Back in 2017, Anthem appears for the first time, taking away the breath of many excited and possible future costumers, promising an experience full of action and freedom and a wild world full of beasts, fighting against them with full armored suits and high caliber guns with futuristic effects and ease to fly, run, doge around the enemies and all over the world. Today, at May’s 10th, another trailer was released from the E3 conference and it was even greater that before, showing new characters, new lands, new monsters to hunt and even explaining what’s happening to the world of this game.
Anthem is developed by BioWare, the same studio responsible of the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchise, which makes the game promise to be a great sci-fi adventure with a solid character evolving mechanics to advance through the history. Another plus point to the game is the engine used on it, which is Frostbite, the same used in the same games of the studio and others like Battlefield 4 and 1, and Mirror’s Edge Catalyst. That’s why am going to list all the good looking things coming in this adventure.
-The McGuffing! The plot of Anthem it’s not fully revealed but thanks to today’s trailer and gameplay we can know more of the history. Looks like the world is a mix of wilderness and futuristic feats, thing we can know since last year’s E3, but even more than that, we know what the protagonist are looking for. The heavy armored and charismatic teams of characters are called “Freelancers”, people that have unique skills to fight against the world and dedicate to hunt and protect the anthem, but, what is the Anthem?; The Anthem some kind of mysterious force which is linked to the tools and technology that the gods forget in the earth and this force itself is capable of altering and create all kind of beasts and lands from absolutely nothing, being the force of creation itself. Since the gods are gone, the whole Anthem is unleashed and randomly creating all king of structures and creatures. This force itself is in risk of being used as a weapon and putting in danger the whole civilization, letting in our hands the fate of the world. The goal is clear, this quest of defending, in my opinion is the right mix of fantasy and magic and sci-fi technology, making our heroes not necessary the good guys, but a bunch of powerful people defending their existence from the ancient’s rivals.
-The Classes! As is said before, more content to study and one of the more interesting things to know about are the Javelins. A Javelin is the mechanical suit that gives a freelancer all the abilities and resources to survive in all the hostile situations in which they get. These suits have different effects and functions and it’s been told that exist 7 different types of Javelin; the first one is “The Ranger” that is the balanced type with multi-target weapons such a freezing grenades and a swarm of missiles, giving the opportunity of grown as the kind of character that you want. The Second is “The Colossus”, that can be considerate as the party’s tank, which have mass damage missiles and heavy weapons, besides an integrated shield and the most armored suit in the group. This two were showed in the first trailer of the game, but know we know about two more of the seven. The Interceptor is one of the new is there is no gameplay showed about him, but it have an explorer style, basing his appearance in velocity and supporting and The Storm, some kind of spell caster that have more mobility in air that the other javelins, with tele-transportation and some kind of energy field around him, using abilities to making him quite powerful.
The World! As we’ve seen on trailers, monsters are in everywhere and in all forms and sizes. Not every creature is a threat, but surely there enough aggressive ones to don’t let your guard down. Now we know that are giant enemies and creatures disgusting and dangerous that remind us a little bit of Half-Life 1, but of course, there also tribes of wild individuals that are not human and are named “Scrapers”. These creatures are presented as foes in some moments and allies in others, being and unstable and un-trustable presence around the mysterious world.
The Connection! There just one problem for some players and is that, as Destiny, this game requires full time internet connection, which it could help to the players to really interact in the game by destroying and affecting parts of the world that others can see, taking decisions as a community, but it can also be just a measure of insurance in case of problems, glitches, bugs, cheaters and statistics of the game, letting the programmers fix the problem in the moment that occurs. But fortunately, the party interaction is a choice of the player, which can be a solo player and enjoy the game by themselves, or making friends and teams and feel like a guild of authentic epic freelancers.
The moment Anthem appears in the screen of the E3 it turns into a promise that a new whole experience of truly freedom in earth, air and sea besides the interesting secrets and possibilities it could be found in there. The key word in the project is potential and surely it could be outcome as some of the best games of our generations as also it can be a truly deception. Personally I hope that they don’t make the same mistakes that Bungie did with Destiny.