BioWare revealed its newest IP Anthem during the opening hours of E3 2017, and it’s a title that has become shockingly divisive. Either it’s the greatest video game ever made and all you’ve ever dreamed of, or it’s a third-person co-op Destiny look-alike set in an open world with waypoints, sub-quests, and all the plug and play elements of the AAA gaming scene.
Looking to cool those negative opinions, BioWare General Manager Aaryn Flynn recently name dropped a comparison to Star Wars as a call for people to not take it so seriously. Yeah, because nobody EVER takes Star Wars too seriously.
Anthem is in a genre we call science-fantasy, very much like Star Wars, very much like the Marvel Universe, where you see a lot of amazing things happening, but we don’t worry too much about why they’re happening, or how they’re happening, the science of it.
Mass Effect is more our real hardcore science fiction IP. This one is much more about just having fun in a game world that is lush and exotic and really sucks you in.
Flynn claims that co-op gameplay is the key to this game, hopefully not meaning that a strong single player campaign and whatever story it might tell will be taking a backseat to the action. As many might agree thanks to recent trends, a decision to focus on multiplayer often detracts from the central pillars of a solid single player experience. It is these single player experiences that people used to love BioWare so much for.
It’s a wonderful way to experience games nowadays, and more and more people want to play games cooperatively nowadays. It’s really nice for us to be able to tell a story that’s going to have cooperative elements and that you can experience it together. That’s really cool.
Anthem launches for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC in 2018.
