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'Anthem' Development Shut Down For Good, BioWare Shifts Focus To Dragon Age, Mass Effect

Ewan Moore

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'Anthem' Development Shut Down For Good, BioWare Shifts Focus To Dragon Age, Mass Effect

Featured Image Credit: EA

Anthem has just taken its last bow. Electronic Arts and BioWare's troubled sci-fi shooter has been on the ropes since launching back in 2019, and now EA has decided that BioWare's time and effort is better focused elsewhere.

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In 2020 BioWare laid out plans for Anthem 2.0, or Anthem Next. The developer envisioned a kind of No Man's Sky-style comeback in which substantial updates worked on by a dedicated team would inject new life into the game. Reports surfaced last month that EA wasn't sure whether or not this was worth the effort, and was expected to make a call on the game's fate once and for all. I guess we now know which option the publisher took.

BioWare Austin studio director Christian Dailey announced the sad news over on Twitter, apologising to the fans and acknowledging the pandemic for its role in impacting the game's development.

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Anthem
Anthem

"I know this will be disappointing to the community of Anthem players who have been excited to see the improvements we've been working on," Dailey wrote. "It's also disappointing for the team who were doing brilliant work. And for me personally, Anthem is what brought me to BioWare, and the last two years have been some of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my career."

"2020 was a year unlike any other, however, and while we continue to make progress against all our game projects at BioWare, working from home during the pandemic has had an impact on our productivity and not everything we had planned as a studio before COVID-19 can be accomplished without putting undue stress on our teams."

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Dailey added that the end of Anthem means that the BioWare staff who were working on it are now able to lend their time and skills to other ongoing projects, including the in-development Mass Effect and Dragon Age titles.

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"Game development is hard," Dailey finished. "Decisions like these are not easy. Moving forward, we need to laser focus our efforts as a studio and strengthen the next Dragon Age, and Mass Effect titles while continuing to provide quality updates to Star Wars: The Old Republic."

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It's a damn shame that Anthem never quite got the chance it perhaps deserved. Here's hoping all the hardworking devs who put so much into the shooter over the past few years can be proud of what they worked on as they move on to new projects.

Topics: Dragon Age, News, Mass Effect, EA, Anthem

Ewan Moore
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