BioWare's Anthem blasting off in February 2019
ZAP!
BioWare's multiplayer shooter-RPG Anthem will launch on February 22nd, 2019, EA announced during their E3 pressblast today. They also showed off the first big lump of Anthem in action since its announcement at E3 last year, with power armour, robots, spacemen, guns, a Spacebrit, and a big spacebug.
Anthem will send us to an alien planet as 'Freelancers' slipping into 'Javelin' power armour to shoot baddies. Shoot, loot, customise your Javelins to better shoot and get better loot, and so on. It's one of those there Destiny-esque "shared-world" shooters, with multiplayer letting players group up or just exist in the same world. And like Destiny, BioWare plan to add new stories, events, and so on over time after launch.
As for story, the marketing blurb explains:
"On a world left unfinished by the gods, a shadowy faction threatens all of humankind. The only thing that stands between these villains and the ancient technology they covet are the Freelancers."
Now for starters with moving pictures, here's Anthem's E3 2018 cinematic trailer:
"The Scars have put together an acid-based superweapon, so you gotta take them out," writer Cathleen Rootsaert said on stage before the gameplay demo, explaining the mission's premise in a tone that suggested even she thought it was daft.
Though Anthem's Destiny inspirations have always been quite clear, I suppose I didn't expect them to go for great glorbs of sci-fi word soup too. "Echoes from the anthem of creation" indeed.
I don't know whether you'll be relieved or disappointed to read in Game Informer's preview that it doesn't have romances.
Anthem is coming to PC via Origin on February 22nd, 2019. It will cost £55. For now, see the game's site and our Anthem hub for more info.
EA say that Anthem will sell cosmetic and vanity items, but not in random loot boxes. After the mess of Battlefront 2's loot boxes, they've been careful to pre-emptively address this topic with several games shown today.
Check out our E3 2018 tag for more announcements, trailers, news, and goodness knows what else.