Anthem: 9 MAJOR Revelations From Kotaku's Exposé

9. Bioware Revealed Anthem Before Knowing What The "Anthem" Part Was

It's hard not starting each one of these with "one of the most insane things was...", but due to Anthem's development being so unfocused following the departure of creative lead Casey Hudson, literal years went by where core teams didn't know what they were working on, or towards.

Kotaku detail a staggering lack of focus and communication, and a suitably "Holy sh*t" moment is Bioware mentioning their new project for the first time at E3 2014, before the notion of what the "anthem" itself even was. In fact, it turns out the game - then codenamed "Dylan" (after the revolutionary musician, Bob Dylan) - was to be called "Beyond", and was something else entirely.

When the rights for the latter title couldn't be obtained, a decision was made to divert to Anthem, though the majority of Bioware didn't think it made any sense.

It's pretty stunning then, that one of the only unique and fairly cool ideas about the game - hearing the "Anthem of creation" as a Voice of God-type analogue - came about long into development, in response to another name change, rather than being the driving force behind its conception.