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Nightengale

Member
Oct 26, 2017
5,708
Malaysia
Joe actually made an excellent point in his review regarding one issue that few highlight, but something I noticed when playing. The conflict between listening to all of these NPCs and playing with other players in a party.

I remember playing through some story missions with a group of friends and we all had a bunch of NPCs to talk to after each mission. So many NPCs that we had to start asking each other which ones are we talking to and if we're done talking to them. There comes a point in this multiplayer setting where you don't want to force your friends to wait on you if you're trying to care about the characters and the world of this game, and then everyone just ends up skipping all of the dialogue and cutscenes.

If it wasn't bad enough that this half-assed attempts at including these conversations were included enough as it is just to have some semblance to the Bioware game of old, they're just a waste of time in this kind of game. But what sucks about it is that in order to get bonus points for the factions and unlock features for them, you gotta talk to them. Fort Tarsis is nothing but pressing a skip button over and over again. Running around at a slow ass pace, and skipping a bunch of dumb dialogue.

So much time is wasted in this game, and for little in return as a looter shooter.

This was a huge issue for me. The game had extremely poor way of dishing out its 'radio-call-NPC-story'. Both in terms of how it could just be shared in any situation without regard for combat scenario/friend chatter/etc, and also in terms of just general delivery of the performances.

When compared to something like Mimir's implementation in God of War, the difference in quality of execution is literally worlds apart.
 

Gatti-man

Banned
Jan 31, 2018
2,359
Obviously, a world you can fly over must be bigger than a world you're expected to run/ride through, but the amount of things to see and do in it, or density of content, if you will, is still much greater in other GaaS games than it is in Anthem.
That's a cop out. You move just as quickly in a speeder in destiny as flying in anthem and maybe even faster. There are more things to see in Anthem than in D2 or D1 in their open world. More wow moments, more interesting design, more interesting places to go, more interesting nooks and crannies. Yes D2 has more activities but that's content and not really the world which is what I'm talking about. Lost sectors and dailies/public events which destiny has a ton of is really bottom barrel content anyways and I wouldn't miss them if they were removed or never even existed as is. Certainly not dynamic or anything interesting. The best Destiny content is its raids and challenges. It's open world content imo is pretty stale and uninspired (not that anthems isn't)
 

Gamer @ Heart

Member
Oct 26, 2017
9,551
I'm having a great time with the game but this is a serious flaw in game design. It's like Anthem doesn't know what it wants to be

This was a major issue in fallout 76 too. All these holotapes, computer terminals and notes, they expected you to read to get any semblance of story all while having friends in your ear? Too make matters worse, inventory management takes a ton of time and is a huge annoying aspect of that game. So now your waiting on your team to throw enough stuff away to store their drops or just not be overencombered.

I feel like there is no real solution for this. It was also true in borderlands, since 90% of that story is VO, but mercifully almost all during the open world gameplay so you never disconnect from your friends for very long or at all.
 

GamingRobioto

Member
May 18, 2018
1,350
Exeter, UK
Someone needs to do the science...what is longer, Sonic 06 loading screen per mission or Anthem's multiple loading screens per mission?

KA_w28.gif

Someone might have already replied to you, but... yes they have.

https://twitter.com/Nitomatta/status/1098409197773848576?s=19
 

Fiery Phoenix

Member
Oct 26, 2017
5,835
I think this is one of his best videos yet. He clearly articulates the pros and cons and demonstrates how annoying those design choices get.
 

Decarb

Member
Oct 27, 2017
8,641
There were a fair amount of people insisting that it was an old build, etc.

Yeah the amount of people batting for Bioware and using that defense was staggering. You couldn't go two steps with your criticism of the demo before someone reminded you that it was a six weeks old build.
 

jviggy43

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
18,184
Yeah the amount of people batting for Bioware and using that defense was staggering. You couldn't go two steps with your criticism of the demo before someone reminded you that it was a six weeks old build.
The fact that members on a gaming enthusiast site like this seriously believed that bullshit is recondite to me. Either that or they were trying to convince themselves/others it wasnt going to be that bad. When we get betas or demos that close to release that's the game.
 

2Shea

Member
Oct 26, 2017
19
Well put together video, and his points are valid. Still bothers me to see so many gleeful to hate on something. Ah well.
 
Nov 2, 2017
6,804
Shibuya
??

The tweet specifically said "Even with the new Day One Patch that just got released, the results are still awful"....? So that's a comparison with day one patch, right?
You know what, straight up missed the bit where he mentioned the day one patch. I checked the time and saw it was way longer than my measures, but it didn't even occur to me that that was surely my SSD making the difference until now.
 

Deleted member 46948

Account closed at user request
Banned
Aug 22, 2018
8,852
There are more things to see in Anthem than in D2 or D1 in their open world. More wow moments, more interesting design, more interesting places to go, more interesting nooks and crannies. Yes D2 has more activities but that's content and not really the world which is what I'm talking about.

No, that's simply not true. I don't know why you feel the need to invent things to defend Anthem - you shouldn't have to, it's doing its own thing pretty well (when it's not getting in its own way, that is).
Anyone who so much as tried Destiny or The Division and Anthem will instantly know you're wrong.

The only thing Anthem really has are vistas. It has barely any content in its world. But vistas make it a beautiful screensaver, not a game, you can only marvel at a waterfall so many times before you start wishing there was something to actually do.
 

Deleted member 50374

alt account
Banned
Dec 4, 2018
2,482
No, that's simply not true. I don't know why you feel the need to invent things to defend Anthem - you shouldn't, it's doing its own thing pretty well (when it's not getting in its own way, that is).
Anyone who so much as tried Destiny or The Division and Anthem will instantly know you're wrong.
Can confirm, after the first hours of Destiny (not too sure, I think around 5-6 hours) and having been on Earth, Nessus, Titan, I see that the game definitely has a bigger variety of weapons, pieces of armor, skills (even that!) and enemies than in the first 10 hours of Anthem that I played with EA Basic - and it also has some variety in its environments which are already vastly different between planets by letting you go deep or up in the levels. While there aren't that many more factions, I've killed more than a dozen different kinds of enemies.
 

Forerunner

Resetufologist
The Fallen
Oct 30, 2017
14,579
After this review, I decided to refund the game. I haven't launched it yet, so I was able to get a full refund ($71). My money is better spent elsewhere.
 

OléGunner

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,275
Airborne Aquarium
Bloody fantastic review by Joe. Probably one of his best!
This game went through crazier than normal development hell and I need to know just wtf went down behind the scenes.
 
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CampFreddie

A King's Landing
Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,954
A good review.
The Other Joe NPC and over-emoting stuff was good. They certainly saw the feedback from ME:A and went overboard in making sure Anthem didn't make the same mistakes. And also to overcompensate for the fixed 1st person perspective, which is a terrible way to "shoot" a long dialogue scene.
I feel conflicted, because I usually love talking to characters in hubs and developing the story (especially in Bioware games) but I've started speed reading, hitting 'circle' and being "Jerk Shepard" to all these time-wasters The game needs a "renegade punch-out/defenestrate" option.

Most of the NPC's are "Grandpa Simpson at the checkout". And the options don't affect anything.
 

Heid

Member
Jan 7, 2018
1,807
This was a major issue in fallout 76 too. All these holotapes, computer terminals and notes, they expected you to read to get any semblance of story all while having friends in your ear? Too make matters worse, inventory management takes a ton of time and is a huge annoying aspect of that game. So now your waiting on your team to throw enough stuff away to store their drops or just not be overencombered.

I feel like there is no real solution for this. It was also true in borderlands, since 90% of that story is VO, but mercifully almost all during the open world gameplay so you never disconnect from your friends for very long or at all.
They could just acknowledge it in a cutscene where your friends appear and you're all talking and the NPC just gets fed up and tells you all the shut up lol maybe using mic input to detect if you're speaking and trigger another STFU, but that probably wouldn't work with every single dialogue interaction
 

danmaku

Member
Nov 5, 2017
3,232
I never thought I'd be able to watch a 50 minute review, but I did. Good job Joe! Also, I always skip the comedy bits in his reviews, but this time I didn't, they were actually funny.
 

Deleted member 2254

user requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
21,467
I'm absolutely not a fan of these faux angry personalities but I felt this review was mostly fair. The issues this game has after 5-6 years of active development is astonishing, like how is there so little in terms of missions, and that's already counting the padding? How is it possible there's barely any skins? I can understand the graphics getting dialed back from what looked like next-gen stuff, but it's the amount of content and basic functions missing or working incorrectly that just baffles me. The development for this game must have been really difficult, because I can't think that someone looked at basic stuff like the loot, the minimap handling, the co-op forcing you to teleport, etc. and genuinely thought it was okay.
 

Coxy

Member
Oct 28, 2017
2,187
I never thought I'd be able to watch a 50 minute review, but I did. Good job Joe! Also, I always skip the comedy bits in his reviews, but this time I didn't, they were actually funny.
Yup me too. The only time I ever watch youtube is when I'm doing the washing up at home - it's a bit of 'me' time before the madness of getting the kids to bed. It doesn't normally take 50 minutes to do the washing up but it did yesterday...
 

Danzflor

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,710
I actually enjoy how Joe directs and present his message, I just wish there was a cut without the annoying skits and comedy segments (beyond the opening, that was funny).
 
Oct 27, 2017
1,114
People in other threads talking about how awesome it is that you can set up missions with whatever perks and weapons you have. What game doesn't allow you to do that?
 

Cleve

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,022
Are the load screens really this bad?

I'm playing on a pretty high end PC with an NVME ssd, and sometimes I get load screens upwards of 30 seconds, I can't imagine how bad they are on consoles with regular hdds. The load at the beginning of the mission isn't that offensive, but if you ever fall behind your group, you will get teleported to them causing a loading screen again, often taking long enough that he lead player flying ahead will get to yet a new area causing you to teleport/load again.

Then there's the loading screen for the post-mission recap, after which you want to go to the forge (inventory screen) the only place you're allowed to equip the items you just got, which has a (admittedly short) loading screen, then you can exit the forge and automatically get kicked back to town (with a lengthy load) before being able to select a mission and start it all over.
 

Jobbs

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
5,639
There are more things to see in Anthem than in D2 or D1 in their open world. More wow moments, more interesting design, more interesting places to go, more interesting nooks and crannies. Yes D2 has more activities but that's content and not really the world which is what I'm talking about.

As someone who played Anthem and then switched to Destiny 2 I've never disagreed with an assessment more in my life. In one hour of D2's campaign you'll see more variety in enemies, weapons, encounter design, and locations than the entirety of Anthem has
 

ChippyTurtle

Banned
Oct 13, 2018
4,773
Sorry, what? The original was 50 minutes. How much more could he possibly discuss?

I'm only partially through but he talks more about the marketing and the misleading stuff showed at E3, he brings up this Livestream of cosmetics Bioware did, and according to him, the vast majority of the stuff showed is not in the game, and he theorizes it'll be added in either for real life money, or in the guise of it as content updates of the GaaS, but Joe points out, your supposed to have a fleshed out game at launch, then add new content, not hoard away stuff and release piecemail. Pretty compelling stuff. He's very few up with this I think.