5 Problems With Anthem Currently Keeping it From Being Great

Problems that Keep Anthem from Being Great

Fetch Questing

Sure, fetch questing isn’t a problem that is only found in Anthem, but it’s still a significant knock against the game. BioWare is a developer known for its deep storytelling and infamous characters that motivate you to go out in the world and help them achieve their goals.

Unfortunately, in Anthem, you’ll find that you aren’t all that excited to go out and collect large amounts of resources or materials for anyone.

Yet, you’re being pushed into completing tasks like opening 20 chests, harvesting 15 materials, etc. if you want to progress in the story. By and large, this is a huge disappointment considering that some of the other story missions have a certain grandeur to them that isn’t present here.

Also, getting some of the end game gear will have you harvesting materials and opening chests later it seems silly to make players have to go through this sort of thing twice.

Problems that Keep Anthem from Being Great

Inconsequential Dialogue Choices

BioWare is its own worst enemy when it comes to Anthem’s characters and the dialogue options presented. When you have the caliber of games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age under your belt, it’s hard not to be disappointed with the characters in this game. At most you’re only ever given two answers to a question, and both seem to lead to the same conclusion.

Gone are the days of picking from an extensive list of branching narrative trees and having to live with those choices. In Anthem, whatever option you choose will always get you from point A to point B.

Nothing carries any weight to it, and while some of the stories help to flesh out the world of Bastion a little more, it does almost nothing to keep the momentum going.

Anthem has free story content coming in March, and I hope it brings more engaging characters and dialogue options with it. 

Problems that Keep Anthem from Being Great

Muddled Game Design

Anthem tries to blend multiplayer gameplay with the rich narrative of single-player storytelling but ends up doing both of them poorly. Matchmaking for every expedition, contract, and stronghold is turned on by default, but the game is insistent on giving you story beats and dialogue during missions.

So if you happen to load into a mission in the middle or have to load into an area because you are too far from your team, you end up missing vital story information.

This blend hurts whatever narrative Anthem is trying to give you and makes us question why this was implemented in the first place. It’s important to add that despite having three teammates, the game often refers to the player being the only one there. This feels wholly disjointed and is confusing for a game that has matchmaking on by default.

Problems that Keep Anthem from Being Great

Mission Padding With Grinding

Mission padding is an easy thing to spot, especially when it’s done poorly. Anthem doesn’t even try to keep the padding out of its main storyline, and it shows.

Most missions consist of fly to a point, kill enemies, fly to a new location, rinse and repeat. The flight between points is fun but offers nothing of value to the experience outside of extended each missions length by a few minutes. This stretches out already uninspired mission design and becomes exhausting towards the end.

In particular, the Tombs Trial missions are some of the worst padding we’ve seen in a while. Forcing players to go out and engage with parts of the game like Freeplay and side quests can be done in a more nuanced way that doesn’t involve stopping the flow they were getting into. It artificially lengthens the experience and only frustrates players.

The most efficient way to currently obtain end game gear is by farming chests since missions and Strongholds take too long and offer too few rewards. So even the grinding is rough for players.

Recently, BioWare patched out some of the chest farming runs players had discovered, furthering the divide between players and acquiring their endgame gear. 

Problems that Keep Anthem from Being Great

Load Times and Slow Menus

The load times in Anthem can be downright brutal. Having to wait over a minute sometimes just to load back into Fort Tarsis can really break any groove players get into. Even while just roaming around the world, certain areas requiring loading into which further breaks any immersion the player had while exploring the rather dense map of Anthem.

Most story missions have players traveling to areas they need to load into, which can be frustrating after waiting a few minutes to load into a mission only to have to sit in then yet another loading screen. Thankfully, BioWare has just pushed out a patch to reduce the load times, which definitely alleviates the issue.

However, there’s another problem to address.

On top of long load times, menus are sluggish and feel unresponsive at some points. While trying to salvage your long list of old equipment it is faster to do it individually rather than use to the mass delete system which takes an awfully long time to load. Compare this to a game like Destiny where players have instant access to their gear, map, and challenge screens with just a few simple buttons and you can see where Anthem falls a bit short.

In a game where repeating the content loop to get stronger, it’s important to put as few roadblocks in the players way as possible, and Anthem has a few too many currently.