In the days of magazines, the launch of a big game came with a poster and a double-page spread. In February 2019, the modern version of that was Anthem’s launch trailer, which BioWare and Electronic Arts published two weeks before release. The video bets on epic tones, with plenty of action and third-person exploration and motivational lines about the game’s world. Watch:
Anthem would hit physical and digital stores on February 22, 2019, for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. Origin Access Premier subscribers could start playing the full version on February 15, while those with Origin Access Basic or EA Access, on Xbox One, got a ten-hour trial.
The story takes place on the planet Coda, where players, aboard armor suits called javelins, defend humanity from the threats that lie beyond the walls. The base is Fort Tarsis, and the villain is the Monitor, who wants to control the Anthem of Creation, the Anthem of the title. In the same week as the trailer, on February 14, EA released Conviction, a live-action short directed by Neill Blomkamp, of District 9, which tells a story set before the game.
What came next
Anthem debuted with mixed Metacritic scores, between 54 and 65 depending on the platform: flying and combat were praised, repetitive missions and a shallow endgame were not. The game passed 5 million copies but fell short of the 6 million EA had targeted for March 2019. The rework announced in 2020 was cancelled in February 2021, and the servers were shut down on January 12, 2026, making the official game impossible to play. A few days later, fans released a patch to run it without EA’s servers.
Source: Eurogamer.
Zé Cartucho
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