With BioWare’s Anthem entering the shared world shooter genre that was popularized by the likes of Bungie’s Destiny, and Ubisoft’s The Division, it’s understandable that comparison will be made. However, did you know that Anthem was in development even before Destiny was released?
This little factoid was shared by Anthem Lead Producer Michael Gamble in a video interview. When asked whether the studio thinks it’s a handicap or an advantage that other studios have developed similar games like Anthem, and how they’ve learned from Destiny and The Division’s player bases, Gamble gave the following response:
“It’s interesting because Anthem has been in development since before Destiny even came out…and talked how games these days are influenced by the games out in the market to a certain degree. “
Note that the next line of text is from a translation software, and as such, might not be 100 percent accurate. The voice from the developer is drowned out by the French translation, but here’s what YouTube’s translation software spat out:
“What we (BioWare) really tried to do is tell a captivating story for people who want to have fun with other players. So we racked our brains to try to understand how we could make people play together and give them the feeling of being part of a group.”
This latter comment goes hand-in-hand with what Producer Mark Darrah said late last year where he mentions that “no one” has been able to nail a multiplayer game that has co-op and able to tell a great story.
You can hear Gamble mention the Destiny thing around the 2:45 mark of the video.
Do you think BioWare has been making Anthem long before Destiny was released? Don’t forget, the studio is also busy working on other projects like Mass Effect, and Dragon Age, while making Anthem, so this could very well be the case.
One thing we know for sure that Anthem will trump Destiny is in the DLC department, as BioWare has already confirmed that ALL story DLC for Anthem will be free, which isn’t the case with Destiny.
In other Anthem news, make sure to check out our first look at sniper gameplay, as well as a brief look at the Mass Effect N7 armor applied to Anthem characters right here.
And? Destiny was in development since 2009. But why would matter unless Anthem was alwsy a pure Destiny clone and somebody is getting insecure about that days away from their game going gold lol.
And that’s the other problem. Your game is coming so long, the Destiny bubble has long burst. But unlike the way Activision simply don’t want Destiny anymore because of the flop it is, Bioware is dead when Anthem flops, even though you could argue they are already long dead.
Duke Nukem took like 12 years.
FF15 took like 10 years.
Long development cycles mean nothing regarding quality.
But regarding when it first started, doesn’t mean Anthem didn’t draw some ideas from Destiny which is fine. Destiny isn’t complete and utter shit. The gunplay itself is fun. The graphics are beautiful and the music epic … yeah kinda fuck everything else.