EA at E3: BioWare confirms Anthem in Feb 2019, Madden returns to PC

Enlarge / It's time to embark in the next Desti-er, no, sorry, this is a teaser for BioWare's new series Anthem. (credit: BioWare)

EA's E3 press conference on Saturday ended with a big, Anthem-loaded bang. The first entry in BioWare's next game series, an open-world online-shooter that looks like Destiny with jetpacks, was showcased with a alleged real-time gameplay demo and a release date confirmation: February 22, 2019.

The gameplay reveal focused largely on full jetpack control, which allows the game's heroes (in suits called "Javelins") to fly up, over, and all around giant worlds and combat arenas, along with bombastic, third-person combat against giant, handsomely rendered beasts. The reveal didn't include hard proof of BioWare's promises about story content in the game, however, particularly BioWare's onstage assurance that Anthem can wholly work as a single-player experience.

Archive of EA Play 2018

A lengthy Game Informer feature story makes the game sound mechanically and structurally quite similar to Destiny and Destiny 2, particularly its calls for co-op requirements to get through higher-level campaign challenges and raid-like "stronghold" battles, along with a greater emphasis on real-time action over RPG-style combat and decision-wheel storytelling. Thus, Anthem is in the precarious position of making promises about an engaging combination of combat, plot, and endgame progression-a juggle that the Destiny series has fumbled time and time again.

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