Three and Out – ‘Anthem’

Throughout my weeks of attempting to play this game and an additional week of waiting for Anthem to stop bricking consoles, this was the main impression I had: Anthem sucks. I’ve never before struggled with finishing a game until I began my journey through Anthem’s mess of a world. And even after dealing with game crashes, wasted missions, boring fetch quests, and nonsense grinding, there was just a modicum of fun to be had in Anthem.  Ultimately it makes me sad for something almost good to be stuck in this maelstrom of a development hell with no hope for its salvage anywhere on this horizon.

Anthem made me feel both over-prepared and underprepared in intervals shorter than the patience I was left with after each session playing the game. Anthem’s gameplay gets stale almost immediately and feels unfinished at most times when you are met with what seem like the same conditions over and over: of shooting up a few hordes until the mission ends. The only other deviation from the almost fun combat missions are the tedious search missions that are akin to the Knuckles levels in SEGA’s Sonic Adventure 2. These levels were the bigger waste of time and nearly brought me to abandon the game entirely to relieve me of the Anthem induced headache. The best part of Anthem and most fun I had playing the game was when I was just roaming the map by flying in the Javelin. Flight is the best mechanic Anthem provides and yet it is also the most limited action in the game, which almost fits poetically in Bioware’s epic tragedy. The game world is lush and at times beautiful, with varying flora and wildlife that will fight back if you get too near. But in my experience, this was the only interaction to be had in the world. Anthem will greeted me with a two minute loading screen claiming it’s matchmaking you with other players playing the game, but there was never anyone. Playing Anthem was frustrating, and buggy, and it intentionally wasted my time in attempts to inflate my playtime. Above all else, Anthem was lonely.

The time I didn’t spend in my Javelin is in Fort Tarsis, which acts as the hub area for Anthem. It functions much like the Tower in Destiny, except it locks you in first person and the areas of the fort aren’t all accessible at the start. This is where you talk to the different characters and where the decisions are made. As a Bioware game, I expected some well written character dialogue and at least one or two choices that would impact my experience of the game. In the end, I’m not even sure with what I got. The only character that I felt was pretty well written (in comparison to everyone else) was Yarrow, who is a retired freelancer who now tells stories of those that have fallen in battle. His presence was the only one that felt impactful and his storytelling was leagues above what the campaign gave me. Dialogue works similar to Mass Effect, but Anthem rarely gives you dialogue decisions that matter. The conversations almost never branch out and I was never met with a decision that made me think any longer than five seconds, which is disappointing, considering this is the same developer that gave us the Mass Effect franchise and Dragon Age. Fort Tarsis was the most bearable part of playing Anthem only because I wasn’t dealing with the chance of crashing my game, and it was the place where I could bug Yarrow for conversations that should’ve been provided by the rest of the cast. By the time I came to the end of Anthem, I was met with relief – and it wasn’t because I ended the big threat or because I brought peace of mind to the people in Fort Tarsis. I was never compelled to care about anything Anthem made me accomplished. I was happy that the game was over and I don’t see myself playing it again for a long while.

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