Despite EA and BioWare doing their best to push Anthem as the next big looter shooter, the game was ultimately unsuccessful due to various problems inside and outside the game. It doesn't mean players were unable to find some things to appreciate about it, namely the four Javelin exosuits used to explore and fight across the dangerous planet of Coda. To this end, a new poll on social media is asking veteran players which of these unique Javelins were their favorite while defending the walls of Bastion.
Anthem was released in February 2019 and was meant to be EA and BioWare's entry into the then crowded looter shooter genre alongside games like Destiny, The Division, Borderlands, and Warframe, to name a few. The game saw players take on the role of a Freelancer, a Javelin-clad mercenary in the settlement of Bastion, tasked with defending Bastion from the dangers of the planet Coda. Standing against the Freelancers was The Dominion, a hostile human faction searching for the Anthem of Creation and a means of controlling it in the hopes of ruling Coda.
The aforementioned poll was posted in Anthem's official subreddit by Reddit user Shawooze, who simply asked what players' favorite Javelin was -- the tanky Colossus, the ability-focused Storm, the quick and stealth Interceptor, or the balanced Ranger. The poll garnered over 1,000 votes from other users, splitting the vote fairly evenly between the four, with none of the options breaking 300 votes. However, the Storm came out victorious with 290 votes, followed closely by the Colossus while the Interceptor and Ranger tied.
It isn't surprising to see the positive reactions Shawooze's poll garnered as the Javelins were among the more popular features of Anthem when the game was released. The consensus among players and critics at the game's release was the Javelins were a unique and fun way to differentiate the game from other looter-shooters while offering familiar class roles for players to enjoy.
The rest of the game, however, was not as well-received by players and critics at the time due to a myriad of issues plaguing it at launch. Anthem's gameplay loop was considered too shallow for a live service looter-shooter, while bugs were present all over the place, whether it was animations not working correctly or entire areas and encounters not loading at all. Most of these bugs were eventually fixed and a relaunch of sorts, dubbed Anthem 2.0 or Anthem Next, was in the works at BioWare, but the plug was ultimately pulled on the revamp in April 2021, while the game, as it was, would remain live.
It later came out that a big reason for all of Anthem's problems was a development cycle plagued with issues, such as a rotating door of project leads, poor communication among teams, and extreme crunch. The latter of those became a key point of discussion for the larger games industry as more people spoke out about crunch, forcing developers like CD Projekt Red and Guerrilla Games to address it directly ahead of or during development.
BioWare has since said it was working to resolve these issues and is looking to rebuild its reputation with new Mass Effect and Dragon Age games, though no official release dates have been announced.
Anthem is currently available on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.