As June inches closer, so too does the next gameplay reveal of Anthem, EA's upcoming multiplayer RPG. While it was announced a few months ago that the project would be delayed until 2019, a presentation of the game will still be unveiled at this year's E3 and EA Play events, and BioWare's Brenon Holmes has taken to Reddit to assure fans that the team is working hard to deliver polished content for the big conferences.

The more we hear about the Anthem's planned features - an open world, co-op and RPG elements, a weapon progression system, an in-game economy, and a choice-based story - the more ambitious the project seems. It's perhaps unsurprising, then, that BioWare is putting so much work into refining and iterating the demo, given that the lead-up to E3 is known to be an intense period even for games with just a fraction of Anthem's scope.

Of course, the player expectations BioWare have to contend with don't just come from this extensive list of promised features, but also from the infamous reputation publisher EA gained in 2017. Star Wars Battlefront 2 became the poster child for unreasonable microtransactions when it employed a loot-box system many players saw as being pay-to-win; however EA has since made it clear that they will not make the same mistakes with Anthem.

E3 2018 will take place from June 12th - June 14th, which means that EA Play, which takes place a few days earlier between June 9th and June 11th, will be the first of the Anthem presentations. Some games often demo at these shows with gameplay that doesn't actually make it into the final game, though this doesn't seem to be the case with Anthem's upcoming reveals. Holmes responded to one Redditor by saying that, if BioWare were not showing at E3, they would do things in a different order.

The upcoming demo(s) will mark an important milestone in the lead up to Anthem's release, as some troubling news about the game's development has many people questioning whether the game will live up to its lofty ambitions. In July 2017, BioWare's general manager, Aaren Flynn, stepped down, and a couple of months ago the project's most renowned writer, Drew Karpyshyn, also jumped ship.

It's not all bad news for Anthem, however - the news that Karpyshyn had finished his story work before departing BioWare came as a welcome relief for fans of the upcoming game. Moreover, the last official word from EA' CEO Andrew Wilson indicated that the game's development was tracking well, even suggesting that the delay was based on portfolio considerations instead of a developmental necessity.

Whatever the reality for Anthem's much-discussed development, it will be interesting to see which of the game's many planned features will be unveiled in the demos come June.

Source: Reddit