BioWare looter shooter Anthem is officially dead, and looking back, its executive producer isn't sure he or the studio ever truly "came back" from it.
Anthem was never considered fantastic – it was largely thought to be fairly average - but, as highlighted by the swarm of folks paying their respects to the game as it was ultimately shut down, many believed it had a lot of potential that went to waste.
Executive producer Mark Darrah – who held that same role on Dragon Age: Origins, 2, and Inquisition (and was a director on the first two) – has been brutally honest about the game and its development in the past. He previously acknowledged that, a few months before launch, the devs knew they were targeting a Metacritic score in the 70s rather than BioWare's usual target of the 90s, and he now says he believes the game "did permanent damage to the careers of a lot of game devs."
In a lengthy new video released publicly on Anthem's shutdown day (below), Darrah says: "To be honest, I'm not sure that I came back from Anthem. I think that's true of a lot of people."
He explains: "Anthem did permanent damage to the careers of a lot of game devs, to the mental health of a lot of game devs. I think even with BioWare itself, you can trace some of the issues that it's had in more recent years back to this time period.
"I don't think Anthem is 100% to blame [for] everything that's happened since 2019, but definitely there are seeds of damage that continue to grow from that point onwards."
Since Anthem's launch, the only all-new game (so, not Mass Effect Legendary Edition) released by BioWare has been Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Veilguard's development wasn't totally smooth sailing, either – the RPG was previously called Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, and the devs even experimented with a multiplayer concept for it, but obviously, that didn't end up happening. Alas, its sales didn't meet expectations, and EA boss Andrew Wilson concluded that despite the "high-quality launch," the game "did not resonate with a broad enough audience in this highly competitive market."
Now, BioWare is working on a new Mass Effect game, unofficially known as Mass Effect 5. Details are still incredibly light on the ground, and there's no word on how long we might be waiting before it finally releases.
