“With the latest PSSR update, Silent Hill f now delivers an even smoother gameplay experience than before,” said Konami’s production team. “Fine details – from swaying blades of grass to shadows cast across the ground – are rendered with greater clarity, deepening immersion in the fog-shrouded Japan of the 1960s.” A short new trailer highlights the difference between the current PSSR and its upgraded version with the latter pretty much eliminating any flickering.

Ninja Theory head, Dom Matthews, noted the team’s excitement to collaborate with Sony while also being impressed by “the quality of particle effects with this latest update, helping to bring key gameplay moments to life through enhanced visuals.” Remedy’s graphical technical director, Tatu Aalto, also noted how the improved image upscaling resulted in “efficient stochastic sampling without sacrificing image stability” and how it “responds quickly to visibility changes in games, keeping motion clear while improving temporal stability.” The result is even “better, more stable image quality” in Control and Alan Wake 2.

Those worried that Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth on consoles would never fully depict the beauty of its characters’ hairstyles should also rejoice. Director Naoki Hamaguchi notes how “fine details such as character’s hair are naturally restored.” Of course, “less flickering and afterimage feeling” is also a bonus. You can also expect sharper edges for wildlife scenery in Nioh 3, whether it’s foliage or various flowers.

And while Capcom didn’t provide any additional comments on the technology, it will be available for Monster Hunter Wilds and Dragon’s Dogma 2. Resident Evil Requiem was the first title that leveraged Upgraded PSSR, and the results have been quite stunning thus far. Stay tuned for more details on other titles that will implement it in the coming weeks.

Speaking to PressBoxPR, Nesmith, “I think they should probably try to make a more Bethesda-style game, to be honest. I think Mass Effect players are dying for an open-world science fiction game that has that kind of flavor to it. A big, open-world, content-heavy game? I think Mass Effect players would be going nuts for that. But I’m a former Bethesda guy, so I’m probably going to say that about a lot of things.”

For clarity’s sake, that was only one of the suggestions. Others included more modern gameplay, which Nesmith says “always felt dusty and old.”

“I would hope that they would try to just take their lore and make a modern game of it. One of the knocks on Mass Effect that I would have is that they always felt like they were a generation behind. I know, they had very cool characters, they had great stories, but the gameplay always felt dusty and old. It just wasn’t there. If they can take the things that they were so good at and do it in a more modern sense, I think that they’d have a fantastic game.”

There’s also, shock of shocks, Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian Studios’ critically and commercially acclaimed role-playing game. “I think taking lessons from Baldur’s Gate 3 would fit Mass Effect really well. They already had that kind of style in their games, and Larian Studios had the advantage of having produced the Divinity and Divinity 2 games. They were able to use that engine for it.”

Of course, this isn’t the first time that Nesmith cited Baldur’s Gate 3 as worth studying. In the same interview, he felt that Bethesda could learn a thing or two about meaningful choices from it for the next Fallout.

As for the next Mass Effect, it will likely offer branching choices and companions with extensive storylines who could like you or hate your guts. After all, that was a staple of their older titles, including Dragon Age: Origins. How BioWare will innovate on this, however, while updating its gameplay for a more contemporary audience, is the real question.

We’ll be waiting a while to find out, but development is seemingly making progress. BioWare recently posted a job listing for a Production Director to act as a “high-impact leader” for the title. Head here to learn more.

“They’ll report to me, and it’s gonna be awesome,” he said on Twitter. The listing is for a Production Director and the company searching for someone with a “passion for the Mass Effect universe” to serve as a “high-impact leader” on the sequel. Over ten years of experience on multiple “large-scale” triple-A games, alongside “deep expertise in ARPG and RPG development”, is required, among other things.

“You will partner closely with creative leadership, studio teams, and internal and external partners to champion the game’s vision and ensure its execution at the highest quality bar.” Said position also involves bringing a “strong player-first mindset, deep knowledge of the competitive gaming landscape, and a commitment to building inspired teams through mentorship, collaboration, and best-in-class production practices.”

If that wasn’t enough, they’ll need to “continuously elevate both the game and the team, fostering a strong production culture while translating ambitious ideas into outstanding player experiences.” All in all, a pretty high-level position, and one that could point to active development beginning soon (if it hasn’t already).

It’s hard to believe, but the first concept art and teaser for the next Mass Effect debuted in 2020. Since then, BioWare has released new concept art and even a look at what could be the new protagonist. Following the most recent N7 Day, it hid some artwork of a Krogan civil war for players to discover.

Even if production is beginning to ramp up, it may be a while before we see the sequel. Rumors from 2023 indicate it won’t be out until 2028 or 2029, and given that this is BioWare, which has had its share of development troubles, plans could change. Time will tell, so stay tuned for further updates.

In their video, And799 was able to successfully “log in” to the live service shooter. It is worth noting that this locally-running server is still in its early stages, and many online-centric features are still inaccessible. These include things like player profiles. Despite this, however, the player was able to set up the local server to function on a peer-to-peer basis, and was able to get a second player in the game by starting up another instance.

And799 has noted in the description of the video that it is simply a log for their research and experimenting with the server infrastructure. It is not meant to “represent the current progress of the private server/revival project that is currently in progress.”

Former executive producer on Anthem, Mark Darrah, had released a lengthy video detailing its development. Among the subjects he touched on throughout the video was also the possibility of reviving the live-service shooter. His pitch “conservatively” involved a roughly $10 million investment from EA, which he noted would be recovered if Anthem were to sell more than 400,000 copies. As a part of this idea, Darrah pitched that BioWare and EA should move the shooter over to current-gen consoles from its PS4 and Xbox One home, and make use of servers that could be hosted locally.

“The reason you do this, it pulls away the cost of maintaining this game,” Darrah explained. “So rather than having dedicated servers that are required for the game to run, you let the server run on one of the machines that’s playing the game.”

Darrah had also spoken about the legacy of Anthem, and how it had left a mark on just about everyone who worked on it at some point. “To be honest, I’m not sure that I came back from Anthem. I think that’s true of a lot of people,” he said.

“Anthem did permanent damage to the careers of a lot of game devs, to the mental health of a lot of game devs. I think even with BioWare itself, you can trace some of the issues that it’s had in more recent years back to this time period,” Darrah continued. “I don’t think Anthem is 100 percent to blame [for] everything that’s happened since 2019, but definitely there are seeds of damage that continue to grow from that point onwards.”

Anthem was released back in 2019 on PC, PS4 and Xbox One. While it was praised for how fun its traversal systems and combat could be, the lack of mission variety and several filler missions would damage its reputation quite a bit. For more details, check out our thoughts on Anthem. Also check out our review from back when it first came out.

Unsurprisingly, former executive producer Mark Darrah heard plenty of this around release time. Speaking to Destin Legarie after servers shut down for the title, he said many came “out of the woodwork” to proclaim the above. However, he views its creation as a natural process since BioWare has “always been changing.”

“My feeling is that BioWare’s always been changing. I mean, by that argument, we should have never made Neverwinter Nights because we were a 2D RPG maker. We should never have made Mass Effect because we were a tactical RPG maker, not an action RPG maker. So, I don’t know that that argument holds a lot of weight for me.”

It’s hard to disagree – by that measure, BioWare had no business working on Baldur’s Gate, a Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game, after releasing Shattered Steel.

But that approach doesn’t always guarantee success. “Studios evolve, and they try new things. Was Anthem too big of a reach? Yeah, for sure. But could you tell at the time? I don’t know. I don’t know that you could,” said Darrah.

Furthermore, he noted that while publisher Electronic Arts “certainly” deserves a “bunch of blame for Anthem,” its failure is “not all their fault.” Remember reports about how the launch version came together roughly a year before release? Or how many team members only learned that it was called Anthem after seeing the first reveal trailer? If it weren’t for former CEO Patrick Söderlund, there apparently wouldn’t have even been flying.

After shipping the relatively disappointing Dragon Age: The Veilguard, BioWare is now focused on the next Mass Effect. While being a single-project studio has its issues, Darrah said in the same interview that it’s “probably for the best.” Granted, we haven’t seen any gameplay, but the teasers have slowly ramped up over the years, including the recent artwork of a Krogan Civil War.

As of now, all eyes are on the next Mass Effect, tentatively referred to as Mass Effect 5, to pick up the pieces. However, even by former executive producer Mike Darrah’s estimates, it may take a “long time.” In an interview with Destin Legarie, Darrah – who released an extensive post-mortem about the failure of Anthem – discussed BioWare’s shift to a “one-project studio” as a positive development.

“Mass Effect 5 team did what we should have done when we moved the Dragon Age people on to Anthem, which is…everyone wins.” And while that means a longer gap between releases – not to mention that the current set-up has its “own problems,” he believes it’s a “different set of problems than what BioWare has been up until arguably 2022.”

In the past, the studio had “several projects fighting for attention and resources, and like bumping into each other and elbowing each other and causing unintended effects on each other. That’s not the studio that it is now. As near as I can tell, 100 percent of what they’re working on right now is Mass Effect. That’s probably for the best.”

It’s hard to disagree – development problems with Anthem resulted in the Dragon Age team having to cancel Project Joplin (Veilguard’s previous incarnation) to help out. This, in turn, ended up contributing to problems with The Veilguard, though the sudden changes in direction from multiplayer to single-player didn’t help either.

As for Mass Effect 5, a release date remains unknown. Rumors claimed it wouldn’t arrive until 2028 or 2029 at the latest, and as of January 2025, full production hadn’t even begun. On the bright side, there could be a proper reveal at some point in the near future, especially with project director Mike Gamble stating that all the N7 Day teases would connect.

When it comes to the legacy of Anthem, Darrah believes that the game damaged its developers’ careers and mental health. He also noted that BioWare itself has faced trouble trying to distance itself from the game. “To be honest, I’m not sure that I came back from Anthem. I think that’s true of a lot of people,” he said.

“Anthem did permanent damage to the careers of a lot of game devs, to the mental health of a lot of game devs. I think even with BioWare itself, you can trace some of the issues that it’s had in more recent years back to this time period,” Darrah continued. “I don’t think Anthem is 100 percent to blame [for] everything that’s happened since 2019, but definitely there are seeds of damage that continue to grow from that point onwards.”

Darrah had worked as executive producer on quite a few projects at BioWare over the years, including controversial 2011 RPG Dragon Age 2, and its 2014 follow-up Dragon Age: Inquisition.

The fact that Anthem was shutting down earlier this week was announced by EA back in July 2025. Its fans had decided to experience and enjoy the game one last time before the plug was pulled on its servers. Many of these fans had taken to social media to discuss Anthem, with a common point of discussion among them being the fact that it had a lot of potential.

“Goodbye Anthem. You had so much potential, such a waste,” wrote one player. “As one of the most notorious ‘Destiny killers’, its shutdown is a good reminder that keeping a looter shooter alive and well for years is a nearly impossible task.”

“Last night I logged into Anthem for the last time. Toured the map one last time. Did some missions. Had some fun,” wrote another. “People can feel how they want, but the potential this game had was undeniable. The flying was spectacular.”

Anthem launched on PC, PS4 and Xbox One back in 2019, and while it had seen quite a bit of praise for its visuals, gunplay and flying mechanics, the title was criticized quite heavily for its lackluster mission design and other questionable decisions throughout its development. For more details, check out our review.

However, Anthem was dragged down by rote mission design, limited enemy and content variety, and a boring opening stretch padded by heavy content-gating, while constant visual bugs, long loading screens, and restrictive, sluggish Fort Tarsis management, having to return just to equip gear, moving slowly, and even being teleported back if you stray too far, making the whole experience feel needlessly frustrating.

However, there was hope. As our reviewer mentioned, “That’s not to say that Anthem is unsalvageable. I think it can be saved, and I hoped that it will be. Because the good stuff is really good. There’s mounds of untapped potential here. It just needs work. Serious work, to fix the game’s core problems before BioWare begins the ceaseless content drip that defines games like this. That shouldn’t be their focus now. Getting this right should be. Right now, Anthem is the music of creation that inspired its name. Left alone, it’s unstable, flawed. But with the right hand to shape it, it could be something wonderful.”

And it seems that BioWare took that feedback to heart. In 2020, it announced that it would be overhauling the game’s many core systems. Dubbed Anthem Next,  Christian Dailey– who was looking after Anthem back then – stated in a BioWare blog post that the team will be making several changes to experience.

“The Anthem incubation team has kicked off and we are starting to validate our design hypotheses,” Dailey said back then. “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.”

“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 back then. “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.”

However, in early 2021, all plans to revamp Anthem were scrapped. On the BioWare blog, Dailey stated that, “2020 was a year unlike any other however and while we continue to make progress against all our game projects at BioWare, working from home during the pandemic has had an impact on our productivity and not everything we had planned as a studio before COVID-19 can be accomplished without putting undue stress on our teams. ”

Dailey revealed that BioWare will now choose to focus all its resources on Dragon Age (eventually released in 2024 to disappointing sales and critical reception) and Mass Effect sequel (which is still in production as of 2026), as well as focusing on Star Wars: The Old Republic.

“Game development is hard. Decisions like these are not easy. Moving forward, we need to laser focus our efforts as a studio and strengthen the next Dragon Age, and Mass Effect titles while continuing to provide quality updates to Star Wars: The Old Republic.”

Interestingly, despite being a critical failure and EA letting it die for a few years, Anthem reportedly sold pretty well, at least on paper. In December of 2023, the LinkedIn profile of ex-EA employee mentioned that Anthem sold 5 million lifetime sales and 2 million in its first week. However, for the publisher it was a different story.  Anthem’s sales failed to meet EA’s expectations, so overall, it was a failure. I mean imagine selling 5 million and still termed as a commercial flop. Sigh.

The entire situation surrounding Anthem has been pretty sad. I won’t go in what kind of development problems the game went through, those have already been documented on the internet, but my mind goes back to 2017. It was E3 and BioWare first revealed Anthem with an absolutely insane demo that showcased the potential of the new IP. It was unreal in so many ways and took the internet by storm. Unfortunately, a large portion of that experience never got translated into the final product.

After the revamp got canceled, Anthem still lived on through a small but passionate community, and now that the game is no more, that group is now looking for PC custom servers so that it could live on. Whether they will be able to achieve that is something that remains to seen.

Anthem is dead and buried, and has now joined numerous other live service games that squandered their potential. The truth is that the game, despite having some really good parts, didn’t do much above the required minimum. And simply put, that is not enough.

It’s a shame that, for most of us, Anthem won’t be remembered as a game worth our money or our time; rather, it’ll stand as a reminder of how poor management, weak planning, and troubled development can doom a game in a matter of weeks.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

“Goodbye Anthem. You had so much potential, such a waste,” wrote one player. “As one of the most notorious ‘Destiny killers’, its shutdown is a good reminder that keeping a looter shooter alive and well for years is a nearly impossible task.”

“Last night I logged into Anthem for the last time. Toured the map one last time, did some missions. Had some fun,” wrote another. “People can feel how they want, but the potential this game had was undeniable. The flying was spectacular.”

“A game that could have been great,” wrote BlueSky user Dominic Tarason. “The feel of moving around, flying and shooting? Top notch. Better than any official Iron Man game. I want sci-fi super-suits to feel like this everywhere. But the mission design was a mess. Levels were designed like they were for a regular ground-based FPS.”

The fact that “potential” is a running theme in many of these posts should come as no surprise. Even back when Anthem first launched on PC, PS4 and Xbox One, common consensus was that the flying mechanics served as excellent foundations on which the rest of the game could then be built. However, a severe lack of content, and other game design decisions ended up hampering a lot of players’ enjoyment of the game.

Even in our own review, we noted that Anthem often tends to have excellent gameplay that is often brought down thanks to un-fun mission design. For example, the story is brought to a dramatic halt after players are tasked with unlocking some old tombs. However, the process to unlock these tombs was considered an arduous waste of time, with our review referring to them as “arbitrary tasks” like killing a certain number of enemies with specific attacks or reviving squad mates. We ultimately gave Anthem a score of 5 out of 10, noting that, while the gunplay, flying, story and world were great, poor mission design and a lack of enemy variety were only part of its problems.

Taking a cue from long-running live service games, BioWare and EA had announced back in February 2020 that a revamp of Anthem was under development. The revamp would focus on improving stability and performance, along with new content and features. However, this revamp would never see the light of day, with the project getting cancelled just a year later in February 2021. In a statement, BioWare Austin head Christian Dailey spoke about the unique events of 2020, including the worldwide pandemic, and noted that the studio had suffered a major impact in its productivity.

For more details on Anthem‘s rise and fall, check out the full story.

A game that could have been great.The feel of moving around, flying and shooting? Top notch. Better than any official Iron Man game. I want sci-fi super-suits to feel like this everywhere.But the mission design was a mess. Levels were designed like they were for a regular ground-based FPS.

— Dominic Tarason (@dominictarason.com) 2026-01-12T11:08:07.430Z

“I have no idea. I have no idea,” said Hale when asked whether Shepard would return in the new title. “This is what I say to fans: look, if you want Shepard in the next game, please, email [BioWare] and tell them, because maybe they’ll respond to that. I literally don’t know. I would love it.”

Throughout the interview, Hale also shared other aspects of her time with BioWare on the Mass Effect franchise. One of these moments was when Mass Effect 3 had the female Commander Shepard on its cover. Discussing the time when fans of Mass Effect started referring to the female version of the protagonist as “FemShep”, Hale noted it as happening around the same time as the Mass Effect 3 cover reveal. “I don’t know when that started,” she said. “I love it though.”

“I’ll never forget the first time I saw that cover,” Hale continued. “‘Cause the third one was where they made the cover reversible, which was really something. I was at GameStop at midnight… I was joyfully there because we were promoting the release of 3.”

“[Mass Effect 3 director] Casey Hudson is a very calm, quiet, humble guy. He’s not a man who calls for the spotlight ever. And somebody dropped [the reversible Mass Effect 3 cover] in front of me to sign, and I almost burst into tears on the spot. So I got up, and I stood on top of either my chair or the table, and I held it over my hands, and I said, ‘CASEY HUDSON! THANK YOU!'”

Hale also recalled seeing the trailer for Mass Effect Legendary Edition, which featured FemShep for the first time in the original trilogy’s history.

“I think it was pandemic times, I want to say it was 2021 or 22 when they released [Mass Effect Legendary Edition],” she recalled. “The trailer for Legendary featured FemShep. And there had never been a trailer that featured FemShep. And I was stunned, and I started crying. For some reason, I grabbed my phone because I just wanted to talk to everybody in that moment, and I recorded it, and I was like, ‘I just watched this, and this is amazing.’ I just wanted to talk to everyone at once in that moment.”

As for Mass Effect 5, BioWare had featured teases for the game back in November 2025 during N7 Day through, among other things, the release of hidden art work depicting the Krogan Civil War, and footage of a Mass Relay. Along with this, executive producer Mike Gamble had also taken to social media to tell fans that “everything you’ve seen – from all N7 days – will connect.”