‘Anthem’ 2.0 reboot is not dead, despite BioWare drama

Yesterday was a wild day for BioWare with two high-profile figures who quit unexpectedly, Casey Hudson (for the second time in a few years) and Mark Darrah (responsible for almost all of the Dragon Ages, including the new one). While publicly this appears to be friendly, it has raised questions about the status of the studio and its projects.

The most curious move in the wake of all this yesterday was the reorganization of Christian Dailey to now lead Dragon Age 4, when a year and a half ago he was working on live Anthem content, then he was appointed director of BioWare Austin, where he received the task of a massive Anthem overhaul for a 2.0 style reboot. And now he’s suddenly in charge of Dragon Age 4, the studio’s most prominent project.

While Dragon Age 4 is its own story, Dailey’s move immediately caused the few remaining Anthem hopefuls to worry about the status of that reboot. Like many others, I just assumed it would die, since it already seemed dim in the first place, but that’s not what Dailey’s outgoing tweet seems to indicate:

That would indicate that you believe you are leaving the Anthem team intact and in good hands, and the work they have done so far will continue and not go to waste. So for now, the Anthem reboot appears to be alive, despite BioWare not mentioning it at all in their reorganization announcement.

The Anthem reboot seems to be getting wider in scope the more Dailey has shared about it in the past. We have:

• New locations
• New factions
• New strengths
• New missions
• New loot and gear system
• New Javelin and Skill Point Upgrade System

In short, it pretty much sounds like an entirely new game, and it remains a mystery in what form it will actually appear (paid expansion? Free update?) And when it might be. Anthem came out almost two years ago and we are now in an entirely new generation of consoles. In addition to all these new aspects, it obviously looks like Anthem would need a next-gen update as well, and it wasn’t even performing that well on next-gen consoles. And from the beginning, BioWare had only commissioned a small team with all of this, something like 30 people, according to Dailey.

At some point, if potential players are going to believe this is happening, we will need more than concept art and blog posts for Anthem 2.0, and I would love to hear who is leading the project now that Dailey is gone. I’m still skeptical that Anthem has a chance to pull off a complete change from No Man’s Sky or Final Fantasy XIV after more than 2 years, but I’m certainly willing to give it a go. And despite this latest news, it still seems that the dream is not dead yet. But given how often things keep changing there, who knows where we’ll be in a few more months.

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