While we would prefer that Anthem remain playable and not face the executioner’s axe, the fact is that it will do so next year, which leads us to wonder just what really happened to cause things to go the way they did. And it’s that morbid curiosity with which we look at the first of a two-part video series from Mark Darrah, the former executive producer of the game, who discusses what he feels were the problems with the project from the very beginning, even before he took the helm.
According to Darrah, a perfect storm of circumstances combined to lead to Anthem’s creation: the hunger for more live service titles from EA (Darrah termed it as “an active disdain for single-player games”) and the core leadership of the Mass Effect series looking to do something new. Enter a pitch from ME3 game director Casey Hudson for a game codenamed Dylan, which would represent a new direction for studio BioWare as a whole and a way to blend its storytelling with always online multiplayer games – and naturally, the business models associated with that angle.
Darrah describes this proposed studio shift to live service as unwelcomed by developers and argued that Hudson’s vagueness for the game itself started to cause problems, along with what he believes was an active attempt to not name competitors like Destiny, which in turn meant that the game’s direction was too vague. This, on top of what Darrah argues was “a starvation of people” to work on the project in the face of most dev focus aiming at Dragon Age: Inquisition and Mass Effect: Andromeda, meant that when Hudson left BioWare in 2014, Anthem was already in a nebulous state.
Things weren’t improving through the intervening years, as Darrah described how there were meetings with limited invitation lists, locked drives, and password-protected PowerPoints, which Darrah argues didn’t help the team get fully aligned behind a design direction. Other bits of chaos with the project included EA being upset that the initially projected number of six Javelin suits couldn’t be hit, a demo that reportedly made EA’s Patrick Soderland upset, presumptions within the organization about how BioWare was working, and even the feature of flying being added and removed multiple times over its gestation.
The video closes at the point when Darrah takes over as executive producer, after which point part two will apparently go “into the weeds” about aiming the game towards its release. We expect more direct insight and a bit less professional presumption and educated guesses then, but for now the full video waits below.
