Everything After the Normandy
You strap into the Javelin and drop out of the Strider. Below you the jungle canopy blurs in the downdraft; ahead of you a storm that never moves crackles at the edge of explored territory—something ancient left unfinished, still detonating in slow motion. The locals call it the Heart of Rage. You’re a Freelancer, which in this world means you’re one of the few people suited and trained enough to fly into that kind of trouble. Whether you come back out is more of a working hypothesis than a guarantee.
I loved Mass Effect. All three games. The Citadel, Eden Prime, Feros, Ilium—I explored every corner of that universe, every dialogue tree, every loyalty mission. Yes, the ending of the third game is what it is and I have opinions, but as a whole that trilogy was the kind of thing I’d have kept replaying forever if I had nothing else going on. Then Mass Effect: Andromeda stumbled badly enough that BioWare quietly shelved the franchise and went to figure out what came next.
What came next is Anthem—an online co-op shooter where up to four Freelancers in powered Javelin exosuits work together across a lush, hostile open world, fighting to stop a villain called the Monitor from seizing the Anthem of Creation, an ancient force capable of reshaping or destroying reality. Big operatic stakes, the kind BioWare has always been good at packaging. Casey Hudson, BioWare’s general manager, described the launch as feeling almost like when we released the original Mass Effect trilogy—excited, nervous, and incredibly proud of what our team has accomplished.
That’s a significant comparison to reach for. It’s also the kind of comparison you make when you’re hoping the audience will go along with it. Anthem is structurally unlike anything BioWare has built before: a live-service game, meaning the world and its narrative are designed to expand over months and years of post-launch updates rather than arriving as a single complete authored experience. Whether that model can carry the same emotional weight as the Normandy once did—whether Anthem can generate the kind of attachment that made me replay Mass Effect 2 four times—I genuinely don’t know yet.
The Javelin designs are genuinely cool. The flight mechanics look like nothing else on the market right now. I want it to be good. BioWare has earned the benefit of the doubt more than once. I’ll be spending the weekend finding out whether those first impressions hold.