Bioware hosted a live stream this Friday with Q&A and answered the community’s most popular questions. I summarized all new Anthem details for you in this article!
If you are new to Anthem or have not been following my previous updates, I strongly recommend you to take a look at the Anthem Archives. This article will not talk about things that have been previously announced, revealed or explained. BioWare’s developers did talk a lot about the game, but during the live stream they explained many things that have already been explained previously.
Without further delay, here are the NEW ANTHEM THINGS from the Friday live stream!
The floating damage numbers have received a tweak-able option. In fact, three options. You can turn them off completely if you so desire. If you like having them, then you can also change their Size and Opacity via two sliders.
During the E3 gameplay demo we only saw the Ultimate abilities used once. These are the special best and most devastating abilities that are different for each Javelin. The Ultimates can be used after their ability bar is filled, which happens through dealing damage in combat. They are much easier to access and frequently used than what we saw in the demo.
A couple of interesting vague, but also clue-giving-away answers were answered with “We are not talking about Interceptor and Storm classes yet”. The questions were: Are there Swords in the game? and Will there be Cloaking
Armor pieces and weapons do have random slots with stats attached to them. This was to be expected as Anthem is a loot based game in which you are hunting for the next better upgrade. There are six tiers of rarity and quality. The names have not been finalized yet, but for now they are called Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, Legendary, Masterwork.
Emotes are going to not just be available, as we saw in the beginning of the demo, but they can be customized. For example, when you join a team in progress, you will be able to customize the animation that accompanies that moment.
Strongholds can be see as the “Dungeons” of Anthem. The devs wanted to avoid calling them that, because the word dungeon kind of inspires an understanding of an underground tunnels and narrow space. In Anthem these places include both interior and exterior. Strongholds are designed for groups of players and are encounters that should take somewhere between 35 and 40 minutes to complete and will include various main objectives and side missions. The Strongholds are multiplayer gameplay, but BioWare has inserted some meaningful content in them to make the journey more appealing.
There will be
no romances in Anthem
… at launch
Even though it was previously announced that there will be no romances in Anthem (at least not on launch), the characters you interact with during the story inside your Strider and Fort Tarsis will give you a strong feeling of camaraderie.
The giant thing, which we saw in the beginning of the demo is called The Strider. This is your mobile base. Here you can change your Javelin’s outfit and loadout and prepare for the next mission. The Strider cannot be manually piloted by the player. When you fast-travel across Anthem’s world, you are doing it via the Strider, according to the lore of the game. Also worth noting is that the difference between the Strider and Fort Tarsis is significant. In the Fort you meet a lot more NPCs, traders and can have all kinds of interactions. You are not meant to stay in the Strider for long periods of time. Your crew prepares you and your exosuit for the next mission and delivers you to the location you need to start from.
The appearance of the Strider might change over the course of the story a little bit, but you, as a player, are not allowed to customize its appearance.
The icons you see on the map are showing you your missions, Stronghold locations (the ones you have already discovered, you can fast-travel to), Replay options (including for the main story missions). Other major fast-travel locations are also marked on the map to make your movement as easy and pleasant as possible. Among these locations are also Points of Interest and Landmarks.
It is difficult to explain how big the map is. In the demo they crossed one sub-region. There are ten sub-regions in the game. Because of the vertical element, the devs refuse to give a static answer to how big the map is. It was qualified as “comfortably large”.
The map in Anthem is not just a flat terrain like in most other games!
Collecting Crafting Materials is done by harvesting special nodes around the world, including plants. Hunting animals and monsters is done for other reasons, though. When you have to kill someone or something, it will be a part of a mission, not to scavenge or harvest it for Crafting Materials. You are a Freelancer, not a hunter, so killing monsters for crafting purposes is not something the devs are planing to include.
You will be able to purchase a very small amount of crafting materials from Merchants at Fort Tarsis. This will not be done using the Premium Currency, but rather the secondary one (I could not pick up what exactly they called it – swet currency?)
The game does not punish you for getting killed. You can be revived by another player in your group or you can re-spawn next to the nearest re-supply point. Dying doesn’t take your loot away nor does it punish you by taking money.
Ever-changing environments and various atmospheric effects, combined with the big diversity of enemy types, will be the main tools for the devs to make Grinding fun. Chasing the next upgrade or that one special weapon with unique stats for your build, is meant to keep driving you forward constantly. Side missions and world events will help make things even more interesting.
Cross-console play is not currently planned. The devs are looking for a possible way to make it happen. There are known issues for cross-play between the two consoles – PS4 and Xbox One. Cross-play between PC and a console is also not possible for now. These things may change in the future.
Almost anything in the world of Anthem is deadly and will try to either eat or destroy you. The bottom of the food chain are the little critters we saw all over the stronghold in the demo. They are called Grabbits. They may be scared from your Javelins, but that’s why you never go out on foot. If you’d be able to do that, even the Grabbits would attack you.
There are, in fact, a few story related moments when you might step out of your Javelin while outside, but this is not something the player is meant to do when they will.
Combos are one of the biggest attractions in Anthem. They were a big deal in the Mass Effect series too and veterans would know why! Combos can be done when playing solo too. You will have abilities that can produce a combo without having to call a friend to join you. An example is the Freeze Grenade of the Ranger that we saw in the demo. The Ranger can throw it and then use its melee ability to trigger a combo.
There will be saves loadouts. Right now it’s still unclear how many pre-saved loadouts you will have per Javelin, but this feature is in the game for sure.
If you miss any valuable loot, you will have it delivered back to Fort Tarsis via a post system. This system, of course, will not deliver to you all the trashy items from common quality.
Anthem is scheduled to release on 22nd February 2019. It is currently available for pre-order in two different versions.
