Anthem did not pan out at all the way EA and BioWare would have hoped- and for very good reason. The game saw exactly the amount of criticism and backlash it deserved, but reports emerged late last year that BioWare were working on major overhaul of the game- an Anthem 2.0, if you will. This was followed a couple months later by the studio itself confirming that it was working on a long-term redesign of Anthem.
If, however, you are hoping to see that any time soon- well, don’t hold your breath. In a recent blog post on BioWare’s official website, Christian Dailey, Studio Director at BioWare Austin – who have taken over Anthem – confirmed that the studio is working on an overhaul for the game. An “incubation” team – which is being kept small at about 30 strong so it can have more “agility” than a larger team – is currently “experimenting” and “prototyping” aspects of the overhaul. Dailey also said that this is going to be a long process, suggesting that you shouldn’t expect to see it in the imminent future.
“The Anthem incubation team has kicked off and we are starting to validate our design hypotheses,” Dailey said. “Incubation is a term we use internally – it essentially means we are going back and experimenting/prototyping to improve on the areas where we believe we fell short and to leverage everything that you love currently about Anthem. We are a small team – about 30-ish, earning our way forward as we set out to hit our first major milestone goals. Spoiler – this is going to be a longer process. And yes, the team is small but the whole point of this is to take our time and go back to the drawing board. And a small team gives us the agility a larger one can’t afford.”
Dailey went on to say that during this process, the team is going to try and keep the community in the loop as much as possible.
“We really want this experience to be different for the team and our players, but we know we have some tough challenges to tackle,” he wrote. “We want to include you as we go and be open and honest with where we are at and what the expectations are with where we are going. The reality is you will see things that look awesome but end up on the cutting room floor or things that you might think suck that you feel we are spending too much time on – but in the spirit of experimentation this is all OK. We really want to provide you all the transparency we can because of your passion and interest in Anthem. But, with that comes seeing how the sausage is made – which is not always pretty by the way.”
So, translation: this is going to take a while, so don’t hold your breath for Anthem 2.0. Hopefully, by the time it comes out, people won’t have completely lost interest.