BioWare's Anthem was disappointing, to put it mildly. Coming hot off the heels of the underwhelming Mass Effect Andromeda, audiences were hoping that Anthem would help give the beloved RPG-maker the boost that it needed to regain some of its former glory, but sadly, the live-service looter-shooter turned out bland, uninspired, and rife with problematic monetization. Recently, it was announced that the much-maligned GaaS will be shutting down in January 2026, drawing its rather depressing saga to a close.
But while Anthem may not have had the impact that BioWare and EA had hoped for, it has managed to get by in the years since its launch. Indeed, against all odds, Anthem did cultivate a fanbase of committed players, who enjoy the game despite its well-documented issues and generally poor reputation. Many of these fans cite Anthem's flying and shooting mechanics as reasons to give the game a shot, and argue that these mechanics are good enough to carry a stand-alone game. These arguments have recently segued into pleas for EA to keep Anthem alive via an offline mode, but the gaming giant is far more likely to move on from the IP quietly, in an effort to close the book on this unfortunate chapter of BioWare's history. In the future, though, another EA game can pick up some of the slack.
Anthem fans' clamors for a permanent offline mode echo movements like Stop Killing Games, as players lament that the product they spent money on will become obsolete.
Anthem: Why You Should Give it a Second Chance
Though it wasn't an initial hit for BioWare, Anthem still has the potential makings of a good game if players and developers give it a second chance.
Anthem Might Be On Its Way Out, but EA's Iron Man Game Could Scratch the Same Itch
With Any Luck, EA's Iron Man Will Be a Suitable Replacement for Anthem
Though virtually nothing has been revealed about it via official channels, EA Motive's Iron Man adaptation seems quite promising. EA Motive made major waves recently with the stunning and well-polished Dead Space remake, which upped audience confidence in the studio. In addition to Dead Space, Motive has experience working on Star Wars: Battlefront and Star Wars: Squadrons—two games that have proven to have notably long legs. As it so happens, BioWare Montreal merged with EA Motive roughly two years before Anthem's release, so even though Anthem was developed primarily by BioWare Edmonton, there could be some cross-pollination in terms of talent, tech, and development processes.
All of this is to say that Motive's Iron Man project, while perhaps not a 1:1 replacement for Anthem, could give Anthem fans much of what they want. At the end of the day, the weighty flight mechanics and high-tech third-person-shooter gameplay loop are what players love about Anthem, more than its world design, lore, or story, so if similar features are featured in Iron Man, then it would be a more than serviceable concession in Anthem's wake. Given Iron Man's primary abilities, it seems safe to say that the Iron Man game will be quite Anthem-like, whether Motive intends it or not.
Hopefully, EA Motive's Iron Man Can Succeed Where Anthem Failed
Repetitive gameplay, a forgettable story, and questionable live-service ambitions are among the greatest reasons for Anthem's failure, but these problems don't need to apply to Iron Man. Indeed, given Motive's strong track record, the potential inherent in the Iron Man IP, and the lessons learned from the Anthem debacle, there's reason to be hopeful that Motive's swing at Marvel's billionaire playboy will be a strong one. The Iron Man project has been explicitly described as a single-player action-adventure game by EA itself, and if its story and gameplay loop are given the proper love and care, it could turn out to have all the good, and none of the bad, of Anthem.
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 61 /100 Critics Rec: 13%
- Released
- February 22, 2019
- ESRB
- T for Teen: Alcohol Reference, Language, Mild Blood, Use of Tobacco, Violence
- Developer(s)
- BioWare
- Publisher(s)
- Electronic Arts
