Anthem open demo this weekend

[BustedAstromech]

I’m not sure if Anthem is the Dylan project mentioned years ago; I believe Anthem came together fairly quickly in response to Destiny. Maybe Dylan was canceled or folded into this? Or maybe it was Anthem all along.

I am almost positive the first-person town sections are done by a different team. This is 3+ BioWare studios and definitely Austin (the Old Republic team); they’re chasing Ubisoft’s distributed development model. Ubisoft is very very good at it by now and it still results in games incapable of rising above mediocre; I think BioWare is still in the learning stage. This is the next step of connection from Mass Effect 3’s separated single- and multiplayer games. Stitching together different bits like this is rough and might also account for the long loading if it wasn’t resourced far enough out.

[BustedAstromech]

I’m going to bring back the single thing that bothered me the most to see if I’m just odd – did anyone else feel like they had to look away in the ultra-close cutscenes with your ‘witty’ partner? He moves so close it felt like he was invading my personal space and I actually looked away from my TV – a novel experience in a game, to be sure, but not very pleasant or intended!

[notbov]

I think that’s less a consequence of how close they’re actually to your avatar and more having to do with first person viewpoints in general being way too zoomed in (whenever I think of Desert Eagles in FPSes, I just picture some idiot holding the thing up to his cheek)

[BustedAstromech]

Seems like they’re cueing off the cutscene direction of Far Cry 3 – we can use the mocap camera as a participant and act into it! – but that was really designed for villains. That’s probably a good way to describe it, it feels like a cinematic technique used to make someone look threatening.

[notbov]

ALSO! this is a side complaint but I’m so fatigued from people asking “BUT WHAT ABOUT THE ENDGAME” re: this game and others like it

I get this

BUT

I feel like this is a legitimate question to levy at games like these because they disproportionately put the interesting encounter design in the endgame

which is a whole 'nother discussion

[username]

I don’t know that these demos have helped Anthem’s image at all so it will be interesting to see how its sales shake out and what happens with Bioware in the ensuing months. I kind of feel like people like old Bioware enough that they’d hold out hope for the new Dragon Age even after Andromeda and hypothetically Anthem.

Bioware fans for the most part are rooting for Anthem to fail and the company to fold so that they can say I told you so. I think one could make an argument that they are some of the worst fans in gaming and their relationship with the company became toxic years ago.

[Drem]

Good physics.

[Grandpa]

Well dang, if it has the Beastcast in it maybe it’ll be worth playing after all.

[Sakurina]

I believe Anthem came together fairly quickly in response to Destiny.

Reactive product development is kind of baffling to me. Like what’s the pitch for this game? “Destiny but worse”? At least The Division has “Destiny for fascists” it can rely on.

[8128]

i think maybe destiny but you can fly??

i flew around in this and i thought it was pretty fun and i’m probably gonna goof around with it some more, though looking at my inventory and parts and loot and shit gave me a headache

i also couldn’t help but compare walking around the settlement place in first person to walking around in destiny in first person, and also comparing sliding the destiny-esque circle cursor around the anthem map to sliding around the destiny cursor on any destiny menu, and lol

[Sakurina]

you can “fly” in destiny, you just need a sword and twilight garrison

[Doolittle]

you can “fly” in destiny, you just need a sword and twilight garrison lion rampant

ftfy

btw, lion rampant + the last word is excellent, best feel this side of titanfall (rip titanfall)

[idiot]

every fps i’ve played since the decline of quake has felt like wading through treacle, what happened

[BustedAstromech]

controllers

[Father.Torque]

Your lips to God’s ears buddy

[BustedAstromech]

That’s why I’m so happy about Doom (2016)! Someone finally realized that if you mitigate aiming as the skill challenge on a controller you can bring the focus back to movement, and it even backports to a mouse with a few feints towards legacy fast+precise (the fusion rifle).

[Father.Torque]

I mean, the gauss rifle is instantly the best weapon in the game if you have a mouse. No one has ever been able to convince me that the superior movement of a stick (which is absolutely real) can make up for the huge gulf in aiming ability in any game that you could describe as an “FPS”. If you’ve got a first person game where a dualstick pad is the better way to control it, you’ve got something that’s not an FPS (Mirror’s Edge, say).

[geist]

I’m still playing baldur’s gate 2 and I feel like everyone firing up their videoboxes for some biowarein’ should probably just go back to that again/for the first time instead

[LWJoestar]

obviously the ideal FPS control scheme is stick-and-mouse

get on it razer

[Drem]

How about Border Break’s controls. Maybe not the finesse of a thumbstick but it could hypothetically have the degrees of motion.