Anthem didn't have the "start many of us wanted," but EA remains invested in the title
Despite a rough start, EA firmly believes Bioware will eventually get Anthem to point where it's "something special and something great."
This is according to EA CEO Andrew Wilson, speaking in a wide-ranging interview with GameDaily.
Wilson believes the main obstacle Anthem hit from the start was trying to bring two subsets of players together to play the game. Especially late-game.
“We brought together these two groups of players who were making this emotional value calculation on two different vectors,” Wilson said. “One was traditional BioWare story driven content, and the other was this action-adventure type content. About the 30 or 40 hour mark they really had to come together and start working in on the elder game.
"At that point everyone kind of went, ‘Oh, hang a minute.’ Now the calculation is off. It's off because I've got a friend who sits in this other category of player. They want to play the game a certain way. I want to play the game a certain way. The promise was we can play together, and that's not working very well."
According to Wilson, two types of players came together to play Anthem: those used to playing 100-plus hour Bioware titles; and those looking more for an "action component" similar to games like Destiny. Neither side seemed happy with what was on offer late-game.
But, at it's core, Wilson believes the world is compelling enough to continue investing in the game. Plus, the company made "promises" to players it "intends to keep." Therefore, he is confident Bioware will eventually get the game to where it needs to be, because it has demonstrated in the past it can do it.
"The teams at BioWare will continue to come to work every day and listen to their players old and new and seek to deliver on the promises they've made to those players," he said. "That's what you're seeing with Anthem today."
Anthem players on PC are currently testing its endgame activity, Cataclysm, on the PTS. Originally set to release in June, Bioware held back its release to perform a proper test. If you own the game on PC or are a current Origin Access Premier subscriber, you can jump on the PTS and try it out for yourself.