On February 8, we reported that EA would decide the fate of Anthem that week. A dead silence came that week until today with a tweet from Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, who posted that Anthem Next is canceled and the team will move on to Dragon Age 4. A statement was issued by Christian Dailey, the executive producer for the sci-fi multiplayer game, on the company’s website, who dives into the news and COVID-19 impacting productivity.
A small team had been working on this new iteration of the multiplayer game since 2019, but they were informed today that they'll be moving to Dragon Age 4. EA held a review of the game's progress earlier this month, as Bloomberg previously reported https://t.co/eQmTq2oEjZ
— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) February 24, 2021
“In the spirit of transparency and closure we wanted to share that we’ve made the difficult decision to stop our new development work on Anthem (aka Anthem NEXT),” Dailey writes. “We will, however, continue to keep the Anthem live service running as it exists today.”
He goes into the difficulties of 2020, which hit the industry hard, especially the developer as people had to work home due to COVID-19.
“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.”
Before getting canned, the group of 30 developers was aiming to revive the multiplayer game after a failed launch. Technical and content issues soured the experience for fans and critics alike. If significant momentum were generated by getting people back on board of suiting up like Iron Man, then it would live on. But EA decided that it was no use.
BioWare currently has the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition lined up to release on May 14. It will include a remastered version of the trilogy with its DLC.
For Dragon Age 4, we got a look with a cinematic trailer two months ago at the 2020 Game Awards. That said, we should not expect to play the long-awaited sequel (the last entry being 2014’s Inquisition) anytime soon. During an earnings call in 2019, CFO Blake Jorgensen spoke about how it is might come sometime after “fiscal ’22.”
What are your thoughts on Anthem Next being canceled? Let us know in the comments.