New video shows Anthem’s open-world gameplay

Less than a month remained before Anthem’s launch when, in January 2019, BioWare gave early access to the game to several creators and outlets. One of them, YouTuber Arekkz, published ten minutes of free gameplay in the open world, and the video became the best showcase so far of what the new game from the Mass Effect studio wanted to be.

What stands out in the video is the movement. The Javelins, the suits of armor the players wear, fly, dive, hover and drop into the middle of combat, and you can see BioWare’s care in making flight feel light and fast. The footage also shows intense firefights, battles against huge creatures, such as Titans and Ursix, and the use of each class’s abilities. There were four Javelins: the Ranger, versatile; the Colossus, a tank with a shield; the Interceptor, fast and focused on melee; and the Storm, which casts elemental attacks and stays in the air longer.

Around the same time, BioWare explained some points of the project: the game would prioritize visuals and would not run at 60 frames even on the Xbox One X and PS4 Pro, there would be matchmaking in all activities, and microtransactions would be cosmetic only, with no loot boxes or season pass.

What came next

The VIP demo opened on January 25 and the open one on February 1. Anthem came out on February 22, 2019 and received Metacritic scores between 54 and 65: flying was praised as liberating, but repetitive missions and a shallow endgame weighed it down. The rework of the game, announced in 2020, was cancelled in February 2021, and the servers were shut down on January 12, 2026, making the game unplayable. The beautiful flight in the video remained a memory.

Source: Eurogamer.