BioWare teases Anthem's "disruptive" social features

BioWare plans to disrupt the industry with Anthem’s innovative social features - “It’s something we’re really excited about.”

During an earnings call last year, Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson brought up something he called Anthem’s “disruptive new social designs”. It seems the shared world shooter has an ace up its sleeve.

In a bid to find out exactly what Wilson was referring to, I put the question to Anthem game director Jonathan Warner - just what are these secret social innovations?

“He means all the cool stuff that we’re going to start revealing between now and launch,” Warner replies to me, deftly dodging my question. “I’m really excited to talk about our social features.”

After this, instead of moving on to another question, I let it hang in the air a minute. Give me something, I beg with my eyes.

“I will say this: one of the main objectives that we have is to remove some of the awkwardness of having multiplayer social interactions,” Warner explains.

“Making things really smooth, making things so you can easily join other people’s games without being dropped out, or squad up for the entire evening with a group of friends and have that also be an easy experience - it’s something we’ve been really passionate about. I think we’re making a really cool innovation.”

I’ll take it. Perhaps we’ll find out more during PAX West, where BioWare will also reveal details about Anthem's upcoming beta/demo.

Anthem releases February 22 on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.