Are you considering buying Anthem? (Mass Effect thread version)

I picked No instead of Unsure bc I am not buying the game as it has been marketed so far. But it has received very little marketing yet and I can see myself purchasing if there is more SP than expected.

Very good status info.

Mmgh, with an addendum of "Providing that the activities you can do in that way are not boring/repetitive". Most solo dungeons and mob slaughter dailies are boring af after three or five times, and the areas designated for drop-in drop-out parallel play with spontaneous non-formalized cooperation (aka you do not have to join a group, you just go an hit on a reward-of-kill boss just like everyone in the area) give loot so poor, everyone abandons them for structured dungeons with high pay offs.

Honestly, if Anthem has a decent story you can play solo, without the need to do mp to gear up, I'd buy it after it's dead/in maintenance mode, and the MP population moved on.

Considering? Yes.

But not with my own money as a pre-order or launch.

If my partner gets it for me as a gift, I'll take it, and money is still spent (just less likely we both get new copies, right?).

If I buy it, it'd be after launch on discount and after updates.

They haven't earned my enthusiasm, but they have retained some of my interest.

I said 'Yes' but 'Unsure' would also count.

I will always be somewhat predisposed to disliking Anthem because it feels like it's at least part of the reason why support of MEA ended (whether it's truth or not, that's what I feel happened...and I'm not sure whether I want to know the truth or not).

That said, it all depends on what the meat of the game will be like: story and characters. If those feel like they came from Bioware (branching conversations, interesting NPCs...) rather than something you might find in say Destiny, I might give it a shot, even if reluctantly. If not, well...the game might as well not exist as far as I'm concerned.

Nope. Without support for MEA, I simply don't trust them witg my dollar.

NWN will always have the ugliest graphics in 3D. I'd start a retro Bio exploration from Jade Empire. NWN was eyesore even when it was released.

Can you walk me through the difference between fighting a swarm of gibberlings in BG1 and fighting a swarm of kett in ME:A? What makes one horde mode and the other not?

Well, yeah, Icewind Dale was about that same time, and it has gorgeous backgrounds. It looked like NWN was a dead end. Obviously if you would put it against something ugly in 2D, like Arcanum... but against prettier isos... not a chance. NWN2 and later games were better. Jade was pretty for its time, kotor was tolerable... but, honestly, I think DA3 was an eyesore... so 3D is still hit and miss.

I did a lot of rallying against the ugly square worlds of NWN and its terrible OC. Peeps are shocked by DA2 or MEA. That's nothing when you went from BG and IWD to NWN. It was literally night and day. After NWN I think nothing can phase me out. Dark, dark times.

No interest in these fee-to-pay, persistent-world, lite-mmo loot-shooters even if it is the Bob Dylan of Destiny Clones. It doesn't matter how pretty you dress up a festering cancer... the underlying mechanics are as abhorrent, tacky and exploitative as any two-bit gambling app masquerading as a video-game.

If you support the propagation of skinner-box business models and the erosion of single-player campaigns you are contributing to the ruination of video-games as a visual artistic medium and sending BioWare, EA and the rest of the industry the wrong message that you are okay with one of the last bastions of role-playing-storytelling in AAA games giving up and churning out the same low-effort cookie-cutter brightly colored tripe that the rest of the industry trend followers have devolved into albeit with moderately higher production values and unlike their Activision/Blizzard counterparts a "story" that doesn't make you want to drop-kick little kids.

I hope they fall flat on their faces to teach them some humility for the dreadful handling, & unofficial cancellation of the Mass Effect series, and their smug hubris over Anthem ever since. Until BioWare get back to making proper 'BioWare RPGs' again to near universal applause they'll truthfully never see another penny from me.