10 Obvious Video Game Home Runs That Somehow FAILED

2. Anthem

Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection
Bioware

When even the staff responsible for creating a game haven't the foggiest idea what it's about, that should be the first sign that trouble is brewing. That's exactly what happened with BioWare's first foray into the live service market. The final result, without hyperbole, ended up being one of gaming's biggest-ever blunders; Anthem was supposed to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Bungie's Destiny as the ultimate offering of an always-online, evolving world which, to be fair, it achieved. Sort of.

The issue, thanks to a lack of foresight, as well as arrogance on the part of BioWare's management that it could do no wrong, was that Anthem didn't know what it wanted to be, let alone its creator. It was only when the IP was officially announced at E3 2017 that BioWare staff realised what they were seeing on-screen was the very same game they were working on, and by then, it was already too late to ship anything resembling the tech demo.

What did ship in 2019 was a disjointed mess of ideas with no direction and a worrying lack of content. Jason Schreier's 2019 exposé for Kotaku provides an excellent, in-depth breakdown of events that preceded one of gaming's biggest blunders but suffice it to say, Anthem was doomed from the word go.

 
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Joe is a freelance games journalist who, while not spending every waking minute selling himself to websites around the world, spends his free time writing. Most of it makes no sense, but when it does, he treats each article as if it were his Magnum Opus - with varying results.