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Anthem has been out for a week for some people, and as of today it's out for everyone. And it's not great, sorry to say: It's pretty, but suffers from numerous technical issues, unclear systems, and worst of all, uninspired and sometimes frustrating gameplay.
BioWare's head of live service Chad Robertson acknowledged some of that in an update posted today, saying that "we understand that we have lots of work ahead of us to continue to improve the game," and sharing the first 90-day roadmap that lays out its short-term plans for Anthem's future.
"I look at today from two perspectives. As a gamer, I’m excited by what we’ve created with Anthem and the promise it carries for a long future behind the game’s lush world, immersive lore, rich characters, and core gameplay," Robertson wrote.
"As a developer, I know we’ve worked hard to strike a balance of engaging BioWare story combined with fun action-gameplay and multi-player progression; I also know how much more we want to bring to the game."
The updated roadmap fills out last week's preview, beginning with a trio of freeplay events—Outlaw Outrage, There Be Giants, and Shaper Surge—in February. March will see new cosmetics in Elysian Stronghold caches, phase one of Legendary Missions, and the return of There Be Giants and Outlaw Outrage, and in April players will be given access to a new Mastery System progression update, the Shaper Surge freeplay event, Legendary Mission phase 2, and a new stronghold called The Sunken. Leaderboards, guild support, and weekly stronghold challenges are also expected to go live in April.
All of that comes on top of recurring updates that include the usual bug fixes, improvements, and optimizations, plus weekly Alliance coin reward, daily, weekly, and monthly challenges, and new stuff in the Prospero Store. There's also still quite a bit of "Cortex Locked" content, hopefully because BioWare is holding back some cool surprises and not because it hasn't figured out what it's going to do.
Anthem's Act 1 will wrap up in May with a Cataclysm, a high-level world event that can "cause physical manifestations to occur: extreme weather, incursions of dangerous hostile enemies, and new mysteries to solve." That will deliver more new items, but the associated freeplay event and new missions are locked for now.
"We’ll be talking in more detail about this roadmap in upcoming streams and social media," Robertson said. "We also commit to sharing updates with you frequently and consistently. I look forward to hearing more of your feedback on our plans and the game overall."
