Anthem might have got off on the wrong foot with its slow and not-so VIP demo weekend, but BioWare’s General Manager has confirmed that they intend to speed things up in the game before launch day.
Those who played the demo were left shocked many problems with the game, such as infinite loading and entitlement issues, but the most striking was to see how slow things were in Anthem’s social hub, or Tarsis.
However, BioWare GM Casey Hudson revealed to GamesRadar that there definitely be a change to the movement of characters in the game before the full version is released.
The closed demo limited players to slowly walking around the Tarsis, making what should be a simple route towards their Javelin’s a drag.
Anthem’s Executive Producer Mark Farrah claimed that this wasn’t a bug, but rather an intentional move in testing. He said they wanted to make characters feel a “bit underpowered, so you really felt that strong difference between out of the suit and in the suit.”
“If you look at most video games, you’re sprinting everywhere and we gave you a jet pack machine for when you’re out in the world, and we really want it to feel like you’re just a person walking around and now you are that person in Iron Man armor.”
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Despite efforts to create that contrast effect, with a consensus already established to be in favor of a sprint option among potential players, its inclusion in the full game has been confirmed.
“There was a run speed that was in [the game]. Then, for some reason, it was out of the game for when that particular build was made. It is back in the main game, anyway” Farrah explained.
There’s no guarantee that freelancers will be able to run around Tarsis in the final demo, however, which will be available to all players between February 1-3 – with the full game set for a February 22 release.
In the meantime, BioWare will be focusing on fixing server problems which Anthem players experienced in the VIP demo, as well as some other hotfixes to ensures its actual launch is not plagued with the same issues as the demo.
