BioWare is ‘tearing down’ Anthem and slowly building it back up according to sources

There has been plenty of talk surrounding Anthem and its development troubles following its disappointing release earlier this year. A short while ago, BioWare announced plans to ditch its original post-launch content plans in an effort to completely rework the game. Now, sources have come forward to talk about just how deep that rework is going to end up being, although many of the details are still being figured out all these months later. 

In a follow-up report from Kotaku's Jason Schreier, BioWare sources have referred to the next version of Anthem as ‘Anthem Next', similar to Hello Games' rework of No Man's Sky. According to the sources, developers have spent “a few months just tearing it down and figuring out what needed to change fundamentally”. The active development team has been “rebuilding for a few months since”.

Unfortunately, specific details are still being finalised. Similarly to Anthem's initial development, there is no clear plan in place for the game. Instead, BioWare is in another phase of experimentation and iteration. Apparently the team wants to change Anthem's entire structure, separating the map into segments and breaking up the need to go back to Fort Tarsis after every mission.

Currently, the list of mechanics set to be reworked includes loot, missions, the world itself, difficulty amongst other pieces of the game. There is no clear timeline for a release and even how the update will be distributed needs to be figured out. It could end up being a game-changing expansion like Destiny's ‘The Taken King', it could be a free update to the base game (which I think it should be), or it could be pivoted into Anthem 2.

Anthem is still being worked on by teams across BioWare Edmonton and Austin, although control is slowly being handed over to Austin, which has more experience in ‘live service' after supporting Star Wars: The Old Republic for almost a decade.

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KitGuru Says: Hopefully in a few more months time, Anthem's update plans will have been finalised. We're closing in on a year since the game first came out, so hearing that the developers still don't really know how they are going to fix the game is a bit disappointing. With that said, it is good that there is still a dedicated team sticking with it and trying to make things right, even if that process ends up being very lengthy.

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