It's been awhile since I'd played but due to the bad taste Anthem put in my mouth I fired up Destiny 2. Jesus fuck it's so much better, the intro level alone is more fun than all the fun I had in Anthem.
And it can start out with a crash as a sequel because it did highly effective world building in the original.
I have played a lot more Anthem and softened on it in a number of ways. The core competencies remain good and big issues remain but with time, more of the world makes sense and what they were going for starts to become more clear. The one game as an influence that I didn't expect but really should have seen coming: The Witcher 3. Disgraced former protectors killing savage beasts in the Wild beyond the walls? But at every turn the beyond thoughtless design decisions. For example: At the end of every mission, you are awarded badges based upon your actions in the missions, and given XP for them. What are they? At that moment, no way tell. You can go into the Codex, while in the mission, I think, or at some other point, but when they are awarded to, did Bioware think to add a tooltip? A text summary anywhere listing out all of the mission feats achieved? Of course not! Its right next to the character sheet in the "good ideas we aren't going to implement because...reasons" bucket. in the Bioware office.
Why not have started the player off with a couple of easier tutorial missions, then have them engage in the Heart of Rage that goes wrong? Let the player choose where in the world of Bastion they are from, give a player a chance ala Elder Scrolls to pick a backstory, etc. it would invest the player in the story and the characters, the freelancers, etc. Slowly ease the player into this world of all new IP, rather than drop them in crash course and then ask them to familiarize themselves shock-therapy style?
Why do javelins overheat so quickly outside of combat, other than to make travel a PITA? Are they fat-shaming my Colossus?
Something else that bothers me. If there are SO many Shaper relics, why are they left to "freelancers"? Wouldn't survival require something more organized vis-a-vis the Sentinels? Make them more rare, or lower powered and give the Freelancers some other function in society.
I am enjoying it when you get used to the needlessly cumbersome mechanics, and reading the Anthem forums, there are a great many folks who are highly invested in it. Can the game outrun the poor decisions? Can Bioware patch past the baked-in flaws? I can't see it maintaining interest long enough to allow Bioware to code its way out of its 5 year old choices into a really good game, which is a shame, because the core is there for some great.
