Author Topic: Anthem  (Read 5474 times)

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Offline Luis Dias

  • 211
Trigger Warning, it's BioWare's new IP. Their take on Destiny, apparently.

Have to admit, it looks amazing. Shades of Titanfall, crossed with Destiny... crossed with Attack on Titan? (some people have called it attack on titanfall, ar ar ar). But seriously, something as dark as the titans in this world would be an incredible experience. Big wolves and some weird goblins ain't enough.

Of course this is all heavily scripted and I don't buy it for a second the graphics will look this amazing at launch, but STILL.


 

Offline The E

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Scripted gameplay trailers are the worst. Why does anyone think that it's a good idea to try and script voice comms between players, when the end result always sounds stilted and bad?

That being said, I really would like a Destiny with a coherent storyline, so I'm definitely interested.
If I'm just aching this can't go on
I came from chasing dreams to feel alone
There must be changes, miss to feel strong
I really need lifе to touch me
--Evergrey, Where August Mourns

 

Offline 0rph3u5

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This is not a game for me ... too much is way off the mark for my interests... The use of technology and power armour as defining kit mechanic is nice, and welcome change from the absue of Clark's third law (despite it yielding positive results once or twice)

I really would like a Destiny with a coherent storyline

That seems to be the first "fighting line" out of the mouth of the EA marketing staff ... However considering Destiny 2 is not only taking up the challange to provide a better narrative, but has a scenario poised to finally adress parts of its mythos, we just have to see how comes out on top...
"As you sought to steal a kingdom for yourself, so must you do again, a thousand times over. For a theft, a true theft, must be practiced to be earned." - The terms of Nyrissa's curse, Pathfinder: Kingmaker

==================

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

  

Offline The E

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I really would like a Destiny with a coherent storyline

That seems to be the first "fighting line" out of the mouth of the EA marketing staff ... However considering Destiny 2 is not only taking up the challange to provide a better narrative, but has a scenario poised to finally adress parts of its mythos, we just have to see how comes out on top...

I am confident that Destiny 2, like the first one, will be fun to play but brain-eatingly stupid in the storytelling department.
If I'm just aching this can't go on
I came from chasing dreams to feel alone
There must be changes, miss to feel strong
I really need lifе to touch me
--Evergrey, Where August Mourns

 

Offline 0rph3u5

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Speculation about Destiny 2 will not serve us here....

Just ... I think neither of these games will be a positive entry into the "crisis" of current futurism, i.e. that positive or optimistic representations of the furture, civilisation and technology are now in minority and the main tool seems to be near-modern decadence imagery (e.g. there are little abstarct tools anymore - granted that was mostly filmmakers/showrunners could save on props but it is cool device nontheless).
* I am not saying we should be blindly optimistic or forget the ways we did and still mess up the planet or the achievments of civilisation (e.g. undermining the concept privacy in the name of efficiency or security) but -you know- it would be nice to see ways this works out for the better more often. Inspiration might be more helpful than constant alarm.

Destiny+ is a post-apocalypse, which can't move away giving us rusted out present day features. It's narrative is laser-focussed on the "space magic powered super-men" which are either going to save an (eeriely) absent human population from an encroaching enemy and restore a (undefined) gold age.

Anthem, juding solely by material avalible, is set on a frontier world the little civilisation there is crammed into a walled-off frontier town. It's protagonist are "freelancers", humans empowered by weaponized envoirment suits going out into the hostile outside for personal gain.



It is to early to say anything more, or to come to concluding judgement, but the absence of evolved civilisation has me a bit worried. But that might be just over exposure to the same stuff again and again with nearly no entry presenting anythig worthwhile (Horizon: Zero Dawn being a notable exception as it yielded at least both a worthwhile mystery and an interesting personal story).
This is the same reason why I lost all interest in post-Capella stories when it comes to Freespace and won't be making any strides into that direction anytime soon. Of Shivans and Men is already pretty post-apocalyptic and while it opens a lot of doors to explore (e.g. what does it actually mean for a Vasudan to be surivoir of the battle against the Lucifer at Vasudan Prime), it is most serious weakness (outside my ability as storyteller of course).

Maybe that is just the 90s Sci-Fi diet of Star Trek and Babylon 5 speaking, my fondness for the "in-between-stories" (i.e. while knowing what world-shaping events are taking place elsewhere to see characters outside the world-shaping circle deal with change in their problems or their powerlessness towards the on-going world-shaping) talking, or even my post-anachristic "voluntary association and commitment is better than both lawlessness and hegemonial rule" making itself known.
« Last Edit: June 12, 2017, 04:05:25 am by 0rph3u5 »
"As you sought to steal a kingdom for yourself, so must you do again, a thousand times over. For a theft, a true theft, must be practiced to be earned." - The terms of Nyrissa's curse, Pathfinder: Kingmaker

==================

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

 

Offline Luis Dias

  • 211
It all depends on the concept. Again, I'm interested in the "Attack on Titan" aspect of it, a trapped within walls humanity that will sometimes venture into the outskirts, where all manners of danger happens.

What is not at all clear however from the trailer is how this meshes with the technology that mankind posseses. So they are sufficiently advanced to have Iron Man suits, but somehow they refrain from reclaiming more territory because... there are some green weird unimpressive goblins and some big bears out there?

That makes little sense, however the story around the portal may have some clues. Technology gone amok and crazy everywhere, or more specifically, open portals that bring monsters from other dimensions or whatever. I don't like that mechanic from storytelling purposes, but at the same time, it's an unavoidable mechanic to get you to other open world maps.

Let's see how it unfolds.

 

Offline Nyctaeus

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EA + Bioware + Frostbite = disaster.

Trailer reminds me of Elex - Piranha Bytes upcoming game. Large mechs, exo suits, post apocalyptic, tropical wasteland and monsters. Looks like a good setting, but I won't buy it as it will probably suffer from many issues known from previous BioWare games, such as poor storytelling, repetative and boring sidequests, short main quests chain, and final explanation of all mysteries which will cause disgust [yeah... Leviathans!]. As a result of recent discussion with Col.HorRet, we agreed that BioWare is not actually gaining any lessons from release of each game.

I guess Bioware is still dreaming about beating Witcher 3... But those are only dreams :P.
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Offline Luis Dias

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I've seen this attack on Frostbite before.

I don't really get it. What's wrong with it? As far as I can tell it's a much better engine than UE3. Surely, it's all about how things are developed and implemented, rather than this particular tool? Help me out here.

 

Offline 0rph3u5

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Frostbite is a highly specialized engine, which does the stuff for Battlefield and Battlefront very well and makes it all look very pretty. But from what you can hear from other Studios than DICE, which have been pushed the engine as "company syngery"-thing, it doesn't have any non-shooter functionality (like an own facial animation engine, which is why stuff looked so off in ME:A).

Many of the technical issues with DA:I and ME:A can be traced back to having to create new functions in the engine from scratch at Bioware.

Sadly, Frostbite is here to stay. (Insert 0rph3u5's rant against photorealism here if you like)
« Last Edit: June 12, 2017, 07:53:38 am by 0rph3u5 »
"As you sought to steal a kingdom for yourself, so must you do again, a thousand times over. For a theft, a true theft, must be practiced to be earned." - The terms of Nyrissa's curse, Pathfinder: Kingmaker

==================

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

 

Offline Nyctaeus

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Read interviews with developers. Frostbite is dedicated FPS engine made for Battlefield, and devs had a lots of problems implementing things such as vechicles or large maps. I agree that it's one of the best engines avaliable, but not for RPG games focused on exploration. Here UE would succeed.

I guess Anthem is gonna be open-map RPG. Unless Dice make some implementations to make Frostbite suitable for support sandbox style gameplay, it will fail where Andromeda devs failed.

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Offline The E

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I guess Anthem is gonna be open-map RPG. Unless Dice make some implementations to make Frostbite suitable for support sandbox style gameplay, it will fail where Andromeda devs failed.

What are you talking about? Andromeda, for all its faults, managed to nail the gameplay pretty well, and DAI was a very solid effort all around. Having done those two, I'd assume that Bioware have found good workarounds for the issues in Frostbite.
If I'm just aching this can't go on
I came from chasing dreams to feel alone
There must be changes, miss to feel strong
I really need lifе to touch me
--Evergrey, Where August Mourns

 

Offline 0rph3u5

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@Nycteaus:
After the inital teaser I asked my EA contact "so bioware is doing bethesda rpgs now?" (Which if you know me is pretty much an insult), he responed Anthem would not be "a Bethesda RPG" nor a "Bioware RPG" - now from him these labels are quasi meaningless but it might be a good indicator that some assumptions maybe out of the window here
"As you sought to steal a kingdom for yourself, so must you do again, a thousand times over. For a theft, a true theft, must be practiced to be earned." - The terms of Nyrissa's curse, Pathfinder: Kingmaker

==================

"I am Curiosity, and I've always wondered what would become of you, here at the end of the world." - The Guide/The Curious Other, Othercide

"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

 

Offline Blue Lion

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I know it's not the same but I saw the Division in that trailer with all the scripted bull. Is it possible I'm getting less impressed by these types of games?

 

Offline The E

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I know it's not the same but I saw the Division in that trailer with all the scripted bull. Is it possible I'm getting less impressed by these types of games?

Possibly. But I'd wager that the trailer format, which immediately reads as super phony and weird, has to carry more of the blame. It just doesn't tell us anything about the game that would really grab interest.
If I'm just aching this can't go on
I came from chasing dreams to feel alone
There must be changes, miss to feel strong
I really need lifе to touch me
--Evergrey, Where August Mourns

 

Offline Nyctaeus

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I guess Anthem is gonna be open-map RPG. Unless Dice make some implementations to make Frostbite suitable for support sandbox style gameplay, it will fail where Andromeda devs failed.

What are you talking about? Andromeda, for all its faults, managed to nail the gameplay pretty well, and DAI was a very solid effort all around. Having done those two, I'd assume that Bioware have found good workarounds for the issues in Frostbite.
But they excluded some features like larger, procedurally generated maps and cut off some other plans. According to dev interviews, Andromeda was supposed be exploration focused like No Man's Sky, but with limited planet count. Frostbite was one of the things that cancelled this plans, and finally we have five explorable planets and one asteroid. Their quality is discussable, but it's not caused by Frostbite. As for gameplay, it's pretty good despite numerous bugs. Majority of them were fixed in 1.07 and probably after recent 1.08. Despite all the issues I enjoyed the game, but just after release, the Andromeda was unfinished and far below expectations.

@Nycteaus:
After the inital teaser I asked my EA contact "so bioware is doing bethesda rpgs now?" (Which if you know me is pretty much an insult), he responed Anthem would not be "a Bethesda RPG" nor a "Bioware RPG" - now from him these labels are quasi meaningless but it might be a good indicator that some assumptions maybe out of the window here
Thats a good news, but it's to better wait until they reveal something more. Neverending promises of innovations by Bethesda, Ubisoft, Bioware etc and further lack of any effectively killed any hype.
« Last Edit: June 12, 2017, 05:51:37 pm by Nyctaeus »
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Offline Blue Lion

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I know it's not the same but I saw the Division in that trailer with all the scripted bull. Is it possible I'm getting less impressed by these types of games?

Possibly. But I'd wager that the trailer format, which immediately reads as super phony and weird, has to carry more of the blame. It just doesn't tell us anything about the game that would really grab interest.

I mean I guess. It's also that Bethesda and bioware RPGs are all over the place now and more copies coming they all start to look the same to me.

 

Offline Firesteel

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The big budget Western RPG has become a flailing mess of tentacles as far as I'm concerned. Everyone needs to be open world and have collectathons everywhere. Playing Tyranny and now Pillars of Eternity is comforting. I don't have to walk 100 miles across the map to discover a place to fast travel for the first time. There aren't piles of garbage to collect for quests.

With that comment that Anthem "won't be a Bethesda or Bioware RPG" does that mean it'll be like DA:I and Andromeda? I wouldn't call either of those games Bethesda or Bioware RPGs.

I don't know much about Frostbite's tools but somehow I'm not surprised that EA is forcing developers to use an engine with a great renderer and narrow original focus to build massive RPGs. There's a reason CDProjekt Red built their own engine for the Witcher 2 and 3. There's a reason Bethesda is still using the junk that is Gamebryo and not IdTech 6 for their games. (Side not, according to one of Id's main engine devs the new Wolfenstein is on a modified Doom engine).
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As for the implementation of the Frostbite engine, I bet that problems were mostly related to the fact, that Andromeda team was told to switch for this engine when they had their game in development already. It is far easier to plan your work when you know which tools you will precisely need but when you are told to change them on-the-fly, serious trouble may arise. For Anthem franchise, I'm almost certain that the whole "Frostbite" thing was planned from the beginning (and we have no idea if this is not a completely new variant of the engine. And what it will be in a final product).

I actually enjoyed Andromeda pretty much, it's brilliant gameplay mechanics, decent characters (let's not compare them to the OT, they had 3 games, Ryder's squad was just introduced). Even though the soundtrack (crown jewel of previous ME games) was awful, generic and simply boring (which I won't forgive them. Dumping the styles of Hulick and Wall was a crime against youmanatee xD), which made big worlds of Andromeda even emptier. Random bits of cinematic horns, strings and some drums, vastly lacking synth tunes which created some most recognizable pieces of ME music.

All of that (yes, I know that Anthem and Andromeda are developed by different teams. It's still Bioware) made me watch the teaser without emotions. I'm not jumping the hype train absolutely. It's even easier for me that I have a strong aversion for post-apocalyptic worlds and especially all sort of mechs, walkers. Simply not my cup of tea. I'll just wait and see what they came up with.

 

Offline HLD_Prophecy

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I really would like a Destiny with a coherent storyline

That seems to be the first "fighting line" out of the mouth of the EA marketing staff ... However considering Destiny 2 is not only taking up the challange to provide a better narrative, but has a scenario poised to finally adress parts of its mythos, we just have to see how comes out on top...

I am confident that Destiny 2, like the first one, will be fun to play but brain-eatingly stupid in the storytelling department.

May I speak in Destiny's defense?

My perception of the storyline was always that it was deliberately obscure, and that was a good thing. It just required the fans to work out a lot of the plot for themselves by digging deeper than the surface and making (yes, sometimes arcane) connections. That's a quality that I like in games, and it was what I hoped to do with Lost (and, with luck, it's successor). Hyper Light Drifter was another game that did that well. Dark Souls did that also (so I hear). And Sync & Transcend.

But that's just my 2cents worth, and I've only played a little Destiny. Mostly just watched hours of youtube playthroughs and commentary like the wierdo I am.  :p :rolleyes:

EDIT: Okay, granted, the Grimoire cards totally should have been readable in-game. That was kind of stupid.  :rolleyes:
« Last Edit: June 12, 2017, 07:07:32 pm by PVD_Hope »

 

Offline Firesteel

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I'm all for allowing interpretation but Destiny's story problems were rooted far more in some questionable decisions made during development that forced things to be reworked from my understanding. That isn't to say certain pieces weren't deliberate. A lot of the lore and history about the Traveler and Golden Age seemed very deliberate and I'm perfectly happy with that stuff, it's a lot more Bungie needed to rush to get something presentable and had to make everything vague a la Dark Souls without being built from the ground up to be that way.

I'm far more worried about Anthem simply because Bioware is as much if not more of a shell than Bungie when it comes to senior staff. To my knowledge Jason Jones at least is still at Bungie and maybe a few others from the early days but Bioware bled what seems like all its leadership as Mass Effect came to a close and nothing Bioware has released since ME3 has even gotten to ME3's bar.
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