In BioWare’s newly published November update, General Manager Casey Hudson takes a look at what’s going on behind the scenes at the studio as the end of the year approaches. Yes, there are new (and unspecified) things going on with the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises, but right now, the primary focus is on the studio’s upcoming multiplayer shooter Anthem, which passed its alpha milestone back in September. “Now that we’re past our Alpha milestone,” Hudson writes, “we’re at the part of the project where we’re doing final tasks and changes, and doing a ton of testing and bug-fixing.”
As part of this final stage of tweaking and polishing, the devs have recently gained access to Anthem’s play-from-home build:
It’s a tradition at BioWare. Late in a project, when the game is good enough and finished enough to really enjoy it as a complete experience, we enable it to be played at home by our developers. It’s an incredibly important step, because it allows us to get out of the mindset of being at the office, and just be at home experiencing the game like a player instead of a developer. Everything that prevents you from loving the game becomes a task or a bug, so we know that when we finish that work, we’ll have something really special.
Of course, there’s still plenty of work to be done before Anthem’s February release, and the devs already have teams “working on entire seasons of post-launch content.” Hudson writes, “It’s scary and exciting to work on something on this scale and complexity, but we’re doing everything we can to make sure it’s an amazing experience for you.” We guess we’ll see if all that hard work has paid off when Anthem goes live next year.
In addition, Dark Horse Comics has announced that it will be publishing a limited-edition art book, The Art of Anthem, shortly after the game’s February 22nd release date. The book will be available for $39.99 US, with a special limited edition version also available for $79.99. If you’re a sucker for art books like many of us, you can check out a preview of The Art of Anthem over at Comicbook.com.
