Trivia / Anthem (2019)

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• Acting for Two: All the 'fragments' of Matthias have the same voice actor, but with different ranges; Matti sounds like Matthias but a little more manic/energized, Erryl is very soft and airy, and Sumner is lower and gravellier.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: Several minor characters are voiced by well-known TV actors like Catherine Tate (Max), Jack McBrayer (Amal) and Amy Okuda (Sentinel Brin).
• Dueling Games: Even more than Destiny 2, Anthem found itself in direct competition with the other big 3rd-person sci-fi action open world looter game, Warframe, which aside from the obvious similarities, also features a range of powerful powered armour suits with a range of different and unique abilities to choose from and an emphasis on high mobility. It also faced off against The Division 2, which launched a mere three weeks after Anthem.
• Executive Meddling:
  • Much like Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mass Effect: Andromeda and many other games published by Electronic Arts, EA required that the game use the Frostbite Game Engine, despite its known difficulties with making games in genres outside the First-Person Shooter genre. Much like the above mentioned games, the problems with Frostbite contributed significantly to Anthem's Troubled Production, not helped by developers who were familiar with Frostbite, even those who already were at Bioware, being moved on to other games, like FIFA. Of course, the irony here is Anthem itself caused most of the Troubled Production problems of Inquisition and Andromeda, as their dev teams had been poached for it.
  • In a strangely positive example, especially given the company, EA executive Patrick Söderlund essentially got Bioware to actually get to work after dragging their feet in pre-production for years. His request for a demo led to Bioware creating one that was not well-received. Söderlund apparently tore it apart, saying that this was not the game he was promised. On Bioware's second attempt, his previous feedback made them actually stick with some design ideas (which the Bioware leaders were apparently not doing at all) — flying in particular.
  • According to "How BioWare's Anthem Went Wrong", Bioware's leadership tried to avoid following in Destiny's footsteps by literally forbidding mentioning Destiny in the studio, which made it harder for the developers to learn from anything Destiny did, right or wrong.
• Follow the Leader: The premise and marketing model for Anthem very closely mirrored that of Ubisoft's The Division and Bungie's Destiny series, obviously as an attempt to cash in on a looter shooter with a "games as services" model, though Mark Darrah said at E3 2018 that there will be no lootboxes (there were), and that players will know exactly what they are spending their real-world currency on. Destiny influences are particularly visible in how the Freelancers and their abilities are extremely similar to Guardians, with the latter's "Light" being replaced with the Anthem of Creation. This despite the fact that the studio reportedly distanced themselves from Destiny so completely that they weren't allowed to talk about the game in person.
• The Other Darrin: Character actor L.J. Batinas announced in September 2018 that he got the role of Haluk in Anthem, and while the character is clearly visually based on him, he was replaced by Nick Tarabay as the voice/performance capture actor.
• Screwed by the Network: According to Bioware insiders, in the aftermath of EA mandating all EA studios use the Frostbite engine for their games, EA prioritized sending the Frostbite support team, the team most experienced working with Frostbite, to working on the FIFA and the Battlefront series. This mean that Bioware was forced to work with an engine they had no experience with, without any external support, and had to build many of their own systems from scratch because the engine wasn't even designed to support the kinds of games they make, heavily contributing to production issues.
• Troubled Production:
  • According to a report from Kotaku, Anthem ran into production issues early on, with the Anthem team pulling in members from other game projects such as the Dragon Age team. In addition, the developers have stated that the originally announced 2018 release date was not feasible at all, and the game would realistically not be done until 2019. This is in addition to reports that several high profile team members left the company during the game's development in 2017 and 2018, the most notable being Drew Karpyshyn.
  • Jason Schreier later published an in-depth exposé about what exactly happened during Anthem's production. The short version is that the development suffered from a serious case of Head-in-the-Sand Management, as the leadership staff at BioWare refused to make decisions or listen to feedback from the developers, including those at BioWare Austin who actually had experience developing an online game with Star Wars: The Old Republic. By the time Mark Darrah was put in charge and actually stepped up and took control of the project, they were less than two years away from release, and most of the game was developed in twelve to sixteen months.
    • This exposé was replied to by EA/Bioware in less than 15 minutes (far too short a time for them to have actually read the massive article beforehand), blaming the entire debacle on websites like Kotaku writing articles that "tear down the industry". This quickly became a PR nightmare, as EA's Twitter feed exploded with indignation. The kicker was that EA addressed all of the troubles commented on by numerous ex-employees with a "hey, what are ya gonna' do?" attitude. EA/Bioware's response can be found here. Ultimately, the backlash to the response resulted in Bioware banning the staff from media interaction.
  • Any attempts to salvage the game post-launch were torpedoed by the COVID-19 Pandemic, which understandably hampered development due to force staff to work at home. This was likely a factor in EA deciding to halt all development on the game in late-February 2021.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The game was originally called Beyond (since the settings are worlds beyond Earth). That said, the executives felt it couldn't be trademarked, so it was changed to Anthem mere days before its reveal.
  • The original incarnation of the game was intended to be a more grounded, hardcore survival experience where players would be wearing bulkier power armor more akin to a NASA space suit, trapped on a Death World where everything from the wildlife to the weather is trying to kill you, and your only hope of survival is scavenging supplies and gear from crashed alien ships.
  • The flight mechanic was almost axed from the game completely, even being taken out and re-added to the game numerous times during development, but the devs were able to get it working in time for the game’s release.
  • Dragon Age writer David Gaider wrote a story draft for the game that reportedly stuck much closer to the traditional BioWare style, but the team were tired of the Strictly Formula approach and rejected the draft.
  • The infamous "Tombs of the Legionnaires" mission was originally going to have the player wait days in order to actually complete.
  • A major overhaul of the title, referred to as Anthem Next, was planned and being developed for over a year after launch, but BioWare cancelled it to put more work into other projects.
• Working Title: Dylan, according to director Jon Warner.

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