The story in Anthem is 90% rubbish, with a couple of pretty good characters thrown in (I liked Haluk). It was CLEARLY mangled beyond recognition due to changes and deadlines, sort of like Destiny 1’s story.
Princess Zhim is a nothing character you talk to for like 20 seconds and then never see again. The Monitor is The Bad Guy ™, with no discernible motivation or personality or backstory or… anything. He is also absent for 85% of the narrative, pretty much appearing near the beginning and at the end, and not much in between. Owen’s character arc is ridiculous and extremely unmotivated by the narrative, without getting into spoilers.
The Freelancers aren’t trusted by the Fort, because they… lost a battle? I guess? Do people only “trust” and like armies if they always win? Has anyone at Fort Tarsis looked up the definition of a “freelancer”?
Much is made of the Shield of Grind, and how it will allow you to re-enter the Heart of Rage (aka run a bunch of the introductory mission areas again), but then it’s not really any big deal. You don’t even see any sort of effect around your javelin, signifying that it’s “shielding” you from something - it’s just a tchotchke that lets you do the final mission.
Fort Tarsis itself is a half a dozen large rooms where everyone is permanently stapled to the ground, and can’t wait to shout one of their 2-3 lines of dialogue at you if you come within 20 feet of them.
It’s a world that feels 10X less alive than SWTOR, and that game was restricted by the limitations of being an MMO.
I say none of the above with pleasure. The core feel of the actual traversal and combat, is good. You can see they had the kernel of something potentially brilliant with Anthem. But literally every layer of game they built around that central core, feels alternatingly unfinished or bad. The Kotaku article actually backs this up - Bioware devs were really happy with how the core mechanics felt, but the quest to build a game around those mechanics ended up being a mess.
Please read my 22000 words fanfiction “The Other Great Gatsby” where Owen aspire to be much more than a tecnician. And to get into the princess pants. And to do so he have to bend the rules, until tired of waiting, have to break them, and that put him in a spiral that end destroying him and becoming a different person that the one that risked everything for love.
(just kidding)
I guess people lost trust on freelancers, because they were part of a disaster that wiped a whole city. Sometimes people behave like that, blame everyone related to a disaster, not matter how fair is that.
The monitor want to give humans the god shaping powers. He is a humanist that believe in humanity. He turn into a monster when he actually acquire the power, because he don’t see himself has a human anymore and acquire other goals.
But, I mean, they weren’t PART of it - they tried to stop it, and a whole bunch of them died in the process. The narrative isn’t at all vague about whether people know who is responsible either; they absolutely do, because they attacked the city to get to the artifact that ultimately caused the “Heart of Rage”.
I don’t know if I’d say it’s accurate to call him a “humanist” haha, considering how expendable he clearly thinks human lives are judging by his actions. If he’s a humanist, then so is Thanos (except even Thanos ultimately thought he was sacrificing himself for the benefit of the universe).
I know the Monitor says he wants the power of the Gods to shape things as he sees fit, because he says as much. But the story does nothing to explain why he has this motivation. He is just Bad Guy™ who wants The Ultimate Power™, which is about as bland as it gets.
I’m still finding myself oddly hooked on this game. I say “oddly” because I recognize that all the criticisms listed above have truth, there’s some weird stuff going on in this game. I’ll never understand why I have three options for places to access the same storefront in-game but I still can’t drop a waypoint on the world map.
But the core experience, the feel of the game, is good to me. I’m still enjoying flying out and experimenting with the interactions between various weapons and powers alongside other players. I’m slowly plugging away at the challenges, but I won’t cry if I never complete them all. They’re just another way of keeping score.
But I’m on a break from Division 2 (which yeah, probably the better game) right now, because I’m still digging Anthem. It won’t last, but that doesn’t bother me. It’s fun right now.
On the bright side you might not have to wait all that long for a $15 copy, especially on a physical box somewhere. On the downside, the game might be dead by then if BioWare continues to manage the game the way they are. :)
Right. When I read the blurb I figured it was just touting an instanced housing/personal area like I said, mainly to make the Bioware RPG people feel like a purchase. Not that it would end up as also the only town, only story place, etc etc etc. And the game being a mash-up of more than one genre might have worked just fine. Some have. This one didn’t seem to have time to glue the bits together cohesively though.
This is the part that got me. Mainly bought the game with a family member as a place to go hang out online again. They’re only doing PvP in the old game, and my hands don’t hold up to doing that as much. We were hoping others from family and past online groups would show up and we could find a larger group. Nope. The one other family member that does like this type of game took one look at launch and said “no thanks, I’ll stay in warframe”. too. /sigh
From their end, how do you even do GaaS without building a community?
I’m still playing casually, but wonder if it is even worth my time to look for a community there. I figured I’d just run into people in pugs right? So far, I’ve done one group instance and had one guy join at the end and heh, we both waved on the closing timer. Highlight of the community right there for me.
Odd, that’s the one family called by level 5.
You know between the bad guy being a caricature, and the nature of your main mission giver … I now want to see an Anthem/Austin Powers story mash-up. Didn’t help that the one bad guy side kick where you did see the face, and was I think called a doctor? looked a bit like Dr.Evil, or Mini-me next to the big suit of main bad guy.
I do everything open at this point, so I’m pretty much playing with randoms full time, and that’s my community building in a nutshell. I give folks a wave and we get down to business.
Maybe it is being a female, but sometimes I want more than just a wave before getting down to business …
… or during, in this case in the game. ;) The lack of interaction does make much of the game less satisfying, combo’s and Heh look I just got a freeplay event that spawned one of the cave events! Nah, I’ll be soling it with three randos on the map who may be still looking for an event pop.
Well, I’m not sure if it’s me being male that’s the main factor, but I’m mainly just looking for a few fellow travelers to go shoot stuff full of holes, at least from randoms. If I could talk any of my actual friends into playing Anthem, yeah I’d like to have a little deeper interaction.
And how do you build a community without tools for players to communicate with each other? Without any kind of clan mechanics? To me, that’s the biggest single sign that Bioware has no idea what they’re doing in the multiplayer arena.
And that’s another thing - I’m playing on Xbox, so is just probably use the built-in party system if I wanted a little better communication and slightly more structured grouping. I guess with PC you have to go with Discord or something?
There is VOIP in-game, but it only works in groups. There’s no way to talk to communicate with people in the common areas (Launch Bay, Freeplay). And even in groups, it’s dodgy. I would guess that 20% of the population has it on to listen, and perhaps one player in 30 actually talks.
On PC, you either bring your own friends on Discord, or you’re playing with bots.
I would too, but the kitten chewed through my headset cord, so I haven’t done any grouping since the release. I know I have another headset somewhere in a box, but haven’t dug it out yet.
I’ve stayed away from some of the damage accelerating support items because they seem like they’d require more coordination than you get from the randos.
Finally got Anthem running over 30 fps in 1440p on my old system by lowering every single graphic setting to off/low …but only in stronghold instances beause overworld Freeplay still bogs at 10-30 fps.
Right. I am on PC. So if I want to see if some of the gameplay is more fun with coordinated builds, I’ve either got to just keep wondering, or maybe join one of the couple of multi-game guilds still recruiting for Anthem. But they are all looter-shooter guilds, and if you want me to be competitive in one, well … they probably don’t want me.
I’m not looking for deep conversation, and my gender comment was humor (go reread it with innuendo). ;) They could solve the “event here!” in Freeplay with an icon. But, there is a base minimum communication though to even fully use the existing builds that they don’t meet, imho. If a game meets that, I can usually build a friends list off randos from pugs and do fine for my group play needs. I can’t get there from here.
Unless you bring the group, the game provides: Solo alone, solo together.
