> Anthem... man that game had potential but just was not ready to ship. Was a ton of fun to play and I loved the bits of story we got but it really was just a tease of a story sadly.
Anthem came across to me that it had most of its story "filed off" at the last minute. I can't prove it, but Bioware was said to have been working on a Mandalorian game for years and so much of Anthem from the KOTOR-like macguffin that gives the title of the game to the underutilized Cantina in the main hub to the fact that AT-ATs (under a slightly different name) just show up in the middle of plot like you should have already been expecting them feels like Bioware in the very last minute had to pull every Star Wars character and Star Wars reference out of a game that was designed to be a Star Wars Mandalorian simulator.
At least as a player of Anthem, I think it's a tale of weird timing that EA was afraid of losing access to the Star Wars license in the wrong week, and also didn't anticipate that Disney would heavily promote a Mandalorian themed TV show not soon after the expected release date. As an officially licensed Star Wars Mandalorian simulator, just as or just before the first couple of seasons of The Mandalorian were premiering could have been incredible. Anthem hints that it was almost that in such weird ways it's hard not to wonder if EA and Bioware just got Anthem's timing wrong.
(It's also not hard to blame Anthem's weird timing for messing up Andromeda by consequence. Andromeda's team got retasked away from story DLC to help Anthem in whatever its last weird rush was, which in my theory is the "removing Star Wars from it" and I still think Andromeda was only one good story DLC from being among the best of the series.)
Interesting theory but there’s not a chance that it’s true. Anthem had been in development for like 6 years by the time the idea for the Mandalorian was even pitched by Favreau.
The weird story absence was due to the studio trying to make it one of those live-service “forever games” that would make them infinite money.
> Anthem had been in development for like 6 years by the time the idea for the Mandalorian was even pitched by Favreau.
People have been wanting to make Mandalorian-focused videogames since essentially the Star Wars Holiday Special invented Boba Fett. (See also all the Mandalorian armored classes in SWTOR.) I'm not saying Anthem was influenced by what would come to be the TV show, I'm saying Anthem was timed with coincidence that if EA's executives had sold Anthem as a Mandalorian videogame it might have been lucky to come out when the TV show did and got a huge audience. It's a weird twist of fate.
Also, yes the live-service pivot also is a reason to expect some under-development of story so that it can come out in later expansions, but also Anthem never really had a clearly defined expansion roadmap, so I think it was more than just the live-service game pivot that damaged Anthem's attempts at storytelling.
Anthem came across to me that it had most of its story "filed off" at the last minute. I can't prove it, but Bioware was said to have been working on a Mandalorian game for years and so much of Anthem from the KOTOR-like macguffin that gives the title of the game to the underutilized Cantina in the main hub to the fact that AT-ATs (under a slightly different name) just show up in the middle of plot like you should have already been expecting them feels like Bioware in the very last minute had to pull every Star Wars character and Star Wars reference out of a game that was designed to be a Star Wars Mandalorian simulator.
At least as a player of Anthem, I think it's a tale of weird timing that EA was afraid of losing access to the Star Wars license in the wrong week, and also didn't anticipate that Disney would heavily promote a Mandalorian themed TV show not soon after the expected release date. As an officially licensed Star Wars Mandalorian simulator, just as or just before the first couple of seasons of The Mandalorian were premiering could have been incredible. Anthem hints that it was almost that in such weird ways it's hard not to wonder if EA and Bioware just got Anthem's timing wrong.
(It's also not hard to blame Anthem's weird timing for messing up Andromeda by consequence. Andromeda's team got retasked away from story DLC to help Anthem in whatever its last weird rush was, which in my theory is the "removing Star Wars from it" and I still think Andromeda was only one good story DLC from being among the best of the series.)