Whether it's considered a massive folly or a missed opportunity, the story of Anthem will go down in video game history as a failure. BioWare spent years creating an iceberg of lore and backstory for its inexplicably unnamed planet, but players only got to see a small fraction of it emerge in the finished product. Like several other games that tried to ape live service titles like Destiny 2 or Fortnite, Anthem's unique gameplay hook couldn't overcome its lack of an endgame and generic combat loop. BioWare attempted to fix it with the Anthem Next reboot (aka Anthem 2.0), but Anthem is now completely dead, and those who were still holding out hope are left to ask why.
Perhaps the easiest answer to this question lies in the state of BioWare as a studio. The last console generation was not kind to the developer responsible for Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Jade Empire. Mass Effect: Andromeda was developed by a newer team within BioWare as the studio's main focus remained on Anthem, but that team quickly proved ill-equipped to handle the latest in the space series. While the game eventually got to a workable state, a launch filled with glitches and broken gameplay made Andromeda a joke. Publisher EA canceled the game's DLC, and Mass Effect seemed to be dead in the water. All of BioWare's hopes then rested with Anthem.
At launch, Anthem certainly wasn't as broken as Andromeda, but players didn't find themselves drawn into the game that was supposed to define BioWare's future. It was a looter-shooter without good loot, an endless game with no endgame, and a social game without many social hooks. BioWare's update roadmap gave way to emergency Anthem patches to try to stop the hemorrhaging player count, but there was no going back. The only way to fix Anthem was a full redo, and that's what a small team at the studio was working on until this week.
Why Was BioWare's Anthem Next Reboot Canceled?
Alongside the redo, BioWare was rallying around the next game in the Dragon Age franchise. It faced its own troubles early on, but all signs seem to indicate the game is coming together, and BioWare went so far as to announce a new Mass Effect game on the way. BioWare's mission, at the moment, seems to be turning the ship around, and Anthem exists in a past BioWare seems hopeful to recover from. Additionally, BioWare noted COVID-19 was a large part of the decision to cancel Anthem Next, saying, "working from home during the pandemic has had an impact on our productivity and not everything we had planned as a studio before COVID-19 can be accomplished without putting undue stress on our teams."
Despite a year of work from a small team, it makes a lot of sense to let Anthem fail and focus on the future. The small player base who might return for a second helping of space jetpacks likely pales in comparison to those eager to return to the adventures of BioWare's more popular franchises. Anthem's whole story is, ultimately, quite unfortunate. There was hype for the game before its release, and the flying gameplay easily impressed those who gave it a chance. At the end of the day, the gaming industry needs more games like Anthem: a brand-new worlds that do things just a little bit differently. Perhaps if Anthem had been a more traditional, narrative-driven adventure, it could have led to the many lucrative sequels EA likely envisioned.