Anthem’s Roadmap is Just What We Asked For

Anthem’s Roadmap is Just What We Asked For

Just this week, in response to major concerns about Anthem’s endgame, developers have dropped details about exactly what we can expect from Anthem’s coming year of updates. Let’s dive right in and take a look at Anthem’s road map.

The Roadmap takes the form of three Seasons that will form an entire year’s worth of content updates, each with their own theme and apparently monthly update.

https://youtu.be/WnOlqh8jfKI

We Got What We Asked For

First of all, this is exactly what I was asking for in my previous video. It’s an entire year worth of confirmed updates, with the first coming as early as March (only a few weeks after launch). Concerns over the endgame having enough for hardcore players and the game being stable enough are clearly being addressed here. We’re going to be able to look forward to the following:

New Events
Quality of Life Changes
New Rewards
Expanded Progression System
New Strongholds
Guilds and Leaderboards
New Missions
The Cataclysm

Now, admittedly, I’d like to have seen most of these features available at launch, but I also understand that many of these things require player feedback and carefully informed development time. In this scenario, I think we need to be thankful that we’re getting these changes and embrace them as part of the life cycle of a new generation of ‘living world’ games.

Like many other looter-shooters, then, Anthem is going to launch incomplete. But, in the same vein as Destiny, Warframe, and The Division, we’re going to see the content we desperately want coming in hot throughout the year after release. That’s a lot better than the alternative of not getting it at all, and need I remind you that all added content is going to be absolutely free (barring cosmetics).

Anthem's Act 01 is looking extremely promising. — Anthem’s Act 01 is looking extremely promising.

So What Exactly Are We Getting?

We don’t know about the later Seasons, but we can see details about what we’re expecting in Season One, dubbed by the devs as the ‘Echoes of Reality’. The First update will be called ‘Evolving World’, which hopefully is going to address the endgame needs and the sparsity of some world events and missions. Unfortunately, the information we have (basically just a few images) is relatively vague. We don’t know if the whole list of features is coming straight away or, more likely, divided into segments.

We do know that there are going to be a further two updates, which presumably are going to be around once per month if we divide up the year into the three Seasons, with three or perhaps four updates each. The second update that we can look forward to in the first season is ‘Stronger Together’, which sounds like it might include the new stronghold and perhaps the ‘Expanded Progression System’ in the form of clans or guilds to work with. It might even expand upon the in-game factions, which we already know that we can earn favor with in order to earn greater and greater rewards.

The whole year looks to be filled with interesting content.

This Promises to be Cataclysmic

The final update presents ‘The Cataclysm’, which is going to be an enormous world event. We’ve already been told that Cataclysms are the new name for Shaper Storms (I called it last time, knew it!), and that they’re going to be live events that all players online can take part in. They’re going to change the world of Anthem in meaningful ways, too. The last Cataclysm we know about was the ‘Heart of Rage’, the storm that starts our story, and that radically affected the world. This could mean a new map, expanded areas, new enemies, and adapted or even altogether new Javelins.

A new trailer involving details of Anthem’s endgame, also released at the same time as this content announcement, declares that Cataclysms are Anthem’s ‘most ambitious and challenging content’. Immediately, I’m thinking of something like Destiny’s raid updates, where the first players to complete the raids put events into motion that will change the game world for all players. Especially when they are described as ‘time-limited events which cause physical manifestations to occur’, we can be certain that there are some big changes in the pipeline.

At the latest, all of that first-season content is going to take around 3 months to arrive. Considering we didn’t know if we were going to get any updates at all within the first few months, that’s actually amazing news. Sure, we aren’t getting access to it all straight away. But I’d rather have a reason to log back into Anthem and suit up with my friends throughout the year than burn all the content in the first month. This way, Anthem is going to keep evolving as a live service with more than enough content for most players to sink their teeth into.

NPC's like this lovely chap will be handing out Endgame Quests. — NPC’s like this lovely chap will be handing out Endgame Quests.

Maybe We Were Wrong About Endgame

I’m going to go straight out and admit it: If all of the content that they have promised arrives in this first season, and there’s even more to come, then our worries about Anthem’s endgame were almost certainly unnecessary. I’m really hoping that we get proven wrong here, and the developers can do the ‘living world’ thing right in order to keep players hooked.

If timed right, the arrival of new missions, and even new weapons and equipment, could be more than enough to bring a host of players back to Anthem. Who knows, if the content is fast enough, we might never leave?

Anthem is coming out in an extremely competitive time of year, however, with the imminent arrival of The Division 2 to directly compete with. It’s also got competition from other shooters, like Metro Exodus for the more story-driven, and even Apex Legends for those looking to compete in PvP. It’s definitely going to be a make-or-break situation for Anthem over the coming month, but I really hope that they deliver. If they do manage to patch the holes in their content in time, it’s going to be a really rewarding experience.

Alright, that’s it for today’s content update for Anthem. It really seems like the developers are taking the community feedback into account, and what they are promising here is exactly what we asked for. The announcement might not be as transparent as we hoped for, but it hints towards a really bright future for Anthem.

Thanks for stopping by. I’m FaultyOptics, and I’ll see you all soon for more guides and news.