Here is everything that was revealed about ANTHEM at today’s EA Play special event: Launch Date, New co-op gameplay demo, all four Classes revealed, Co-op and Single Player and more!
Note: All images are taken from the live event. Quality is not perfect due to EA stream’s low bitrate.
This game strives to be something new and unique – not an MMO, not a multiplayer game with stories “sort of pushed on the side”. Not an experience you have had until now! Something different and unique!
The three Bioware developers that revealed all the new details about the game on the EA Play 2018 stage today were general manager Casey Hudson (who recently returned to work at Bioware), executive producer Mark Darrah and lead writer Cathleen Rootsaert.
Our World, My Story
The main goal for Anthem, according to Hudson, is for the studio to create a brand whole new dynamic living and breathing world for people to discover. Something unseen in any other game before. This world will be shared between all players and it will be constantly changing based on player actions and world-wide events.
In a lot of multiplayer games the personal story of the player and your interactions with the various characters you meet and interact with are diluted. Bioware has gone a step further by building a solution of this problem by integrating all of the story with the core of the game.
Everything in the world is shared, including the weather, the changing day time, the world-shaping and altering events. What you see in Anthem’s world, is the same as what everyone else sees.
Once you are done with your mission, though, you come back to your base. This is where your personal and private experience starts. At these places you will be able to turn your rewards, switch your Javelin exosuit (more on that later!), speak to the various NPCs, pick up new missions… you get to experience the consequences of your choices and actions.
The game is designed so it can receive new stories for years to come. It is not news that Anthem wants to be a game service for a long period of time. These stories could be a new event, continuation of a previous story-driven “chapter” or “episode” or perhaps even a little side-step allowing you to explore a character you have encountered before, describes lead writer Cathleen Rootsaert. Unlike with Mass Effect: Andromeda and even the Dragon Age series, in Anthem there will always be a new story coming in the future.
Anthem’s Lore
At the heart of the game is a world left unfinished by the Gods. But the Gods left behind their massive tools, which are in a constant conflict with this force called “The Anthem of Creation”.
It is the chaos resulting of these two things pushing against each other that causes the world to be constantly reshaped in new and unpredictable ways.
Violent storms, gigantic monsters, horrible creatures – the world is extremely dangerous. This forces you to wear a special suit – a powerful armor. Here come the Javelins. They are special highly customizable exosuits that you have to wear when venturing to the shared world. Otherwise the wilderness and constant dangers will simply kill you.
The Four Classes
You enter Anthem’s world as a freelancer. Uniquely skilled to pilot the exosuits called Javelins. Each exosuit is different in terms of mobility, customization, weaponry, armor strength and so on. You will not be just walking and running, but also flying and swimming too.
The suits are made on purpose to look like they are built from materials of the world. There are four standard classes of Javelins.
- Ranger – all-around balanced class for close combat and one-on-one combat.
- Colossus – Heavy armor tank-like class. Designed to protect others around while dealing devastating damage.
- Interceptor – not revealed in details yet. Looks like it could be a stealthy class with some support abilities and/or crowd-control skills.
- Storm – not revealed in details yet. Looks like it is some sort of a support class with crowd control abilities and some protective shields for the party.
The different weapons and abilities can be used in conjunctions to produce a powerful combo – much like in the Mass Effect series. Combos work in the following way: You use one ability as an activator or a “primer” and then a second ability to activate the the combo.
All four Javelins can be customized very heavily – different looks, different gear and attachments, even the geometry can be altered. You are expected to use these exosuits for a very long period of time, so the dev team is giving you the opportunity to make it feel like it’s your own.
As announced earlier, Anthem will allow you to play the game solo. Today the devs confirmed that if you choose this option, you might find some missions in the shared world a little more difficult and your progress through them would slower.
No Lootboxes!
Anthem will feature cosmetic monetization only. The game will offer ONLY appearance altering items available for purchase with real-life money. There will be no lootboxes at all. You will always know and see exactly what you are paying for.
Casey Hudson confirmed that the game will not feature “buy to win” items or things that will affect your gameplay performance and improve or upgrade your exosuits in a way that will give you advantage over other players. His exact words were “No lootboxes, no ability to pay for power. No ability to spend money on gameplay advantage in Anthem”.
Combat Gameplay and the HUD (UI)
The gameplay section you can watch from the attached video to this article. There were a few new abilities and weaponry demonstrated, but it’s too early to go into details. Maybe I’ll leave that for another article down the road. One thing I would like to point out is the way damage is illustrated – through multiple damage numbers flying out of the target you are hitting. There are also different colors for different types of damage. It could be related to combo abilities or different types of attacks – melee, ranged, energy and other things like that. The types of attacks have not yet been revealed, so this is just an example.
What I want to show and tell you here is the new info and visuals we got on the UI of the game. The HUD seems to be dynamic. This is typical for many modern games, including other Bioware titles, such as Mass Effect and Star Wars: The Old Republic. Dynamic means that for different scenes and moments differents elements might be shown or hidden.
What we can see on the video and on the screenshot here is that in the top middle we have a compass with important and special locations and objectives marked. In the top right corner we have the missions with their objectives.
Below that in the bottom right corner we see the weapons arsenal of the player together with the special abilities and their shortcuts. On the 2017 demo these abilities were located in the middle. It is unknown at the moment if the UI can be customized so you can place different parts wherever you please or perhaps the devs decided to free up some space in the middle, where mos of the action is.
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In the bottom middle of the screen you will see the subtitles from dialogues and voice coms with other characters.
RELEASE DATE AND TRAILER
Anthem launches on 22nd February 2019!
