Anthem is a bold, major departure for BioWare from what they have been known for thus far. Rather than being a character driven story focused RPG, it will be a multiplayer co-op loot shooter, in the vein of Destiny.
So you can understand there being some trepidation around the game, naturally. It’s BioWare’s first time doing something like this, and they are entering a crowded market. And as their competitors at Bethesda have shown, it’s not easy to transition from making an RPG to making a multiplayer game.
BioWare held an Ask Me Anything for fans on Reddit, allowing them to ask the developers any questions they may have directly. One of the questions that came up during this was the question of loot—would Anthem lock end game loot to just the end game, like other games in the genre do?
As it turns out, the answer is no. “There may still be a very very small chance a piece of that [end game] loot could drop somewhere else, but it would be a very rare thing to happen,” BioWare’s Senior Systems Designer Chris Schmidt said.
The chances of this happening are very rare, but I actually like this approach—though exclusivity to end game activities gives players the incentive to stick with the game for the long term, things like getting a crazy drop early in the game can absolutely make for the kinds of stories that help a community grow. I have to assume things will be balanced, and players won’t be able to use end game loot early in the game, either.
Anthem launches on February 22 2019 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC.