Anthemwas mired in problems from the very beginning.Pushed to work with an unfamiliar engine in an unfamiliar genre, BioWare was constantly behind schedule and struggling to pinpoint what it wanted the game to be.
But developers have clawed back from worse. So, despite its less-than-ideal critical reception and the immediate struggle to maintain players following its tumultuous launch, the team got to work on rebooting the game in hopes of pulling off a historic redemption arc. IfNo Man’s Sky,Battlefront 2, andFinal Fantasy 14can step back from the brink, surely Anthem could as well? Two years later, development ceased, and BioWare moved on. Five years after that,it’s being rendered completely unplayable.
Anthem was codenamed Dylan, after Bob Dylan, as BioWare hoped it would be talked about for years to come. In a way, they got their wish, as it became a benchmark for failure.
Anthem might not have been BioWare’s best work, but it’s heartbreaking to imagine a chapter of its history—however infamous—being lost forever. It’s a chapter that I want to experience while I still can, in the few months we have left; the ill-fitting puzzle piece betweenMass Effect AndromedaandDragon Age: The Veilguard, the crucial bridge between the BioWare of old and the BioWare of today.
Walking through that history first-hand paints a much clearer picture than poring through old articles ever could, so against my better judgement, after years of apathy towards this game, I’m taking the dive.
For $5.99, You May As Well Try Anthem At Least Once
You can’t buy Anthem anymore, at least not on PC, and it never came to Steam, which I can’t imagine ever helped things. The only way to experience it anymore is through the EA Play subscription service.
That’s fine. Odds are, I’m not going to spend dozens of hours in Anthem’s notoriously grindy and uneventful endgame—nobody else did. That’s why BioWare’s experimental turn into multiplayer is going out like a whoopee cushion. Instead, with the campaign clocking in at around 14 hours, I’ll probably be done in a week or two, satisfying my morbid curiosity.
I’m not sure it’ll be an enjoyable 14 hours, or if I’ll ever look back on the game fondly when it’s shuttered, but I know for a fact that it will always gnaw at me if an entire BioWare game is lost to time and I never bothered to try it, especially when trying it only costs six bucks. Maybe it’ll come back online one day, but I’m not holding my breath. I’ve been given a deadline—2026.
There’s a finality to this playthrough, barreling towards the finish line knowing that if I don’t reach it now, I never will. It’s an oddly haunting way to play a game, wandering through vast, empty servers that should be bustling with activity, while a timer silently ticks away. If nothing else, playing through Anthem in one last hurrah before it disappears will be a unique experience that makes pushing through even an awful live-service flop like this memorable.
I’ll always be upset I never did the same withConcord. Watching as the few players left behind rushed to get every achievement before it was lost forever was captivating. Complaints vanished almost immediately and were replaced by a camaraderie I never would’ve expected from such a disastrous and unappreciated game that had failed entirely to foster a community. Everyone was so distracted from its problems because they were caught in a flash of gaming history—a moment that can never be replicated.
I know I’ll probably find Anthem tedious (even if it does star Catherine Tate and Joe Lo Truglio), but that same camaraderie has sprung up again, and I’d love to get in on the ground floor this time. Games should never be ripped away forever, and I hope it comes back one day, so that BioWare’s history can feel complete. But if that never happens, I’d at least like something to remember it by.
