Anthem Angry Rant! - Extended Review Discussion 

My only complaint on Anthem is that the whole gameplay ruins my loading screen immersion.

My only complain on Anthem is that the whole gameplay ruins my loading screen immersion.

6 years in development, and not one gun has a unique model. Wow.

I sent a letter to EA asking their executives to be Pall Bearers at my funeral. That way they can let me down one last time.

"Cut it, but we might sell it to 'em later." EA in a sentence.

I feel like talking about this game is more fun than actually playing it.

Your choices DO have consequences....just ask someone who bought Anthem.

There are no STATUS SCREEN in a STATS based game!

That's why Del is instrumental in most reviews. He actually gets in and works on the game.

Can somebody explain to me.... Youre EA , you have the Star Wars license. Youre EA , you have the studio that made the best Star Wars game ever, Bioware's Knights of the Old Republic. Youre EA, you have Dice who made many great online shooters.... Why on earth do you have Bioware develop an online shooter and have Dice develop a Star Wars game?????? Its like they are f-ing it up on purpose.....

Anthem fans don't have buyer's remorse. They have buyer's denial.

*”Are they going to fix this? Yes, eventually.”* This did not age well.

Literally Delrith is like the vice cop. Getting into the danger zone to get the information the public needs

Anthem took 6 years of development.....God of War 4 took 5 years, Witcher 3 took 3.5 years, Persona 5 took 6 years, Neir: Automata took 3 years. No more excuses!!!! You guys coulda just put 2 more years of development in Mass effect Andromeda!!!

Revisiting this two years later: they didn't fix anything and abandoned the game in this state. Worst game in history.

Mass Effect died for this One of my favourite franchises died for this.

In the Anthem Wiki, it says Jarras Wrath is a weapon dropped in Hell or High Water quest. There's no such quest therefore no such weapon lol. Wow.

Delrith was really good here, and is making a good addition to the channel. It’s cool how he puts in so many hours into these games and knows what he’s talking about/ make sure info is correct/ adds in important info.

Whose here for the 1 year anniversary of this GAME!!?? Edit: sorry I’m a few days late, was stuck at the load screen.

Bethesda: We've created the worst and most broken game of all times Bioware: Hold my load screen

EA perfected the $60 yearly dlc years ago

“After 70 hours, do you think you’ve achieved something?” “No.”

"Yes they'll fix this eventually. They have a road map." *laughs in future* Edit (March 2021): *LAUGHS EVEN HARDER IN FUTURE*

it’s like buying a gym membership while it’s just a treadmill in a room.

As a developer who has worked in the industry, I can tell you that what most likely happened with anthem was a ton of corporate meddling. When bioware announced anthem, you could tell that the leads were passionate about making something that was a part of a clear vision. And these guys are not amateur developers, they've built extremely expansive games time and time again. They learned many of these lessions from making swtor and they were working with an engine which they already knew very well, frostbite (both da:I and me:a used frostbite 3.0). The most logical chain of events in my mind is that due to the amount of fan hype, EA decided to take anthem apart so that they could sell it in pieces to the fans/players. This is something that actually happened with both of the destiny games as well. It's well documented that many pieces and systems from destiny two were actually supposed to be a part of destiny one. I believe that EA sat down and just pulled out the parts of the game that they assumed would be good to drip feed their player base. Elemental weapons, large world bosses, catacylsms, missions, strongholds, cosmetics, and probably even entire factions of enemies were removed so that this "live service" bullshit could work. Anthem has a somewhat satisfactory gameplay loop despite all of the balance problems and lack of choices and EA knows that that is enough to get some people hooked on a title even if there is no content at launch. It's also very likely that the pacing and balance issues exist because of the corporate meddling. When you remove entire systems of the game and rework others to make it more of a grind and a drip feed, you fundamentally change the balance of a game like this. EA also knows that the whole live service thing doesn't work with triple A studios because these developers often release a title and then move on to the next one with only a few devs staying on to add minimal content patches. Fact is, once you've built the tooling for a game, it becomes extremely easy to make cosmetic content, new weapons and items, as well as new systems and levels for a game. Anyone who has played a game like Skyrim and has made a mod for a game like Skyrim can understand this logic. You don't need to invest a ton of money and effort into designing these things because the main game is already out there. The only live service games that have worked are games with developers who are devoted to releasing content patches. Look at DotA 2 or path of exile or Warframe. The devs who work on Warframe only make Warframe (though they might be working on another game soon). GGG is constantly able to innovate on path of exile every 4 to 6 months because they have a full staff of developers constantly tinkering with the engine, with cosmetics, with items, skills, balance and new leagues and mechanics. The point is, with anthem already released and deemed meh from a critical standpoint, it's unlikely that you will see changes to parts of the engine or to anything that requires new tooling to be built because it's too expensive both from a monetary standpoint and in terms of man hours. The best you can hope for after the initial 4 to 6 months post release is just a bunch of surface level stuff and content that is already either feature complete or almost feature complete. Aka content that was ripped from the game prior to release either due to the deadline or because of EAs meddling. Oh and btw, the 6 year dev cycle was either due to a complete rebuild of the entire game or due to a rather large game rework as a result of corporate choices. Even if this game was completely rebuilt; they would have had most of the tooling to build it. EA and bioware's suits decided to release a skeleton game and they probably didn't play test it because they play tested a build that most likely is more feature complete.

Sterling was right. The best thing about the game is talking about the game

We had games like Borderlands, GTA, Warframe Skyrim which could be played for thousands of Hours for a fair prize and are still loved, so why do so many games fail now?

Joe "how do we fix anthem?" Del "you don't"

Del has really added a lot to the channel! The only person I know that'll grind that hard just so we don't have too! the Hero we dont deserve, DELRITH

Thank you guys for the honest criticism! The release of Anthem really portrayed some of the worst practices of the current gaming industry and as you repeatedly pointed out they are not acceptable. I played the 10h trial on Origin but now I'm going to vote with my wallet and pass on this one.

What more can you expect from a company that says "single player games are dead’

Anthem is the Fyre Festival of gaming

Wasn't this game an excuse on why Andromeda was bad, didn't they say they where putting in more time developing this and that's why Andromeda facial animations where so bad, or am i mistaken?

EA wants a looter shooter where you pay for loot

It's sad watching this now and hearing Joe say "will they fix this, yes here is the road map". It would be nothing but lie after lie until they admitted that they didn't care enough to do right by the customer and killed the game.

Anybody else here, rewatching these old reviews like they're podcasts episodes while they do stuff?

I said over and over and over again..... DO NOT PRE ORDER ANY EA OR ACTIVISION GAMES EVER.

Dear EA, Thank you - Bungie

Whole f***ing gaming industry is in shambles. Loot boxes, micro transactions, mvps, greedy attitude all over. Sad...

"Are they going to fix this? Yes....eventually" 2 Y E A R S L A T E R

Good grind = a grind that makes the player WANT to replay certain parts to see what they can achieve. Bad grind = a grind that makes the player HAVE to replay certain parts to achieve what they need to. (No personal fulfilment, or personal challenge)

I hate all of these new age soulless loot based grind fest games

AJ: I dont want my game review to be more than 1h20m long. Days later, make a Extended review for the same game just about 1 hour 10 mins.....well played

Guys I hate to say it, but this is partly on us!! We encourage developers with our wallets. In order to encourage change however, we need to make sacrifices and NOT BUY AT LAUNCH! Even if the game has this one cool feature that you love so much and boasts with top notch graphics.....take one for the team and DONT BUY! This goes especially to the younger players as you are their main demographic! Developers will have to come up with new exciting game concepts for an affordable price if they want to survive. And that's the message we need to send. I was working for a company that released an online version of a very beloved fantasy game in 2014, the greed and corporate approach of said company has completely ruined the launch and this entirely empty, maddeningly repetitive and ugly looking game is now free to play, however that was AFTER the fans had already spent full retail price PLUS season pass on this mess. If a game asks for a season pass DONT BUY! Does the game push in-game purchases on top of a full retail price? DONT BUY! I sticked to this since 2014 and have not only saved myself a lot of money but a lot of frustration. Reward the "God of War's", the "RDR2's", the "Breath of Wild's" as well as indie title such as "Far Lone Sails" and "Unravel" and only buy the AAA titles if you are truly convinced its a finished quality product.

Don't let the review distract you from little joe's tattoo moving

"You pick your face and you never see it again." lol epic

They fixed it the only way EA could by cancelling the whole damned thing.

I miss the days where DLC and patches weren't possibly so video game developers had to first put the ENTIRE GAME AND ALL IT'S CONTENT ON THE DISK and make sure that is was tested and playable before putting it on shelves.

Least we can all agree that EA doesn't stand for Electronic Arts anymore but for Early Access

One quick note on the MVP part: a minimum viable product in software development is usually used for proving a concept to a client by building a functioning app that does the bare minimum, and providing a "base" for future development sprints. The reason for this is that sometimes clients don't want to go all in on a product and want to set milestones that they pay for instead of committing long term to an entire full scale development cycle(which is a lot of money). In a consumer context this would mean that we'd pay 5-10 dollars for Anthem's current version and decide after playing if we want to commit to future content in the form of DLCs/upgrades(5-10 bucks per DLC). Now the problem here is that we pay 60$ which is FULL PRICE for an MVP, this translates directly to : pay me the entire project NOW and hope that I fix it/deliver on what we agreed. If you'd say this as a developer to any client they would just laugh like hell at you and tell you to fuck off.

Delrith needs to host a weekly podcast. The depth of his analysis is always amazing.

4 years later and nothing was ever done.

Really like these extended review discussions, keep them up

2:15 Joe: “What’s the best looter shooter? I already know the answer.” Me: Borderlands borderlands borderlands borderlands Joe: “Borderlands 2.” YOU’RE GOD DAMN RIGHT.

Don't worry CDPR will show these big time developers how to make a complete masterpiece of a game...... Or NOT

If you can dislike this video and defend this game you're an EA fanboy and can't handle any criticism and that's a fact.

Anthem is probably the best loading screen simulater.9/10- Too much gameplay

This is a visceral breakdown of what happens when making money takes precedent over everything else

I revisited this discussion because it's relevant after BF 2042. How much does someone want to bet 2042 gets abandoned also?

2 hours total of AJ ripping on Anthem. Completely deserved.

BioWare: *my time has come*

Saw an ad for Warframe on this vid.....best ad placement ever XDDDD

This video aged well

Female Narrator:"Revolutionary story telling in a multiplayer game" Me: you mean warframe?

Wait IGN gave it 6.5/10, Did they actually forget to pay off IGN?

Can we have a moment of silence for everyone who pre ordered this game

Saving my money for Cyberpunk 2077.

Every time I get temptation to buy this when it goes on sale for less than 8 pounds, I turn to this video to come to my senses

I love the group discussions like this.

If the game is not fun, why bother? - reggie

Back in 2021....for the comments lol

TFW there's an ad for Anthem right before watching a video about how bad Anthem is.

*grabs snack box* Now, I'm ready.

Thing is, we don’t really know if Cataclysms are “Raids”

My question is... What did people expect? At this point, it's become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This is a common practice in my office as well. Our project manager asked us to design "pieces" of a school that would be visible in renderings to market to the client to get them to invest, but they would eventually use a completely different designer and the district would ALWAYS get a downgrade of what was marketed.

imagine buying a 5 star steak, then having it be cooked as you eat it raw and them going through and seasoning it as you eat this raw steak they are trying to cook and fix to your taste. That is most of these live service games. Stop buying 5 star price steaks that is not even finished.

Im loving the fact that theres a discussion after the Angry review the longer the better !!!

Not buying anymore EA games... They seem to always fail.

The roadmap: “so that was a lie” 😂

You wouldn't buy a car in February if you didn't get the wheels til June. Don't understand how people can defend this game when they've made content and took it out to keep people waiting, playing & paying in to it. The Witcher 3 is one of the best games that created a product and then added a whole games worth of content for a small fee extra, thats how these major companies should go about making these games. People today are stilling paying witcher, a game that has been out for nearly 5 years. I understand the two games are different genres but the foundations of the games stay the same.

I bet Anthem was originally going to be a new single player sci fi rpg. Then EA saw Destiny making money and made bioware "pivot the design" a few years into development.

Coming back 3 years later lmaooo anthem was such a fucking shitty game & i loved this review when it first came out

wow when joe said it was like a skeleton crew made it he manage to predict what actually happened before this information was discovered

As Jim Sterling put it: The best thing about this game is the shitshow thats surrounding it. Tons of videos to watch and laugh about :)

The whole "Games as a Service" just needs to die already.

The moment when you realize that Andromeda's multiplayer is better than Anthem's lmao

"You will meet people with shady backgrounds and questionable motives" Huh, I wonder if EA's higher ups know that Devs put them in the game?

I really like this chilled out type of discussions on games

I feel bad for whoever preordered that game except not really because they should know better by now

It's sad that Sonic Adventure in 1998 had moving NPCs that had their own storylines that progressed as you do.

Man does this criticism of the game AND the defenders really demonstrates how every single opportunity to give a company the "benefit of the doubt" is a choice that is NOT IN YOUR BEST INTEREST. Imagine being someone that defends roadmaps in 2023....

So the total review is 2 hours long... not counting edits and retakes. That is dedication for sure.

There's one thing I've noticed while watching the cutscenes: Why is everyone but you incompetent? They keep getting killed by EASILY DODGEABLE attacks. Why? Cause the story needs it.

Joe: are they gonna fix it? Yes EA: excuse me?

Funny thing is I bought Anthem because I play a ton of Warframe and wanted a break.....then Warframe had an update. They just released it's first season event called Wolf of Saturn Six, a playlist almost of daily and weekly task to earn special rewards. I probably haven't touched Anthem since, what I did instead was go mining and fishing in WFs open world and after a somewhat stressful endeavor I feel immensely satisfied, because I have crafted a brand new item that can kill the current bosses of the game without spending any real life currency. I guess this is just me saying I bought Anthem to take a break from WF, but ended up having a really great week in WF instead. Lol

I really wish EA didn't get lucky with Apex... would have rather seen them go bankrupt and sell off all their assets...

It’s too bad man. So much potential. I WANTED it to succeed. But of course EA...

16:20 delrith speaking without his mouth moving lol

This why games speak for themselves, if you need to market it, generally its crap.