much wrong with the development cycle of the game and how everything was run from management within Bioware to those within EA. Thats well documented at this point and similarly impacted Andromeda (the recent news that they could only put new races in that game that were cos play friendly and that they only had the budget for the 2 new races tells you what EA thinks of Bioware) but it is a shame because the gameplay was fun for what it was, its just everything else wasn't up to snuff. Bioware Austin are doing this and Star Wars The Old Republic and to be honest, I could easily see them shuttering both projects at this point. The latter title is long in the tooth and while it could've had a new lease of life under EA's Star Wars licence agreement, it hasn't had that even with it being free to play. The studio could end up being shifted to help with other EA properties or likely shuttered completely at this point. For EA, its all about the bottom line and the studio hasn't exactly pulled in the big bucks. Even if something could be salvaged, at this point would there be an audience for it? We can point to games like No Man's Sky and say they're similar but at least Hello Games got on with it and put out a massive update within the first year to start the addition of content updates. Anthem has had nothing beyond the initial weeks of its road map, with the latter ideas within that being scrapped completely. As an IP, it holds little cachet with gamers outside of being remembered for how poorly handled development was and how lacklustre the overall package was. When thats you're starting point as a GaaS title, there's not much room for manoeuvring and because of that, its very likely the writing is on the wall. Hell, even The Division 2 which underperformed has managed to winkle out its own space and had substantial content updates that have fundamentally changed things up. So yeah, I expect it to go no further. Refocus them on assisting with the new ME title, put The Old Republic into end of life territory and have them go one more time some years down the line for a new title again once DA4 and ME are out.
Sheikah Posted February 9, 2021 Posted February 9, 2021 (edited) 2 hours ago, Ronnie said: I'll never understand gamers thirst for games, studios, conventions to "die". re: "all hands on deck for DA and ME", I'd be quite keen for something to play from Bioware before 2025 tbh. A rebooted Anthem would be nice. People don't want Bioware to die, rather Anthem; they don't want to see a company throw good money after bad. It would also free them up to focus their efforts on things more worthwhile. I saw the comparison to No Man's Sky, in that they managed to turn that around, but that game is quite different. NMS didn't contain features that were promised so it was a fairly straightforward case of putting those features in to win back an audience. At its core, having a spaceship and visiting new planets is fun, so it had a nice foundation for being made into an interesting game. Anthem wasn't interesting, nor was it built by a small indie team that might justify being supported. I played the beta and really was not impressed. Although some people liked the combat the general what you were doing was not interesting; it felt as though it was borrowing design elements and systems from several different games and had no identity. It would need a massive overhaul to the point that you may as well put that effort into a new game not associated with a brand that has a bad reputation. Edited February 9, 2021 by Sheikah
Cube Posted February 9, 2021 Posted February 9, 2021 2 minutes ago, Ganepark32 said: Bioware Austin are doing this and Star Wars The Old Republic and to be honest, I could easily see them shuttering both projects at this point. I think you might be right about The Old Republic. A few Bioware Austin staff members seem to have moved to Aspyr as well. Aspyr are mainly a porting company, and have ported a fair few Star Wars games to different platforms (including Knights of the Old Republic to Android). They've just been bought by Embracer (who own a bunch of others including THQ Nordic, Koch Media, Gearbox) and have a very large $70 million budget game in the works - a big step up from what they usually do. Rumours suggest they're doing a remake of Knights of the Old Republic.
Julius Posted February 24, 2021 Posted February 24, 2021 (edited) Yikes. According to Schreier, it's as good as dead. UPDATE: official communication. Edited February 24, 2021 by Julius
Sheikah Posted February 24, 2021 Posted February 24, 2021 Yikes. According to Schreier, it's as good as dead. Not much of a surprise, but still.Yeah no surprise at all, amazed me they ever thought overhauling it might work?
Julius Posted February 24, 2021 Posted February 24, 2021 1 minute ago, Sheikah said: 6 minutes ago, Julius said: Yikes. According to Schreier, it's as good as dead. Not much of a surprise, but still. Yeah no surprise at all, amazed me they ever thought overhauling it might work? Yeah, completely agreed. I know some here had a fun time with it, but the comparisons by gaming outlets to the redemptions we saw for No Man's Sky and Sea of Thieves always felt a bit unfounded to me, considering that I always thought those games, while not exactly flourishing at their lowest points, still seemed to have a pretty active user count at those points, and pretty decently sized followings, whereas Anthem just didn't. A healthy but relatively small community I feel helped No Man's Sky in particular with their NEXT update.
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