Anthem got a great little story trailer yesterday, but there’s a bunch of new details coming out of PAX West for the game.
BioWare had a panel during the event that put a laser focus on story and character development, but there was also some teases about things like post-launch plans, DLC, and paid microtransactions in Anthem.
One of the biggest announcements is that Anthem will not force division within the community in terms of DLC or other content. “For storytelling we don’t want to divide the audience, we want people to be able to experience the same stories so none of that is going to be locked,” said Mark Darrah, executive producer of Anthem at Bioware. Bioware intends to continue to support Anthem after release with more story content and other end game DLC in order to keep the game alive over the long-term.
BioWare plans to centralize the entire gameplay experience around the hub world of Fort Tarsis. Tarsis is where you pick up all of your missions, but you also interact with NPCs, engage in dialogue and develop relationships with your team. In short, Tarsis and the overall story structure of Anthem are going to be totally unified as a single experience.
The team will also not include any kind of loot boxes in the game. There will be optional cosmetics, but those can be earned in-game as well as purchased directly. These rewards can be earned through end-game challenges, completing milestones and other goals. End-game content for Anthem includes attacking strongholds – tough raid-style four-player challenges that will require teamwork and planning against some of the game’s hardest adversaries.
