BioWare Veteran Defends Anthem’s Creation: “If We Followed That Logic, Mass Effect Wouldn’t Exist”

Last week, Electronic Arts officially shuttered the servers of Anthem, a live service game developed by BioWare that failed to achieve its ambitious goals, a decision previously announced in July.

In a recent video interview, YouTuber Destin Legarie engaged with Mark Darrah, a seasoned BioWare producer with a career spanning from the original Baldur’s Gate (1998) to the upcoming Dragon Age: The Veilguard as a consultant. Notably, Darrah’s involvement in the studio excluded the Mass Effect franchise.

Throughout the discussion, Darrah reflected on various shortcomings of Anthem, where he served as Executive Producer. Key insights from the interview include:

Initially, Anthem drew inspiration from Diablo, but Darrah suggested it should have taken more cues from Destiny as a looter shooter. This foundational oversight contributed to failures in loot mechanics, endgame content, and player retention.
Flight mechanics enhanced player enjoyment but introduced several complications. For example, Darrah noted that enemy units had to feature ranged attacks to counter flying players. Furthermore, experienced players could easily carry newcomers through story missions too quickly, disrupting narrative pacing.
Prior to E3 2017, BioWare even experimented with an Anthem version lacking flight capabilities. However, the ultimate vision always included flight as a central game mechanic.
During the interview, Darrah proposed that a nine-month public beta could have been beneficial. Such an approach would have allowed the development team to make iterative improvements during a “beta”phase, similar to what occurred in the first year after the game’s initial release.
Darrah emphasized the need for better leadership within BioWare Austin, which had extensive experience in live-service game development from Star Wars: The Old Republic. They were initially tasked with Anthem Next, a planned overhaul with new gameplay features. Unfortunately, due to staffing shortages, this ambitious project was canceled in February 2021.

As the interview drew to a close, Darrah addressed a common narrative in gaming communities regarding the development of Anthem. While acknowledging that EA shares some blame for the game’s issues, he refuted the idea that BioWare should have never ventured into creating it at all.

I think it’s easy to blame EA, and certainly, they deserve a bunch of blame for Anthem, but it’s not all their fault. But one thing that actually is worth mentioning, I think, is that there are some people that at the time loved coming out of the woodwork and saying ‘see, I told you so’, and it’s like, ‘BioWare should have never made Anthem because they are a single player RPG studio.’ But my feeling is that BioWare has always been changing. By that argument, we should never have made Neverwinter Nights because we were a 2D RPG maker. We should never have made Mass Effect, because we were a tactical RPG maker, not an action RPG maker. So, I don’t know that that argument holds a lot of weight for me.

Looking forward, Mark Darrah expressed cautious optimism regarding BioWare’s future, especially following the company’s struggles with Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which did not meet financial expectations. The next installment in the Mass Effect series is critical for the studio’s trajectory. Darrah noted a potential silver lining: BioWare is now a focused single-project studio, devoted entirely to this next title, unlike during the development of Anthem, Mass Effect: Andromeda, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard, where resources were spread thin. Whether this focused approach will yield a successful game remains to be seen.

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