Hi everyone! It's Overall with the black & white cat avatar under a new user name (long story, don't ask why). Here's my take on Anthem:
BioWare used to make games that were evocative of other source material. Baldur's Gate games were celebrations of D&D. KotOR was a Star Wars universe game. Mass Effect had more of a Star Trek vibe. ME1 even had the film grain and synth soundtrack (which I LOVED) that was reminiscent of old Sci-fi movies. It was a callback to things people loved.
Dragon Age was a meld of rebooting BG games (minus the D&D license) while adding a more cinematic approach. BioWare built the DA world from the ground up, and it showed. I was never a huge fan of the DA games because BioWare felt the need to hit you over the head, HARD, with world building lore at every turn. Too many NPCs just spouted on and on about the Mages vs. the Chantry, etc, etc. A lot of the magic was already gone for me, but the games were still great because they were built on characters that were interesting. I barely remember the gameplay of the DA games, but many of the characters were very memorable. Some were even unlikable... which is GREAT.
What is Anthem a nod towards? The movie Avatar? Sort of. Iron Man? Well, kind of but not really. The current game called Destiny? Yes, that's closest. Anthem just looks like an also-ran, an iteration of the looter-shooter game with character stuff tacked on... because BioWare. There's nothing in Anthem that a fan of a genre can connect with like Dragon Age or Mass Effect or KotOR. If I'm a fan of Destiny... well, I already HAVE Destiny.
Forcing in multi-player makes it so everyone NEEDS to be at the same power level. The older games were power fantasies. Looter games with multi-player can never be this. It's just a treadmill that your equals are on along with you. And that can be great! I happen to really like Destiny.
But trying to use the treadmill model along with a character-driven power fantasy is never going to work. Your fellow players who you can never escape will always be around you and you will always see that others are more powerful. Some vastly more powerful because they can run the treadmill more than you.
Plus, the amount of loading screens in Anthem are inexcusable in 2019. Add those number of screens to any past BioWare game and those games would have been murdered, too.
TL, DR: Old Bioware games—that people still love—were based on genres that already had a fan base. They took a genre and made a video game about it where the player was the hero. This central, player driven character interacted with memorable NPCs that were integral to the story that played out in a well-loved genre. Player choices drove the story. Anthem does not do that.