Anthem Hands-On Beta Review: 5 Ups & 5 Downs

3. The Cringeworthy Dialogue

A somewhat tiny point, but perhaps the best example of the nexus between EA's "make it so everyone will love it!" mandate, and Bioware's "actually, we just want to write a good story" design philosophy, dialogue is all over the place.

I've already mentioned the overuse of wannabe-weighty sci-fi lore where characters speak with unnecessary amounts of terminology, but we've also got "cool bro" dialogue like characters saying "I got this!", or when you customise your mech, the forge master saying, "It's time to make a statement!".

Then there's the abundance of stuttering, faux-"quirky" lines where every character is a stereotypical millennial i.e. a nervous wreck, a la every depiction we're seeing across video games and movies right now.

It all clashes, obviously so, resulting in a world that's portraying an epic, unexplored world full of wonders, right alongside a casual, "yeah whatever, let's shoot stuff" approach, more associated with Destiny's Cayde-6.

Whether you like Bungie's motormouth hero is another discussion, but we saw Bioware attempt this style of dialogue in Mass Effect Andromeda to disastrous results too. Here it doesn't dominate anywhere near as much, but does feel like the team catering to an audience of "gamer bros" who seldom actually exist.