It’s time to celebrate a full year of adventure, combat, and exploration in the beautiful but dangerous world of Anthem. We’d like to thank all the brave Freelancers who dared to journey beyond the walls and face a myriad of dangers, from the Monitor to the Grabbit King. You’ve suited up and joined the fight, selflessly protecting the people of Bastion.
Courage like yours deserves a reward. That’s why, from now through March 24, 2020, you’ll be able to claim four exclusive “Empowered” vinyls – one for each javelin type. In addition, we’re including a brand-new material: “Painted Metallic Flake.” All five are yours starting today; no unlocks necessary!
What Do I Have to Do? Log in to Anthem between February 25, 12:00 pm UTC and March 24, 2020, 12:00 pm UTC*.
How Do I Claim My Gift? Just head to the Forge – all four wraps and the new material are waiting for you.
What if I have EA Access or Origin Access?? EA Access and Origin Access subscribers** who log in to Anthem during the four-week anniversary celebration will also receive the wraps and material.
Do you feel that? The winds of winter have finally dwindled, and the birds of spring have begun to sing their songs once more. Sometimes it felt as though the greenery would never return, but the snow has melted away and revealed the lush (and now blooming!) jungles of Bastion once again.
Starting today, Icetide has come to an end. Thank you to all of you who experienced it! We hope you loved the snowstorms as much as the jungle rains. However, that’s not the only notable date to pass recently. 22 February 2019 was the release date for Anthem, meaning our first anniversary was this past weekend. One whole year. It feels like both a lifetime ago and as though it went by in the blink of an eye.
Whether you’ve been flying your javelin from the very start or you suited up along the way, we couldn’t have gotten this far without you. Your feedback, your creativity, your passion—all of it has driven us forward.
To celebrate this occasion, we’ve released an anniversary gift for all players who log in until 24 March. If you’re wondering why the wraps may look familiar, it’s because they’re actually based on the heroic freelancers who adorned the original Anthem key art that decorates the box for the game and various promotional art! For more details on this gift, be sure to check out our blog post on it.
Alongside today’s anniversary gift, we released update 1.7.0. This concludes the Icetide event and adorns Bastion with the lovely blooming visage of spring. Be sure to read over the release notes as they cover a great deal, including how the game will function in the time to come.
From here on out, we’re going to be a bit quieter, though, during the post-Icetide period. We’ll still be around and will provide Community Cortexes and the like when appropriate, but we’re otherwise going to be heads-down and working hard towards the future.
It’s been our pleasure to be your Cyphers (AKA, your community team) all this time and we look forward to continuing this journey with you in the many days to come. But always remember…
Been wandering around Artstation tonight and ran across some cool Anthem concept art. Quite like the vibe of these... www.artstation.com/artwork/xz98dr
A Sound Effect @asoundeffect Just posted - Virtual GDC: Go behind the sound of Anthem - with Cody Behiel & Eric Vervaet: www.asoundeffect.com/anthem-game-audio-gdc/ #sounddesign #soundeffects #audiopost #gameaudio #gamedev #GDC2020 @official_GDC
TJ Ramini @tjramini #Bored? How about some #FREE @anthemgame CODES! Until April 4th, I’ll be giving away #PS4 #XBOX & #PC codes at random to #followers who #like, #comment & #tag a friend. Tell me where you are in the world & what system you use. Stay safe, have fun 😊❤️🎮 #stayandplay #competition
Patreon Pre and Post show are free for a limited time. 👉https://www.patreon.com/posts/120-bonus-35838723?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=postshare
Freelancer Codex @freelancercodex We had an awesome time talking with deedlite for episode 121. Melissa worked on @anthemgame and helped bring to life the enemies we face. YouTube will be uploaded later today.
Mark has been posting triangle-shaped tweets the last couple of days, which is making me wonder if we'll have some Anthem news soon (maybe at the XBox event).
Mark Darrah @biomarkdarrah I like the number 3 It includes the balance point If you space them on a line, you have a left, a right, and 1 middle Move into a triangle, and each corner serves as a balance to the other 2
Electronic Arts #stayandplay @ea EA Play Live goes digital in 2020! See you on June 11th at 4pm PST... World premieres, news and more! www.ea.com/eaplay
Electronic Arts #stayandplay @ea EA Play Live goes digital in 2020! See you on June 11th at 4pm PST... World premieres, news and more! www.ea.com/eaplay
For some reason EA Play fails to excite.
By then, I hope to go outside from enforced isolation due to Covid-19.. smell the fresh air and take in some rays.
Morpheus: "know what happened happened and that it could not have happened in any other way".
Anthem @anthemgame Freelancers. Tomorrow at 8AM ET, Anthem will undergo a short period of scheduled server maintenance for up to a few hours. We appreciate your patience during this time.
Anthem @anthemgame Freelancers. Tomorrow at 8AM ET, Anthem will undergo a short period of scheduled server maintenance for up to a few hours. We appreciate your patience during this time.
Not to worry Bio The shutdown won't negatively impact me at all.
Morpheus: "know what happened happened and that it could not have happened in any other way".
My name is Christian, and I am the Studio Director for the BioWare Austin office that is leading the production of what we are exploring NEXT for Anthem. NICE TO MEET YOU!
Prior to this role I was the Franchise Development Director for the Anthem Live Service helping guide the development of our post-launch updates which focused on stabilizing and improving performance of the service, our first Cataclysm, Season of Skulls, Icetide and into the most recent update with 1.7. And in addition, I have been silently stalking you over the past year on Reddit, EA Forums, Twitter, etc. taking in all the feedback you have been graciously providing and adding it to the giant cookbook of things we are experimenting with in Anthem.
As you can see from my photo and like most of you, I am all set up from home, ready to be juggling multiple things – children, pets, family. Some days are better than others, but I can tell you that regardless of where I am working or where the team is working – we’re committed to this project. With that, I wanted to start with a quick update on what is going on with Anthem since we last discussed it in February.
Incubation- AKA prototyping
The Anthem incubation team has kicked off and we are starting to validate our design hypotheses. Incubation is a term we use internally – it essentially means we are going back and experimenting/prototyping to improve on the areas where we believe we fell short and to leverage everything that you love currently about Anthem. We are a small team – about 30-ish, earning our way forward as we set out to hit our first major milestone goals. Spoiler – this is going to be a longer process. And yes, the team is small but the whole point of this is to take our time and go back to the drawing board. And a small team gives us the agility a larger one can’t afford.
We really want this experience to be different for the team and our players, but we know we have some tough challenges to tackle. We want to include you as we go and be open and honest with where we are at and what the expectations are with where we are going. The reality is you will see things that look awesome but end up on the cutting room floor or things that you might think suck that you feel we are spending too much time on – but in the spirit of experimentation this is all OK. We really want to provide you all the transparency we can because of your passion and interest in Anthem. But, with that comes seeing how the sausage is made – which is not always pretty by the way.
Start the conversation
We also want to start putting together some regular comms out to everyone to show/talk about these changes and our progress. This blog is one example, but we also want to include you in more of the day to day and hopefully get you some real interactions with the team. These updates could come in the form of an ad-hoc live stream, or some cool concept art posted on social media, or the occasional feed of me curled up in a ball crying in the corner…
We will get back to everyone on what our update cadence will look like soon, as we start looping you into our progress.
We hope this finds you well
We have a great studio here in Austin working on Anthem and other cool projects (shout out to the SWTOR team). I am proud of the folks I spend time with – and in this physical distancing new world, the folks I spend time on Zoom with. I am not here to over hype anything, but we do believe the changes we are making are the right ones and we hope you think so as well…but you might not and that is cool too. It is the constructive criticism and feedback we need – in either direction.
I hope everyone is staying safe and focusing on the things that matter most to you. As game developers we are all very lucky for the job we get to do but there is some real stuff going on out there and some real heroes looking out for our safety and well-being. Take care of yourselves and each other. Stay tuned as we kick this off and we hope to see/hear from you as we go on this journey (stronger) together.
First, I am happy that Bio finally decided to start communicating with us. ... looked forward to this for a while.
Second, starting to validate design hypotheses shows progress is being made. That Bio wants to do it right is very encouraging. That it will take quite a while is disheartening. Nevertheless, bravo to the studio for wanting to take their time.
Last, I think we are looking at late 2021 game launch at its earliest but 2022 is more likely.
Morpheus: "know what happened happened and that it could not have happened in any other way".
Not surprised the team was small, but had no idea it would 30 small. At this point, I don't see the game really seeding big changes till Fall of next year; if they're just no prototyping. Time will tell how all this turns out.
Jay Watamaniuk @jaywatamaniuk Received an official work document that contained the phrase “hoity-toity.” I’m fairly certain I’ve never seen it actually written out before.
Jay Watamaniuk @jaywatamaniuk Received an official work document that contained the phrase “hoity-toity.” I’m fairly certain I’ve never seen it actually written out before.