Anthem Fixes Major Problems, Delays Everything Else

I am not sure if it has been a bumpy road for Anthem or no road at all. It seems like it crested the hill it needed to crest and then just sort of stalled after that. Bioware has promised to fix the major complaints about their multiplayer shooter as soon as possible and, at least as far as today’s update goes, some of that is true.

The 1.1.0 patch released today makes some much-needed quality of life changes to the game, namely having to do with how often you need to go back to Fort Tarsis or the launch bay. You can now select contracts from the mission board without needing to physically be in front of the mission board, and you can also choose a new mission right from the end of the mission you just finished. Perhaps most crucially, you now possess the ability to access the Forge during missions, strongholds and freeplay. 

So that’s all good! Unfortunately, it looks like the roadmap for the future is going to take a little while longer in the meantime. On the game’s subreddit, Bioware’s head of live services Chad Robertson and Anthem’s lead producer Ben Irving wrote that a detour is being taken at the moment.

“While we have delivered many of the Act 1 features on time, we are not going to hit all the goals on our Act 1 Calendar,” the two said in the subreddit post. “We have been prioritizing things like bug fixes, stability and game flow over the new features of Act 1. We set aside time for this work, but the reality is there are more things to fix and improve than we planned for. While this is the best thing to do for the game, it means some items from the calendar will be delayed.”

That list of what will be delayed includes a few freeplay events, the second phase of legendary missions, guilds, the weekly stronghold challenge, leaderboards, the mastery system, and Cataclysms, the expansion-style content meant to come out every so often. It is not a small list. Bioware says that, when they have information on when these things will come, they will release it.

Anthem is currently available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.