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6 months ago
Anthem updates with a new Stronghold and mid-mission gear changes
Troubled looter-shooter Anthem has rolled out its first major post-release update today. Despite adding a new post-story Stronghold mission to complete, the centrepiece of this update is undoubtedly a quality-of-life fix: Players no longer have to return to base to change equipment. Improvements like this seem to be order of the day for patch 1.1.0, as BioWare plug up the worst of the wounds after…
7 months ago
Feature: BuyerBeware
BioWare’s awful response to Kotaku’s exposé pours petrol on a raging PR fire
Yesterday Kotaku's Jason Schreier dropped one of his explosive articles upon the gaming industry, this time revealing the sad, grim tale of how BioWare's Anthem came to be. It was, as has come to be expected from Kotaku's investigative exposés, a meticulously researched and cited piece that step-by-step broke down the maudlin development of Anthem, from the perspective of nineteen current and former BioWare employees,…
After playing nearly twenty hours, it's hard to shake the sense that Anthem's development was messier than BioWare might have liked. Today's report by Kotaku's Jason Schreier, talking to former developers, confirms many suspicions, and doesn't paint a pretty picture of the studio or publisher. There's talk of mismanagement, confusing orders from higher up the corporate ladder and that perennial EA bugbear; gruelling crunch. In…
BioWare have now officially and intentionally improved loot drop rates in certain Anthem activities, following weeks of griping from players that the looter-shooter is too stingy with the goodies. BioWare had previously unintentionally buffed loot rates twice, at which points players seemed a lot happier grinding for gear, then both times BioWare stepped in to say "Oh whoops that was a bug, sorry, we've fixed…
8 months ago
Anthem did nerf loot drops, but only after accidentally boosting them
If you were zapping around Anthem over the weekend and felt a patch had made loot drops stingier, well, it did - but only because a bug had briefly made BioWare's looter-shooter more generous than intended. Oops. While BioWare are still patching away to fix problems since Friday's official launch (and its unofficial "early access" launch a week earlier), they're also opening up about longer-term…
Have Anthem’s loading times been improved by the Day One patch?
Anthem's Day One (minus two) patch has finally arrived, with one of the big 'High Level' fixes being its atrocious loading times, specifically when it comes to what Bioware refer to as 'older disk drives'. But how much have they actually improved by? Well, I've gone and re-tested the same HDD, SSD and NVMe SSD I tried on Tuesday to see what's what.
While Anthem technically doesn't launch until tomorrow, and has been out since last Friday for Origin Access subscribers, the "Day 1 Patch" hit BioWare's sci-fi looter-shooter overnight. It aims to address many of the technical troubles which have been evident in the test weekends and early access, which include long loading times, crashes, freezes, bugs impeding quest progress, and some--but not all--of the other problems…
We put Anthem’s loading times to the test: HDD vs SSD vs NVMe
Anthem doesn't technically come out until February 22, but those who pre-ordered the game have been jumping around Bioware's futuristic Iron Man fantasy since Friday - or at least some of them have, as a lot of people haven't been able to get past the game's interminably long loading screens. Indeed, sometimes the game takes so long to load that you're too far behind the…
Anthem is out now, kinda-sorta - assuming you've got an Origin Access subscription. While the game fully debuts on February 22nd, subscribers can play now. Those with the cheap Basic subscription get a ten-hour trial, while Premier subscribers have been set loose on the full game. I'm also happy to say that some issues in the first hour or two aside, the servers appear to…
Blomkamp’s Anthem story is just an outrageously long trailer
The first thing I did after watching Conviction, the Anthem 'story' directed by District 9 and Chappie fella Neill Blomkamp, was to check it wasn't just a trailer for Conviction, the Anthem 'story' directed by District 9 and Chappie fella Neill Blomkamp. It's not. What I would swear blind is but a four-minute trailer for something I might watch on Netflix once I've run out…
Anthem to debut alongside a Neill Blomkamp short film this week
Anthem launches next week, or this Friday for Origin Access subscribers. For those stuck waiting until the regular release next week, at least there'll be Anthem: Conviction to watch on February 14th, a free live-action short produced by District 9 director Neill Blomkamp and Oats Studio. Set decades before Bioware's power-armoured shoot n' looter begins, it should be a great special effects showcase, at least.…
9 months ago
Following teething problems with last weekend's invitation-only Anthem trial period, from endless loading to laggy controls, BioWare have explain some of what went wrong and some of what they're doing. They say the full game has already fixed some of the issues players flagged, that this demo is based on an earlier version of their cooperative sci-fi shoot-o-looter, which is good to hear. And it…
Pre-loading has begun for the Anthem demo weekend, so you can download in advance if you fancy trying BioWare's new cooperative sci-fi shoot-o-RPG. Given that it's a 43.54 gigabyte download, you probably shouldn't wait until the demo weekend starts next week to get that going. Because I'm a total goofus who'll try any game which lets me fly around in a power armour I can…
10 months ago
All-flying all-shooting mech RPG Anthem isn’t far off now, and BioWare (via IGN) have shown off an early mission called Lost Arcanist in full. As the name suggests, it’s about finding someone who’s gone missing, and you can watch the crew ping from waypoint to waypoint, shoot some enemies, and see a lot of incredibly beautiful flora and fauna. You can see the full fifteen…
11 months ago
If you're curious about BioWare's sci-fi shooter RPG Anthem but have no luck with closed alpha invitations, hey, chillax: a three-day open beta is coming in February. EA call this an "open demo" rather than the usual "open beta", but a demo isn't open for only three days several weeks before launch so I'll use the technically-incorrect-but-widely-known term thank you, much to the chagrin of…
Do you hear the players sing? Singing a song of angry mech suits It is the music of a people Who'll soon be slaves to shoots When BioWare's Anthem alpha starts On the 8th of next month Sign up now to take part when December comes!
1 year ago
BioWare address Anthem’s approach to story and player choice
A handful of BioWare developers took to the PAX West stage last night to try to explain Anthem’s balance of singleplayer story and multiplayer action. The hour-long panel focused mainly on the factions and NPCs that your freelancer protagonist will be able to interact with and influence in the open-world action-RPG, including showing the ‘Our World, My Story’ trailer, which you can see below.
BioWare say that we’ve not seen the end of Mass Effect or Dragon Age yet
With all the coverage that Anthem is getting, you'd be forgiven for forgetting that BioWare had ever developed anything else. Fortunately, they haven't. In their Summer Update dev-blog post, the studio talk about what they've been up to over the past few months, including promoting Anthem art-books and comics at the San Diego Comic-Con. In amidst all this they did find time to let slip…
1998's Dungeons & Dragons adaptation Baldur's Gate wasn't BioWare's first game, but it was the one that really made the KOTOR and Mass Effect studio's name. These days they're making shooty-bang games for EA, so it's hard not to feel that Baldur's Gate lead designer James Ohlen parting ways with the uber-studio marks a chapter closing and an new one beginning. D&D is Ohlen's one…
BioWare took a hunk of Anthem to E3 in June in a gameplay demo, then only showed it behind closed doors to press. But now summer is here, they've flung open the doors to get a breeze going and oh ho! The fools! Now we can walk right in and see that demo for ourselves! No longer must we read our Brendan's impressions of the…
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