I got back into Anthem and the thought that’s been racing through my mind is this game worth me coming back to it? I’m a busy bloke and my time to relax and enjoy some games is important. The reason for getting back into it was I saw a post from United Gaming Australia saying that there’s new content coming out soon. The article was about the upcoming event called Cataclysm: The Oncoming Storm. In the lead up to the new Cataclysm event, they’ve also created a pre-cataclysm event that sends you into free-roam to collect crystals. It adds another layer to the game, and you get another couple of hours of interesting gameplay out of it.
I was wondering while playing, were these events going to bring the game back from ruin? It’s not an easy question to answer and while I was mulling it over I figured out what my original issue was that I had with Anthem. Before I delve into it though, let’s talk about a framework that writers or storytellers build a story. There’s a lot of frameworks, I know, but out of the numerous this to consider, two of the things that need to be thought about are, to either build depth into a small number of characters or build breadth, meaning a lot of characters and places but not much depth is talked about for each one. From what I can see, EA and Bioware had tried and failed to build breadth instead of depth in their approach to content and storytelling, they went with a larger world without depth. Where they went wrong with that is not having enough depth or something you could immerse yourself In. The small amount of depth they did add is not enough to bridge the gap between a mechanically great game and immersive and compelling story. This may have been because hey stripped out a lot of content to build up later with DLC. And a lot of last-minute changes they made to the story and name. EA has had 5 months to add to the story in any meaningful way and they missed the mark, again. The feeling of being burnt by the original release has only seemed to have deepened.
In saying that the basics of the game haven’t changed, the flight system is still awesome, the fighting is still fun and the game still looks epic and grand. Plus grinding out the levels to get a worthwhile legendary in Grand Master 3 is hard and requires a lot of teamwork to get through, which I enjoy.
To answer the question, is anthem worth your time? Well if you’ve played before the game before, I would say wait a bit longer. Not much has changed and I would recommend waiting until the Cataclysm event to see if there are any major changes. If you haven’t played the game before, I would recommend jumping in to check it out and to get some levels in before the Cataclysm event. It won’t cost you a bunch of money, because the game tanked so much at the start. This game had the potential and hype to be a triple AAA blockbuster. But now it’s a meme of people throwing in the bin. Let’s hope they bring it back like No Man’s Sky did.
Written by Jared
