Inside look at BioWare explains exactly how fake E3 2017’s Anthem demo was

Enlarge / This "javelin" suit could have starred in a game titled Beyond, but at the last minute, its name was swapped to Anthem. Find out about this story, and many more, in today's lengthy Kotaku report. (credit: EA / BioWare)

In what has become a regular occurrence in recent years, a major story about game-development woes-full of insider sources and years of production hell-has emerged courtesy of Kotaku news editor Jason Schreier. In what has also become a regular occurrence in recent years, the article in question is about an EA game.

BioWare's Anthem is the latest subject of a wide-ranging, years-spanning report that comes to a few conclusions, all trying to explain why the game shipped as such a critical flop. Perhaps the biggest takeaway is that BioWare staffers allege that the game's production process didn't truly begin in earnest until "12 or 16 months" before the game shipped.

The Kotaku report explains this timeline by chronicling how the game's pre-production process was marked by indecision and technical headaches. The project was jolted from this morass after EA executive Patrick Siderlund played an early Anthem demo in December 2016. "This is not what you had promised to me as a game," Siderlund allegedly told BioWare, and the article talks at length about how the game's original design documents described something a little more like a cross between the likes of Dark Souls and Shadow of the Colossus-where co-op players would focus less on collecting loot and more on teaming up to "see how long you could survive" in brutally difficult, dynamically changing worlds.

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