Anthem — 20 Hours of Play and Regret

N.B. The following article first appeared on googa.me in May 2019. The hosting site has since discontinued its operation. This article is reposted here for archival purposes only.

Since its release to the general public, Anthem has engendered severely mixed responses. There are those who have are in love with it, and there are those who feel that the many issues (bugs, glitches, etc.) have overshadowed everything that the game did get right. Twenty hours in, and despite my incredibly high hopes for the game, I have finished and given up on Anthem. Completely.

Initially…well…

You fly at will, making use of waterfalls and skim rivers to keep your jets cooler to fly longer then come crashing down atop the enemy in a seamless transition from third-person airborne artistry to on-the-ground shooting and close-quarters combat.

I will say that the Javelins move great, that their abilities in combat are fluid, fast-paced, and definitely fun. There is a great sense of uniqueness with each Javelin I’ve tried, ranging from my preferred stompy in your face assault-oriented nature of the Colossus to the fluid grace of the assassinating Interceptor. Working with other players, it is definitely possible to build a squad and quite literally play it your way. The animations are phenomenal and you can actually feel it when you take a Colossus and shield smash an enemy like a tank crushing a jeep. The intuitive and fluid controls let you execute whatever combat insanity you have in mind near effortlessly.

The combat, unfortunately, shoots its load of features with the first few hours of gameplay and began to get both boring and repetitively grindy. There were lots of unique enemies to fight in the first few hours, but nothing beyond a few unique Boss Fights as grandiose set-piece battles. Too many hours were spent trying to increase stats on my various pieces of gear and weapons with nothing new coming out until you approach the end game. It was a bad reminder of the earliest days of Diablo 3, where no Legendary ranked weapons or armor would drop.

Ham-Fisted Gunplay

And once the luxury of the Javelins wears off, you’re reduced to moving and shooting which is just fine… but the run and gun gameplay somehow did not feel as good or dynamic as when using the suite of Javelin abilities. Whatever the weapons are supposed to be firing, be it bullets, lasers, plasma, gauss, or even lightning, it felt too much like I was suddenly in a Call of Duty firefight. Players are supposed to be Godlike Javelin pilots, not a grunt from Battlefield. Overall, the mech combat is hampered by very ham-fisted gunplay.

Bugs, Imbalances, and Poorly Thought Out Mechanics.

Anthem started to fall apart due to bugs and imbalances that are worse than a locust plague. For a game that has been in development since Mass Effect 3’s release (2012), I should not be falling through the map, rubber banding, suffering audio and/or framerate drops, invisible damage sources, imprecise telegraphs, poorly balanced debuffs, and things just randomly missing/not activating. These are just some of the issues that have just made whatever cool thing I was doing suddenly less cool. Probably because I got killed.

Poorly Balanced Weapon and Equipment Progression.

The bugs are bad and weapons and abilities do not seem to be very well balanced, or in a few cases, even functional. I cannot understand why the Interceptor’s Cluster Mine fails to damage enemies. In a similar vein of frustration, why can I not see whatever loot or rewards that I have successfully collected thus far? Why do I have to go back to Tarsis to figure out what is in that glowing box I just found?

Granted the end game Legendary and Masterwork weapons liven things up, combat becomes more enjoyable again with buffs and bonuses that actually make it worthwhile to get into combat and more importantly, experiment with new ideas, new combinations, and crazy load-outs. The “Papa Pump” would have made for a high-speed glass cannon build, if players could get it earlier to experiment and create a loadout. This would add meaningful variety to the gameplay.

The components and weapon distribution throughout the game were not given due considering, resulting in all the great weapons and gear being stuffed into the end game, forcing players to suffer through the grind. Monster Hunter World did this mechanic system right, where players could combine armor, weapons, elements, and other entities and attributes to create something amazing and effective at every stage of the game.

The RPG mechanics are present but poorly developed or explained. Rarity has no meaning or use because things are literally assigned at random and using the vaguest of terminology that leaves you guessing just what they are supposed to do. Have a look at the picture of this Interceptor Component. There is no explanation of what this actually does with its “Shields +10% Delay.”

Flight and Overheat

But what disappointed me the most, was the “overheat” mechanic in flight. Flying around Bastion is one of the most fun things I’ve done in Anthem…. But to be forced to skim waterfalls and lakes and rivers to cool off and prevent crashing to the ground every 30 seconds was disappointing. Limiting flight time in a combat scenario makes perfect sense — you’re moving, shooting, using abilities so there is a reason why your mobility becomes a bit more limited. But why was the ability to just fly around and enjoy the sunset vista hampered?

Amazingly Stunning but Shallow Visuals

The world of Bastion is visually expansive and beautiful, with a number of fantastic vistas that would make great desktop wallpapers. There are some areas of the game where you fly over the forests and waterfalls or cut through the ruins for the first time and you actually want to just stop and genuinely admire the scenery. Then wish your screenshots could do justice to what you are seeing. Unfortunately, that’s about all there is.

The world is basically comprised of cliffs, waterfalls, ruins, and more cliff-filled landscapes. There is a lot of nothing out there, making the world feel barren and soulless. The world just does not feel vibrant or alive. Regretfully, this also applies to the game player hub. Fort Tarsis is just bland and lifeless. It has no life, energy, or sense of even being alive. This is where portions of the story are told, and the blandness leaves me indifferent to the story. The NPCs are well clad, stiff, robotic automatons bereft of facial expression. The background and environmental soundscape are bland and just plain uninteresting. Fort Tarsis is a navigable obstacle in finding the next piece of gameplay.

Endless Grind, Point Defense, Fetch Quest

While I will admit that in all games, there is a certain degree of “copy-and-paste” in the mission design, Anthem is guilty of having only two types of missions: — Point Defense or a Fetch Quest in every single mission including the side quests (Agent Quest and Contract Mission). The objective of every mission becomes painfully obvious and predictable.

The padding in the mission objectives is blatantly obvious, Bioware has to be called out on this. Players are required to complete multi-kills, ultimate kills, and other generic combat hoops commonly found attached to trivial and unrelated accomplishments for the “Completionist,” and achievement hunters. These form the core of Anthem’s storyline quest objectives.

The worst, and best example of this are the requirements for the following main mission “Tomb of the Legionnaires.” The objectives are listed here: –

These are actual requirements to proceed with the main mission to progress the story, from scratch. The amount of pointless, boring grinding one has to do to advance the main mission, left me stuck for several long hours because I could not find World Events, Collectibles, and Treasure Chests. It is by far the worst mission that I have ever played in more than a decade of gaming, and this broke my interest and zeroed out my passion for Anthem.

Where is the Story?

There is a story but it boiled down to be a generic and unmemorable “Good guys stop the bad guys from taking over the world with a McGuffin.” The NPCs were lifeless and soulless in the cutscenes and whenever I encountered them. I could not engage with the story. There was no Bioware in the narrative of this game. None of the gripping the edge of your seat, expectation subversion, or even expectation fulfillment that I had hoped for.

The dialogue system is painfully barebones with two inconsequential choices that never impact gameplay or the state of the work in any meaningful fashion. The writing is poor as NPCs throw quips and puns as if this were a comedy show, hampering any attempt to connect with them. I found myself hankering for the four-choice dialogue system of Fallout 4 (2015), or Alpha Protocol (2010).

The Final Verdict

Anthem is a game that has a great deal of potential in its current form, but it leans towards a Co-op Action RPG than a narrative or lore-driven game. Its successes only become apparent after a patience wearying grind through highly repetitive main missions. What it does get right cannot make up for the disappointing shortcomings, leaving this as a game that needs perhaps another year to bug fix, refine, and further polish. Right now, its USD60.00 price tag buys you a USD15 dollar game, with USD45 dollars in potential.