Set on a fictional planet named Coda, players assume the role of Freelancers, heroic adventurers who wear powerful exosuits to defend humanity from the threats beyond their cities' walls.
The game's title refers to the Anthem of Creation, a powerful and mysterious force responsible for most of the extraordinary technology, phenomena, and threats in the world.
Each Javelin features unique attributes and abilities that encourage different styles of play and evoke classic role-playing game character archetypes.
[clarification needed][3] The Ranger is the Javelin players begin the game with, and is considered the "all-around master of combat";[4] the Colossus is the largest and slowest, but the most resilient and features a large shield to absorb attacks or hit enemies;[3] the Interceptor is the fastest and most agile, specializing in quick close-quarters melee strikes;[3] and the Storm is the least armored, but can remain airborne the longest, allowing it to attack from a distance with blasts of elemental energies.
[7] Unstable relics can spontaneously terraform sections of the planet, mutate wildlife, change the local climate, create portals, and spawn monstrous creatures.
[7] Human knowledge about the relics is limited, but its believed they were created by a godlike race called the Shapers, who abandoned the planet millennia ago for unknown reasons.
Beyond the cities is a frontier filled with dangerous creatures, exiled outlaws, a hostile insectoid race called Scars, and random disasters caused by unstable Shaper artifacts.
Ten years before the main campaign, an authoritarian faction called the Dominion attacked the city of Freemark, which was the Freelancers' primary base of operations.
An agent of Corvus named Tassyn hires the player to locate a spy who went missing while undercover with a smuggling gang called the Regulators.
She also notes that Haluk and Faye have spent the past two years developing a new plan to deactivate the Cenotaph, recruiting the pair to Tassyn's mission.
Within her tomb, the player's obtains Taris's signet, which acts as a key to the Fortress of Dawn- the site of her last stand and the Javelin of Dawn's resting place.
After reenacting the last stand, an apparition of General Tarsis declares the player to possess the qualities of a Legionnaire of Dawn and grants access to her Javelin.
He plans to accept the Monitor's offer to spare Fort Tarsis in exchange for assisting him with the Javelin of Dawn, and accuses the player of keeping him from his dream to be a Freelancer.
While celebrating in Fort Tarsis, the player is pulled away by Tassyn to see the corpse of an Urgoth recently discovered and killed inside of Bastion's borders.
[10] While BioWare did not have any strong ideas at the start of Anthem's development cycle, they knew they wanted an action game that players could play cooperatively, and which moved away from their Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises.
BioWare had difficulty transitioning some of the systems they had built for Dragon Age and Mass Effect into Anthem - leading to the team scrapping some of their gameplay concepts like survival and crafting.
[10] The game features the voices of Catherine Tate, Joe Lo Truglio, Annie Wersching, Nick E. Tarabay, Rochelle Neil, Jack McBrayer, Kristen Schaal, Matthew Gravelle, Niamh McGrady, Peter Macon, and Mark Pellegrino.
He expressed great concern with its state in contrast to the previous 2014 teaser, and ordered several senior members to fly to Stockholm, Sweden to discuss how to improve the game with EA DICE, Frostbite's creators.
[11][10] BioWare staff that had been working on a fourth Dragon Age game were moved to Anthem, including Mark Darrah as executive producer.
Wilson said that, through playtesting, both sets of players were satisfied with Anthem up through about 30 hours of content, but afterwards the game had a diverging audience, with many of those BioWare fans finding the lack of story a disappointment.
[16] However, in September 2019, Bioware announced that plans for the remaining acts had been dropped and they would instead be delivering "seasonal updates" in order to improve core issues with the game.
Casey Hudson said in the post that BioWare wants to "reinvent the core gameplay loop with clear goals, motivating challenges and progression with meaningful rewards – while preserving the fun of flying and fighting in a vast science-fantasy setting.
"[20] BioWare Austin studio director Christian Dailey stated in a blog post in May 2020 that an "incubation team" of about 30 were evaluating Anthem's rework.
[23][24] Bloomberg reported that this decision partially led EA and BioWare to cancel the multiplayer elements that had been planned in Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, instead focusing that game as a single-player experience.
[26] Schachner was inspired by the idea of fusing fantasy and science fiction sounds to represent Anthem's setting and story: "(Bioware) were clear from the start that they wanted the music to feel somewhere between Avengers and Middle Earth.
"[46] IGN's James Duggan said: "Anthem has energetic combat but it saves too much of what precious little content it has for the endgame, making playing through its mismatched story a tediously repetitive grind.
[49] EGM's Nick Plessas was more generous toward the game, saying: "Anthem is a beautiful car that is an absolute joy to drive...", despite saying that "...the wheels will periodically fall off".
[48] Several critics noted long loading screens that could take up to 5 minutes or longer and could surpass the time necessary to complete an average in-game mission.
[61] In North America, according to NPD data tracking, "Anthem represents the second-highest launch month sales ever recorded for a BioWare developed game, trailing only the March 2012 release of Mass Effect 3".
[65] In June 2019, Wilson reiterated how Anthem was not working as planned in keeping players engaged, although he stated that BioWare would continue to support the game.