A conversation about poorly reviewed games and the developers who worked on them was captured on social media over the weekend. While most publications were limited to a single developer sharing the game they worked on, one title garnered a lot of attention due to its launch and public management, Bioware’s Anthem.
It’s no secret that somewhere between Electronic Arts and BioWare, balls have been dropped when it comes to Anthem. Still beloved by many fans today, it was poorly reviewed at launch and continually discontinued. Of all the poorly reviewed games discussed this weekend, Anthem is the one that gamers and fans want to focus on.
Related: EA and BioWare to end post-launch support for Anthem, killing Anthem Next renewal plans
Anthem development stories are shared in a candid conversation about games with poor review scores
Over the past few days, a trend has cropped up on Twitter due to the reception Daedalic Entertainment’s The Lord of the Rings: Gollum received at launch. Most outlets scored the game very poorly, so game developers took to social media to share titles they’ve worked on in the past that had similar scores. Almost every developer takes pride in the games they’ve worked on, even if they don’t resonate with gamers.
The most memorable thread comes from Ian Saterdalen, the former developer at BioWare who worked on Anthem. Much of Anthem’s development history has been covered in articles since the time the game was cancelled, but some new information is hidden in the responses. For example, Saterdalen says Anthem was built mostly in 15 months, with the Javelin’s first mech suit, the Ranger, being built just three months before work began.
Other snippets of information about Anthem 2.0 or Anthem Next, set to liven up the game and brand with player feedback built into the design, show a turbulent few months for BioWare. Saterdalen even suspected that BioWare could have resolved it if it hadn’t released Anthem when it did, meaning that all hopes for future Mass Effect and Dragon Age games would have been dashed.
The main topic of most of the responses in this thread, and Much bigger on Reddit, is that Anthem has a huge fan base. The game has a Metacritic score of 59, and is unplayable for some people, but the world BioWare built, the way Javelins fly and fight, and the possibilities left intact still appeal to fans today. This shows that review results are not everything but also that sometimes delays are necessary. Anthem is the result of a short development cycle that could have been one of the essential MMOs in 2023 if Electronic Arts had given it enough time to cook.
