It was not given the TLC it needed to achieve greatness, but there was lots of good content underneath its goofy exterior. You wouldn't need an end-game either, just some good DLC.Įven Mass Effect: Andromeda could have been great.

It's there, somewhere, buried beneath the game-as-service. But if you took those graphics and some of the better game mechanics and put them into a game with a truly compelling story, real character choices, actual dialogue options, romances, a space-ship and crew, etc.

Flying around the dystopian planet and unleashing destruction on your enemies can be fun-it's just an empty fun. And some of the mechanics are really quite fun as well. It's really a remarkable game to look at. Sure, many of the OG devs at the studio have gone on to other companies or retired, but there's still a core of talent there that is obvious when you look at the potential of these failed games.Īnthem is gorgeous. If BioWare used an engine like the Unreal Engine, with all its flexibility and support, and created sprawling single-player RPGs (heck, tack on some multiplayer on the side, fine) we would quickly be whistling another tune. This is how EA releases one failed BioWare project after another-by not listening to fans, by not listening to developers, but instead releasing games nobody wants built on engines that don't make sense for them. Now we have a new Dragon Age in the works that not only utilizes Frostbite, but also is apparently built around the games-as-service model. Frostbite is great for shooters, but everyone agrees it's unwieldy for RPGs, and has damaged efforts like Dragon Age Inquisition and Mass Effect: Andromeda.

EA needs to stop insisting that its developers all use the same engine and adopt the same business model. Of course, the use of the Frostbite engine is also part of this equation. If Anthem had been an actual BioWare game instead of this multiplayer atrocity, with a deep story and lots of interesting characters to get to know, it could have been fantastic. Meanwhile, BioWare can still make money doing what they do best: Creating single-player RPGs with dozens of hours of content, branching storylines and interesting NPCs and world-building.

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