Anthem

Anthem is a third-person action RPG and looter shooter set on the planet Coda, a world shaped by a mysterious omnipresent energy known as the Anthem of Creation, which powers both civilization and the catastrophic storms and creatures that threaten it.

Players take on the role of Freelancers, elite mercenaries who pilot powerful exosuits called Javelins to venture beyond the walls of humanity's last fortified settlements, completing missions, gathering loot, and battling a villainous figure known as the Monitor who seeks to weaponize the Anthem itself. Four distinct Javelin classes offered different playstyles ranging from tank to support to glass cannon, and the game's praised flight mechanics allowed players to soar freely across the open world, diving into combat from the air in a manner widely compared to piloting Iron Man's armor.

Despite strong moment-to-moment combat and a visually striking world, the game's shallow story, repetitive structure, and near-absent endgame prevented it from becoming the decade-long live service franchise EA had envisioned.

Anthem's failure was years in the making before a single player ever touched it. Development began in 2012 under the codename "Dylan," but for most of that period the game had no clear direction, no defined genre, and no firm creative vision. According to former BioWare producer Mark Darrah, the studio spent years spinning its wheels without anyone knowing what the game actually was. The real production only coalesced in the final 15 months before launch, forcing developers into 90-hour work weeks to ship something resembling a finished product. EA's insistence on holding the release date meant the game shipped in a state that was, by multiple accounts, nowhere near ready.

The result was a game that launched in February 2019 to mixed reviews and almost immediate player attrition. Critics and players alike pointed to a grindy, repetitive mission structure, a threadbare endgame with poor loot systems, excessively long load times, persistent technical issues, and a story that squandered the world BioWare had built. The combat and flight mechanics received genuine praise, but they were not enough to keep players engaged when the content surrounding them was so thin. EA had earmarked a 10-year service life for the game; in practice the post-launch roadmap was largely undelivered, and the community began bleeding out within months of release.

In February 2020, BioWare announced "Anthem Next," a full reinvention of the game's core systems described by those who worked on it as genuinely promising. EA cancelled it a year later, in February 2021, citing the resources required and the uncertain return on investment. The game limped on with a skeleton playerbase for another four years before EA announced the server shutdown in July 2025, with servers going offline on January 12, 2026, nearly seven years after launch. Since Anthem was online-only with no offline mode, it became completely unplayable on that date, leaving no way for anyone to experience it again.