The Anthem Skepticism Thread

I'm not invested in this conversation one way or the other, but there is a caveat that is missing from your point - The 'dominant narrative,' so to speak, regarding DLC was that there was content within the game disc already in-place (think the 'From Ashes' DLC for ME3.) The issue then was that this 'day one DLC' was already on the game, but was being withheld for more money. Now, while I don't totally believe that the material was ready and purposely omitted for the sake of making more money, I do think that it was a poor decision to make this available from the get-go and charge players to access this DLC, on top of the full price for the game, especially since much/most of the content was already on the disc.

Think of a scenario of buying a house - say, you buy a house (i.e., the Vanilla game) and it's all well and good. Some people are fine with it as it is, some people want to expand it or build a new patio or deck (the DLC, if you will.) The problem with the ME3 version of this in particular was that you were essentially buying a house with a locked door and room inside of it that wasn't considered legally 'yours' until you paid an additional fee/charge for the key, say a closet or cupboard or whatever. I imagine as a new homeowner, you'd feel pretty stiffed at that notion.

While not quite the same in effect here, it is similar in spirit - this was the problem with DLC for ME3 in the beginning, as many saw it. Your point belies this distinction, I feel.

IMO, DLC works best when it is a genuine add-on to an already complete game, adding more story or content that expands on the experience - it should never have to 'complete' the original experience - and if it has to be done, it should not be something players should have to be charged for. 

I think that millennials are just confused about what they want from a gaming company, and the gaming companies are confused about their product and it's life cycle and the further and further you get from launch, the more vocal the minority will be.   

And before any of you start, Andromeda was trash, that's why I was so vocal about it from the very start.

What little we've seen points to a MP-focused game where NPCs happen to talk to us.

We had more banter between the players than anything else.

Mass Effect 3's multiplayer was a beacon of awesomeness.
If some of that crosses over to Anthem, many will be very happy.

If you don't like multiplayer, this may not suit you as much, depending on how much of a compromise 'solo play' is.

Advertising isn’t about showing off the strongest feature, it’s about showing off a marketable feature. In this case, I think the demo was pointedly targeted at the Destiny/Division/Warframe audience, to show them that this is something they might like.

Think about it, Bioware’s marketing has almost never been targeted at the RPG crowd. Every game’s marketing campaign that I can think of in the past ten+ years has spotlighted big action set pieces, not storytelling. Remember the “This is the new shit” DAO trailers?

Don't have expectations, if anything that is a benefit for you because there is nothing to be hyped about.  Its the approach I take with all games for I will keep an eye on games that might interest me, but I don't have expectations for until people start to play the full thing there is nothing to base expectations on since you see maybe fifteen minutes of the game that might take twenty or more hours to play.  These videos cherry pick what they think the audience that is paying attention to the game is wanting to see and giving them what they specifically want.  Just because you might want to see RPG elements, it doesn't mean the majority of players out there or the people that they want to be interested in the game want to see RPG elements.

I can’t be the only one who remembers this marketing gem:

None in my opinion.  Just each game on its own merits when we have information on it.  I wouldn't go into a movie thinking it would be automatically good because I liked the last thing I watched from Paramount I liked.

So funny and bizarre. Nothing could have misrepresented the game more. 

To discuss theories and impressions with others interested in finding out more?

The point of marketing is to try and convince people to buy a product, it really isn’t usually in the consumer’s best interest to take carefully crafted presentation at face value.

Really, the BioWare I know has always been chasing something new.  I remember the criticism they got when making sequels to Dragon Age and Mass Effect because BioWare was always about new things.  Even massive differences between the Mass Effect games, I would say Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2/3, and Mass Effect: Andromeda were vastly different then one another same with Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, and Dragon Age: Inquisition and neither of those franchises are anything like Jade Empire.

Marketing is no longer done by BioWare its done by the marketing team at EA, so you won't see marketing like BioWare from the past because they no longer control it so it will be down to spreadsheets and sales numbers to determine who to market to.  They are going to focus the majority of the marketing on the audience they think they have the biggest chance of getting interested in the game.

As far as what the game will actually be like, who knows the game was still years away from development back with that short E3 trailer if you even want to call it that.  I bet the fake VoIP was probably due to the voice actor's strike and they had to do something that could be explained away.  It is always easier to show what you have done in the game which is primary systems and the world because those will be the first things done and the more RPG like elements are probably polished much later in development for if they do it too early they cannot test them and we all know how the internet likes broken things in a BioWare release.

(Edit:) I remember Dragon Age: Inquisition how they had to cut major pieces of content during optimization because of reasons and how people got all pissy about that.  I rather not see content they cannot confirm to be in the game if it gets cut and prevent another "but you promised" type of internet action because something wasn't fully developed and then removed, but a video on the internet is a promise to be there.