Anthem
Deeply flawed and frequently frustrating, but it sure is gorgeous.
Anthem is a deceptive game. From the first moment I stepped into its world and started meeting its characters, I was stunned by how gorgeous everything is. The jungles of Bastion are jaw-dropping, an alien landscape full of fantastic vistas and wondrous ruins. Likewise, Anthem’s characters are alluring. I was fascinated by how lifelike their expressions were, and the voice acting for the main characters is charming and expressive.
That’s the problem with Anthem — it coasts entirely on the momentum of its stunning first impression. Once that new game smell began to fade, I started to see Anthem as a derivative, buggy, and at times exasperatingly soulless world.
On a hostile, alien planet, the human race has etched out a meagre survival thanks to the noble efforts of a loose guild of exosuit-wearing warriors called Freelancers. A long time ago, a mysterious alien race shaped the planet by harnessing the Anthem of Creation, a mystical energy that permeates everything. Then those ‘Shapers’ disappeared.
It sounds exciting, but Anthem’s story feels half-finished. Fort Tarsis, my home base that I return to after missions, is a narrative prison where the story and characters are locked away from everything else.
I never really get the sense that we’re spending quality time or enduring hardships together, which makes these regular insights into their lives predictable and too easily won. When I should have felt a resolve to protect them, I was mostly indifferent — which is more than I can say about Anthem’s villains, who are given so little screen time that I barely understand their mission, let alone their motivations.
IN A BLENDER
As mission after mission blends together, I rarely have a clear understanding of what’s happening The story provides a never-ending supply of MacGuffins to chase — Shaper relics, ancient suits of armor, mysterious rituals. Anthem is so full of mysticism and ambiguity that it feels like an excuse to not adhere to the logic of its own world.
Fort Tarsis is also filled with secondary characters who have isolated stories I uncover bit by bit each time I visit. These residents feel superfluous and our exchanges are often awkward and hamfisted, like the time I pretended to be a delusional mother’s dead son to help her reconcile his death. Talking to these Fort Tarsis locals doesn’t open up interesting avenues in the main story or change how I interact with the settlement in any meaningful way.
HEART OF RAGE
The jungles of Bastion are ridiculously pretty and soaring through them with my squad before each mission is sublime, but the missions themselves are boring and repetitive. Whether I’m doing a story mission, a randomized contract, or one of Anthem’s Strongholds (20-minute dungeons that work like Strikes in Destiny 2), there are maybe half a dozen mission objectives that Anthem cycles between again and again and again.
Nearly every mission follows the exact same structure: Fly a few minutes to a location, complete the objective, and repeat that process two more times until the mission is over. Though Anthem’s world feels large at first, by the end of the campaign I had fought in the same handful of arenas and caves plenty of times.
It’s a good thing that Anthem’s combat is mostly enjoyable, at least at lower difficulties. Each javelin is like a typical RPG class, with three types of abilities you can augment as you loot more gear. I’m particularly fond of the Storm, who channels the elements into explosive area-of-effect spells that can
obliterate entire packs of enemies. Every javelin is fun to play, though, and their abilities erupt with all the flash and force of a nuclear bomb.
The heart of Anthem’s combat is the combo system, which requires that teams work together to first afflict enemies with a status effect from one ability, called a ‘primer’, before hitting them with a ‘detonator’ ability that triggers a combo and deals massive damage. It’s a lot of fun to pull off — not least because the sound effect that indicates a successful combo is so satisfying. Layering these abilities is necessary to efficiently deal with enemies on higher difficulties, so it’s baffling that Anthem leaves the combo system almost entirely unexplained. If I went into Anthem without knowing anything about it, I might not even realise it exists.
MASTERWORKS ALL
Now that I’m deep into Anthem’s endgame, the gear is getting more exciting at the cost of combat being more aggravating. Calling it an endgame might be giving Anthem too much credit, since the only thing that changes is that I have more challenging missions and two new Strongholds — one of which is actually just the last story mission.
Enemies rarely telegraph their deadlier attacks, which means I’m constantly being one-shotted by hits I didn’t see — or worse, attacks I did see and dodged, but that killed me anyway. Instead of flying around like Iron Man laying waste to my enemies, I’m hiding behind rocks scared to stick my head out in case some unseen attack is going to flatten me instantly.
As a live service game, it’s reasonable to expect that Anthem will change a great deal, and BioWare seems responsive to feedback. But I’m not going to hold my breath.
It sounds exciting, but Anthem’s story feels half-finished.