As Anthem shuts down, the game’s executive producer has released a nearly four-hour post-mortem

Anthem executive producer Mark Darrah has released a video post-mortem on the game lasting nearly four hours.

Following a poor launch and the subsequent decision to abandon future updates on the game, Anthem was rendered unplayable this week, 7 years after the game was released.

Now, its executive producer, Mark Darrah, has released a new YouTube video in which he breaks down the game’s entire development, from its inception to the point when development of the live service element ceased.

The video includes Darrah recounting how then-BioWare boss Casey Hudson pitched the game to EA as a “new BioWare,” where instead of the studio taking years to make a single-player adventure that would be critically acclaimed, but didn’t have a long financial tail, BioWare would bring its brand of storytelling to the then-burgeoning always online, live service genre.

“What if FIFA, but BioWare,” Darrah paraphrases.

Anthem was an online-only multiplayer game developed by the Mass Effect studio and published by EA in 2019. The game, which was pitched as the beginning of a brand-new franchise from the people behind Mass Effect following the end of Shepard’s trilogy, was met with middling reviews when it was released.

Darrah’s video recounts the game’s tumultuous development, which saw Casey Hudson leave the studio entirely, with the reins of the project being handed over to Darrah.

Darrah also explains Anthem’s impact on the then-in-development Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which was “starved” of developers in the mid-2010s to ship Anthem.

Also mentioned in Darrah’s video is a breakdown of the game’s much-mocked pre-order spreadsheet, which broke down the multiple different pre-order incentives and methods of early access that players could pick from.

“If you have to make a chart explaining to the player which version they want to get, because there is nuance in that purchase decision, you’ve made a terrible mistake.”

Darrah discusses the game’s reviews, which he calls “bad.”

The PS4 version of the game currently holds a 54 on Metacritic, with the Xbox One version sitting on 65. Darrah claims that BioWare was targeting in the 70s, which would still be lower than BioWare’s standard at the time.

“It is a game that has a lot of decent pieces and a few not-so-good ones in a genre that expects those pieces to be a lot better than decent,” said Darrah.

The game was also a commercial failure, according to EA CEO Andrew Wilson, who said the game didn’t reach the internal target of 6 million sales, and that microtransaction sales were also softer than expected. 

Following the game’s release, it was announced that a small group of developers at BioWare were working on a soft reboot of the game, referred to as Anthem Next. This would have seen a focus on endgame content, as well as new social spaces, and looked to address other player concerns.

However, this was soon abandoned. In February 2021, just over two years after the game was released, it was announced that development on Anthem would end.

At the time, BioWare Austin studio director Christian Dailey said “undue stress” on developers caused the team to refocus efforts on the then-in-development Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

“2020 was a year unlike any other, however and while we continue to make progress against all our game projects at BioWare, working from home during the pandemic has had an impact on our productivity and not everything we had planned as a studio before COVID-19 can be accomplished without putting undue stress on our teams.” he explained.

“I know this will be disappointing to the community of Anthem players who have been excited to see the improvements we’ve been working on. It’s also disappointing for the team who were doing brilliant work. And for me personally, Anthem is what brought me to BioWare, and the last two years have been some of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my career.”

Anthem’s failure caused a ripple effect across EA. According to a Bloomberg report, Dragon Age: The Veilguard was due to have a multiplayer component, but the failure of Anthem convinced EA to allow the studio to abandon it in favour of an entirely single-player experience. 

However, some aspects of this multiplayer design philosophy were still evident in the final game, which many cited as a reason for the RPG’s middling reviews.

BioWare is currently working on the next game in the Mass Effect franchise.