Final week, BioWare introduced that Anthem, the studio’s ill-advised loot shooter from 2019, would lastly be sundown on January 12, 2026. This wasn’t a shock for anybody who had been paying consideration, however for individuals who weren’t, it was a shock that the sport hadn’t already been shut down years in the past. Anthem was a tragedy of errors. The loot shooter was a misuse of the RPG studio’s skills, and from the sound of it, a mess to place collectively internally. Two years after launch, BioWare introduced it was scrapping its deliberate revamp of the sport, and 4 years after that, the sport goes away endlessly.
As soon as the servers go offline, nobody will be capable of play Anthem ever once more. Understanding the tip is coming, I booted up Anthem once more for the primary time in six years. I had hoped that with time and distance, I might be capable of respect the sport for what it was. I wasn’t as down on Anthem as others again within the day, and even thought there was potential hidden below the live-service glut. Now, half a decade later, and having seen Digital Arts desecrate BioWare within the years that adopted, I feel I resent Anthem as a damaging detour greater than I did again then. However even the worst video games don’t should be obliterated.
In 2019, I attempted to see the great in Anthem. I acknowledged it for what it was: a trend-chasing sport probably demanded from on excessive by a writer in search of its subsequent live-service hit. It didn’t matter if it was pulling assets from the forms of video games BioWare was traditionally recognized for or if it was diametrically against what made the studio such a powerhouse within the western RPG panorama. Loot shooters and endlessly video games had been the present hotness, and experience and legacy weren’t as necessary because the pattern of the second. However within the margins, I noticed flashes of BioWare’s best-in-class character writing, and by god, its flying mechanics nonetheless really feel fairly unimaginable in 2025. However now that EA and BioWare are shutting the sport down, what as soon as felt like a studio attempting to make the most effective of a nasty state of affairs simply appears like a cynical try at becoming a sq. peg right into a spherical gap.
Anthem is the quintessential “made by committee” online game. It appears to be like just like the form of factor you see a child taking part in within the background of a TV present that’s simply descriptive sufficient to learn as a online game however not distinct sufficient to have any discernible persona of its personal. Every little thing about it feels prefer it’s meant to depersonalize you in favor of a spotlighting faceless, ugly swimsuit of armor referred to as a Javelin. You’ll be able to’t customise your freelancer’s look, the character doesn’t also have a identify, and the preset faces you select will present up in-game fewer instances than you may rely on one hand. Its binary dialogue selections really feel particularly written to don’t have any affect, relatively than even trying to emulate the phantasm of selection like the remainder of BioWare’s catalog.
The one actual expression you get is within the colours and designs you slap in your Javelin, and even the sleekest amongst them are some ugly clunkers that no quantity of customization can beautify. You’ll be able to change up your emotes, however they’re the identical handful each different participant has. In a lot of their different releases, towards all odds, BioWare has excelled in handing gamers the next stage of authorship than they normally obtain in big-budget video games. Anthem, in the meantime, doesn’t simply really feel like a pivot away from participant expression; it feels prefer it was actively attempting to stifle it at any probability it may. In 2019, I had some hope that BioWare would course-correct this in future updates, however now that these aren’t coming, what stays of Anthem feels creatively sterile, each for gamers and BioWare.
If you’re not flying round in your Javelin, most of Anthem takes place in a vaguely sci-fi fantasy fortress referred to as Fort Tarsis. Right here is the place a few of BioWare’s strengths present, with characters who present tantalizing glimpses right into a world that feels in any other case underdeveloped. Owen, the participant’s sprightly assistant who finally betrays you, may have been a basic BioWare character in a sport that afforded its relationships the identical depth as its different work. However as a result of Anthem can solely gesture on the acclaimed BioWare home model, characters principally speak on the participant, relatively than to them. Assembly Anthem’s forged feels voyeuristic, with its first-person perspective and lackluster dialogue choices emulating one thing like Disney’s theme parks which have a personality arrange in a single designated space so that you can work together with briefly as you cross by way of. Paradoxically sufficient, that feels acceptable on condition that loads of Fort Tarsis appears like an deserted theme park. Strolling by way of rooms that had been as soon as meant to facilitate repeatable quests is haunting, on condition that there aren’t different gamers that can assist you play by way of them.
As a lot as taking part in Anthem appears like trying right into a void, flying by way of its non-descript environments nonetheless fucking guidelines. The flight controls really feel unimaginable. The Javelins you may choose from are every big, clunky monstrosities, however Anthem manages to make them really feel weighty and light-weight on their ft on the similar time. Flight in video video games is straightforward to get flawed as a result of it will probably typically both really feel too gradual to be helpful or it may be so floaty that it may be onerous to take care of management and precision. Anthem hits the proper candy spot. It’s form of wild that the web spent so lengthy clowning on BioWare for Anthem’s misguided live-service aspirations and Mass Impact: Andromeda’s animations that we glossed over how the studio had grow to be an actual power to be reckoned with on the motion fight entrance. Dragon Age: The Veilguard is rightfully divisive, nevertheless it acquired loads of reward for its tight, fluid fight. Anthem is a dry as hell sport emulating tendencies it was years late to, however you gained’t discover a higher Iron Man simulator in the marketplace. That’s together with the precise Iron Man VR sport. Effectively, that’s truly your solely possibility now, as a result of Anthem isn’t truly in the marketplace anymore. The sport has been delisted from each on-line retailer, and bodily copies are going to cease working in January.
Once I performed by way of the early hours of Anthem, I had virtually forgotten it was imagined to be a multiplayer sport. There have been hints, corresponding to the best way mission aims had been unfold throughout massive areas encouraging groups of gamers to separate as much as discover them, however I used to be having an honest sufficient time dealing with the sport myself that it wasn’t till the haunting “matchmaking” icon confirmed up once I tried to start out a mission, solely to get no reply from different gamers, that I forgot that is why Anthem goes away endlessly.
In EA’s announcement weblog, there’s a Q&A bit that claims the rationale Anthem is shutting down and might be unplayable after January is that the sport was “designed to be an online-only title, so as soon as the servers go offline, the sport will now not be playable.” In the meantime, right here I’m, holding my very own in battles which, sure, had been clearly meant to be skilled by a number of gamers directly, however are nonetheless completely serviceable to play alone. However placing within the effort below the hood to make Anthem a single-player sport somebody may nonetheless expertise after subsequent January would require work that EA and BioWare don’t appear prepared to do. Nobody on the studio has been engaged on Anthem, and EA even confirms within the submit that flipping the change in January gained’t lead to any layoffs. So if nobody’s engaged on it in any respect proper now, why would they commit the assets to rebalancing the sport for offline play so it isn’t dropped right into a black gap?
One of many frequent refrains in Anthem is that freelancers are “robust alone, stronger collectively.” On the time, this tagline felt like a determined plea to BioWare followers who had grown accustomed to the group’s solitary RPGs that they weren’t being left behind on this uncharacteristic pivot. Anthem is a sport you may play with others, however if you happen to persist, you may play it by your self, too, proper? Effectively, not anymore.
Shutting down Anthem might be the appropriate enterprise resolution. If I can’t even discover gamers when the sport is in its last months, that in all probability implies that not sufficient individuals are roaming round Fort Tarsis to justify the price of holding the sport on-line. That being stated, it additionally appears like one final deluded assertion that the sport couldn’t have been something apart from what it was. It’s an act that asserts Anthem was all the time supposed to be completely a multiplayer expertise, an assertion that the sport itself insists wasn’t the case time and time once more. Ending the scant story content material that exists in Anthem, the beginning of what was meant to be a years-long endeavor, appears like scrambling by way of a sequence of unfinished design paperwork, with imprecise concepts written in massive crimson letters that it doesn’t really feel like BioWare or EA actually had thought of a lot. However even given the slapdash method right here, EA destroying Anthem whereas additionally scattering the studio’s foundational expertise to the winds marks the newest occasion of cultural vandalism this firm has dedicated on BioWare’s historical past.
No matter BioWare was planning was killed earlier than it acquired out the door, and now all now we have is a time capsule of company hubris, and we gained’t even have that for for much longer. Anthem had such a blind confidence in “the calls for of the market” that it forgot to contemplate whether or not following them was worthwhile. No person knew the place Anthem was going. After years of labor, the upheaval of a studio’s storied legacy, and years of horror tales to go along with it, it seems the one place Anthem went was completely nowhere.
