[News] Anthem's rebirth is canceled and BioWare's game says its final goodbye

[SougarLord]

The multiplayer shooter will not have its promised rebirth known as Anthem NEXT. Among the reasons why it could not be carried out is the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

 

As we informed you a few days ago Electronic Arts is deciding the future of Anthem and today they have just published their decision: the game is dead, and its promised rebirth is definitively canceled, as BioWare has made known in a statement signed by Christian Dailey , executive product of the game.

 

The reasons for the cancellation of Anthem NEXT

 

"We have made the difficult decision to stop our new development work on Anthem (also known as Anthem NEXT). However, we will keep Anthem running as it does today. Since the launch of Anthem, the team has been working hard to continually improving the game, releasing multiple updates that brought a variety of improvements and introduced new content. Towards the end of 2019 we expanded that effort and began work on a more fundamental restructuring of the game. "

"2020 was a year unlike any other and while we continue to make progress on all of our gaming projects at BioWare, working from home during the pandemic has had an impact on our productivity and we have not been able to achieve everything planned as a study before the COVID-19 appeared, without putting undue stress on our teams. "

 

"I know this will be disappointing for the Anthem gaming community, who are excited to see the improvements we have been working on. It is also disappointing for the team that was doing a brilliant job. And for me personally, Anthem is the thing. which led me to BioWare, and the last two years have been some of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my career. "

 

"Game development is difficult. Decisions like these are not easy. Going forward, we must focus our efforts as a studio and strengthen upcoming Dragon Age and Mass Effect titles while continuing to provide quality updates for Star Wars: The Old Republic." .

 

One of the most ambitious games of recent years and one of the biggest failures

 

Announced with great fanfare at E3 2017 with a spectacular demo, BioWare's game launched in February 2019 and was very poorly received by both players and critics, being a cooperative action shooter that mimicked the style of Destiny game but that failed in many aspects, both technical and playable and especially content.

 

After promising Electronic Arts that they would relaunch the game fixing some of its biggest problems, a small team of about 30 people has been working throughout 2020 on this return known as Anthem NEXT, which has finally been canceled. As Jason Schreir featured in great detail in 2019, the game had a development full of problems, being one of the largest productions in the history of Electronic Arts, and also and more after what is known today, one of the biggest failures of the last years.

 

After this cancellation, the next big BioWare titles will be Mass Effect 4 and Dragon Age 4, for which we will still have to wait a few years, although very soon, this May, we will be able to enjoy Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, a remastering the beloved original trilogy, when everything went round for this company that has had two serious setbacks in this generation as Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem.