By Electronic Arts’ ill-fated online shooter Anthem will permanently power down in January, and ex-BioWare executive producer Mark Darrah has some capital-T Opinions on precisely what derailed the project.
A recurring thread through Darrah’s Part 1 and Part 2 instalments of his ‘What Happened on Anthem’ YouTube series is BioWare’s “misreading of how multiplayer titles function,” and he doubles down on that notion in a fresh clip devoted to Anthem’s narrative stumbles.
In Darrah’s view, one major stumble was the game’s insistence that every participant be the identical hero, spawning an unintended communal “we” where nobody truly feels personal investment in key chunks—especially the plot.
“At its core, the issue circles back to the fact that authorship over the disparate facets of a shared experience wasn’t properly mapped out,” Darrah remarked, citing Gearbox’s Borderlands saga as a franchise that sidesteps the pitfall by “deliberately sharing the narrative load whenever the squad splinters.”
“The moment the group fractures, the plot disperses among every member.”
He also appeared to allude to Final Fantasy XIV (slipping and saying “XIII,” though that entry lacks online play), praising how it “strives to make the journey feel personal” by “addressing me as the central figure” while “companions are simply tagging along.
“Sure, each ally may be undergoing the exact same arc from their own vantage, so the hero fantasy is replicated for all, but the payoff is that the tale can be customised per individual. Anthem’s slipshod collective ‘we,’ by contrast, treats the entire fireteam as one interchangeable lead. Crafting an intentional ‘we’ is doable, yet it demands purposeful design.”
Darrah contended that Anthem’s “fringe failure states”—instances where gamers felt zero narrative ownership—morphed into “typical outcomes” because the loot loop championed “specific grind rituals.”
“Ask yourself: when I’m immersed in a plotline, who does that saga belong to? When I roam an environment, whose realm is it? When I pick up loot, whose sword is it? When I customise an avatar, whose identity am I shaping? Mine? Our squad’s? Yours? Am I invading your session? Does it belong to the wider player base, or is it merely a static backdrop?” Darrah posed.
“Any of those answers can birth fascinating mechanics, but ignore the question and you’ll stumble into a default—and in co-operative adventures, accidental defaults spell disaster.”
Darrah stepped in as Anthem’s executive producer during 2017 and remained at the studio through its 2019 launch, departing in late 2020 alongside general manager Casey Hudson. In short, if someone can unpack why Anthem collapsed, it’s him. His critique dovetails with the widespread complaint that Anthem’s fiction never supplied the sturdy spine a forever-game requires.