Will Anthem be the death of swtor?

Wow...that's a harsh review if true...

Anthem won't kill SWTOR, but it should ensure Bioware Austin gets closed. SWTORs 'vast' development team will either work remotely, or be absorbed by another location.

I found it funny how the review narrator describes the choices of dialogue having no future impact on your character, because the story only has one direction it is going.

How odd BW would create such a bland story system for a game, when they are the lords of story. Oh well. That review is harsh, indeed.

EDIT:

Ahh. Love the point he makes here too: Repetition. "The repetition is so obvious the player begins dreading it, the game lacks the window dressing to properly cover it up." Sounds like Ossus grind. Doing one small area over and over and over. Awesome.

Yeah, all great points.

Clearly Bioware learned nothing from SWTOR, which is why their time is likely up. It's shocking how you put the same people who destroyed SWTOR in charge of Anthem, and you end up with the same problems SWTOR suffers from in Anthem...

Lhance and Tux,

The least of Anthem's problems is that the dialogue choices have no impact (though *cough* at many points in this game one could say the same).

As someone who has put in over 20 hours in Anthem, I can safely say, yes, the dialogue choices are irrelevant. You have the "aww shucks" choice vs. the "I'm a witty, snarky antagonist" choice. The choice is irrelevant.

But to BW's credit, they did not market it as a MMORPG. For example, they made clear there are no character customization choices outside of javelins.

The problem Anthem faces is that it fails, or at this point needs a lot of work, on its target and intended audience -- those who like Looter / Shooters.

Dasty

Well, one part that reviewer focused on later was the load screens and how immersion breaking they were. From a very technical point, that is bad.

He also went into great detail about some of the bugs. I am surprised at how many bugs Anthem launched with, well, I shouldn't be but... I figured as little attention this game was getting Anthem has to be damn near perfect after 6 years of development!

I don't want Anthem to fail, although I'd be a lying if I said I don't resent BW for how they dumped this game on back burners with zero fire lit under it. My resentment for BW has nothing to do with Anthem though, I have come to realize that.

But they are different studios, aren't they?

It was split between the Austin and Edmonton offices, though I think the Edmonton office was primary

I'm starting to think though the the source of many problems recently lies a bit higher up the food chain. We have some indication that EA is interfering with BWs choices of developing games (ex. their repeated refusal to let them make KOTOR 3). They clearly wanted something to compete with other popular shooters like Destiny to try and bring players back into the EA fold, so they picked one of their star studios to take a crack at it, even though it was a totally inappropriate choice.


That being said, there is a very low chance this will actually kill the company. There was a bunch of Kotaku inspired doom awhile back that BW had bet everything on Anthem (same time they said TOR development was ending to support Anthem, which clearly didn't happen (despite what it may feel like sometimes)), however they are already pushing ahead on Dragon Age 4 now that resources have been freed up. This is not the behaviour of a dead/dying studio.

Yeah, from what I've learned about its development story the Edmonton office is the main one. They've been working on Anthem since 2012.

It is getting absolutely roasted on YouTube reviews. I saw one last night that a place in Germany is already discounting it 20 Euros after just 2 days with bins full of copies. The good news (maybe?) is that they have plans to continue development. The road map has things for March and two more grayed out future updates. I'll wait. Other people can sit through the loading screens to get to their grind gate quests while they flesh it out months down the road.

It certainly is ironic that the same people that brought us KOTFE/ET and GC where choice was an illusion and grind fests brought the same thing in Anthem. Ironic or foreshadowing? I've always maintained that this is the studio's stepping stone project and it seems to have been exactly that for Ben Irving.

It honestly baffles me how people can compare Ossus grind in this game to grind in Anthem or any other looter shooter... those games are built on rng grind from the ground up and every waking moment you're not grinding away you feel like you're falling behind. Which is why after Warframe I'm not touching another one with a 10 meter pole... and they're seen as the ethical peak of the genre.