"It isn't Destiny. It isn't Borderlands. It isn't Mass Effect": Ex BioWare lead says Anthem's vision for "the future of storytelling" struggled to come together because it had "no one really clearly saying what it is"

Anthem.

Former BioWare executive producer Mark Darrah has said Anthem's failure can be partly attributed to EA's reluctance to compare the third-person online shooter to existing successes.

In Part 1 of a series of videos titled "What Really Happened to Anthem," Darrah gives his perspective as someone who was working at BioWare when the game was conceived and through its launch. Anthem released as BioWare's entry into live-service in 2019, Darrah left BioWare in 2020, and the game will no longer be playable at the start of next year following an unsuccessful launch and consistently low player counts in subsequent years.