Casey Hudson recently took to a blog post over on BioWare’s official site, and while he had some things to say about the company’s mission statement being updated, he also touched on how gamers will be able to play Anthem with randoms or with friends online and how players will be able to enjoy their story as a solo player as well.
Furthermore, Hudson feels that Anthem can bring a story that can be experienced with friends or by oneself, and although his proposed formula was met with questions and concerns, he believes that Anthem will be able to tackle both multiplayer and single-player storytelling without being watered down:
“I talked last time about Anthem being “a story you can experience with friends.” There were, understandably, some questions and concerns about story in multiplayer. Specifically, “what if I don’t want to play with randos?” “What if I don’t have friends that I play games with?” And, “I like to be the one making choices in my story—if it’s multiplayer, won’t the story get watered down?”
As a player, I worry about these things too—which brings us to the last line of our mission: become the hero of your story. In a BioWare game, you should feel like the story is about you. You create your own character, you decide what happens next, and you become the hero. I think the reason people are concerned about whether these things are possible in a multiplayer game is because it just hasn’t been solved well before.”
Hudson also explained that the team over at BioWare are taking this issue head-on and plan to structure Anthem accordingly to provide a solution for multiplayer and single-player storytelling to be in one game:
“With Anthem we’re taking this problem head-on and structuring the entire game design to provide a specific solution for this. We’ll be sharing details on how it works very soon. We think it creates a unique experience where you have control over your own story, but your story is set in an ever-changing multiplayer world. And yes, even though Anthem is meant to bring out the best parts of playing as part of an online community, you can choose to play through the story with only your friends, or even on your own.”
When Hudson said “we’ll be sharing details on how it works very soon,” I take it that we’ll be hearing about this system and more about Anthem sometime around E3 2018.
With all of that said, it looks like BioWare will be trying to tackle a community-driven multiplayer experience that can tell a story with friends or in a single-player package in a shared world, without the experience feeling watered down. Time will surely tell how all of this will pan out.
EA and BioWare are set to release Anthem for PC, PS4, and Xbox One sometime in March 2019. The full blog post that Casey Hudson posted up can be found over on blog.bioware.com.
