Anthem was an online multiplayer action role-playing video game developed by BioWare and published by Electronic Arts. The game was released worldwide for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One on February 22, 2019.
Set on a fictional planet named Coda, players assumed the role of Freelancers, heroic adventurers who wear powerful exosuits to defend humanity from the threats beyond their cities' walls. The game's title refers to the Anthem of Creation, a powerful and mysterious force responsible for most of the extraordinary technology, phenomena, and threats in the world. In the main narrative, the player's Freelancer is tasked with stopping the villainous Monitor from seizing control of the Anthem.
Anthem received mixed reviews from critics, who criticized it for its grind and shallow gameplay, technical aspects, and story, although its combat, flight controls, and visuals received some praise. Despite some positive sales achievements, reaching over 5 million lifetime sales, the game failed to meet commercial expectations. Although BioWare announced in February 2020 that they would be reinventing the core gameplay of Anthem as part of a long-term plan, all future development ceased in February 2021. Anthem′s servers shut down on January 12, 2026, rendering the game unplayable.
Gameplay Anthem combined third-person shooter and action role-playing game elements in a "contiguous open world" shared with up to three other players. Each player took the role of a Freelancer donning fully customizable exosuits called Javelins.
Anthem featured four unique Javelin variants which the player unlocked while progressing through the game. Each Javelin featured unique attributes and abilities that encouraged different styles of play and evoked classic role-playing game character archetypes. The Ranger was the Javelin players began the game with, and was considered the "all-around master of combat"; the Colossus was the largest and slowest, but the most resilient and featured a large shield to absorb attacks or hit enemies; the Interceptor was the fastest and most agile, specializing in quick close-quarters melee strikes; the Storm was the least armored, but could remain airborne the longest, allowing it to attack from a distance with blasts of elemental energies.
Players could build relationships with various non-playable characters, but they could not establish romantic relationships with them, as was common in previous BioWare games. The central meeting point of the game took place in Fort Tarsis, which serves as a fortified settlement against the threats of the outside world, and was the point where the player went to receive new missions and freelance assignments. Fort Tarsis is a melting pot where all the different factions of the game meet, including the Sentinels, Corvus, Cyphers, and Arcanists.
The game featured both single-player and co-operative multiplayer elements in a "shared world" that could have up to four squad members per team. Teams could fight beasts and marauders while exploring lost ruins and experiencing massive, world-altering occurrences, such as "Shaper Storms".
Synopsis
Setting Anthem was set on the planet Coda, which is littered with advanced technological relics which harness an omnipresent energy known as the Anthem of Creation. Unstable relics can spontaneously terraform sections of the planet, mutate wildlife, change the local climate, create portals, and spawn monstrous creatures. Extremely unstable artifacts can envelope a significant area with destructive energies, storms, and creatures, rendering them barren and deadly. Such events are known as Cataclysms. Human knowledge about the relics is limited, but its believed they were created by a godlike race called the Shapers, who abandoned the planet millennia ago for unknown reasons. The Anthem and the Shapers are revered by some as the source of all life.
Centuries before the start of the game, humanity was enslaved by a race of creatures called the Urgoth. A human named Helena Tarsis and her compatriots used Shaper technology to invent powerful exosuits to fight back. These exosuits became known as Javelins, and Tarsis sacrificed herself to overthrow the Urgoth, who have not been seen since. Over the centuries, Tarsis and her Legion of Dawn became heroic legends to humanity, which reestablished itself as a dominant race.
In the nation of Bastion, most people live in fortified cities protected by Sentinels: Javelin pilots who act as the primary security and police force within the city walls. National security issues that require discretion and espionage are handled by Corvus, Bastion's intelligence and diplomatic agency. Beyond the cities is a frontier filled with dangerous creatures, exiled outlaws, a hostile insectoid race called Scars, and random disasters caused by unstable Shaper artifacts. Cities rely on Freelancers, a faction of altruistic Javelin-piloting mercenaries, to deal with these threats. In the field, Freelancers rely on the help of Cyphers, individuals who are naturally attuned to the Anthem and use resulting psychic gifts to remotely assist on missions and sense Anthem energy.
Ten years before the main campaign, an authoritarian faction called the Dominion attacked the city of Freemark, which was the Freelancers' primary base of operations. The Dominion wanted to access a Shaper relic beneath the city called the Cenotaph, believing it would grant them control over the Anthem. Their activation of the Cenotaph resulted in an explosion that annihilated Freemark and left an expanding Cataclysm in its place called the Heart of Rage.
Plot A famed Freelancer named Haluk rallies an army of Freelancers to enter the Heart of Rage and deactivate the Cenotaph. Among them is the player's unnamed character (voiced by Sarah Elmaleh or Ray Chase), a rookie undertaking their first mission. Accompanying them is Faye, Haluk's Cypher and wife. Shortly into the mission, all the other Freelancers are killed, prompting Faye to call a retreat, with the player evacuating a wounded Haluk against his wishes. The resounding failure causes people to lose faith in the Freelancers, whose ranks are decimated. Two years later, the player has settled in Fort Tarsis, a frontier city between the Heart of Rage and Antium, Bastion's capital. Partnered with a young Cypher named Owen, they make a living completing modest Freelancer contracts for the locals. Owen aspires to be a Freelancer, despite his psychic abilities being a hindrance to piloting a Javelin.
An agent of Corvus named Tassyn hires the player to locate a spy who went missing while undercover with a smuggling gang called the Regulators. At a devastated Regulator hideout, they encounter a Dominion leader called the Monitor. The Monitor is a powerful Cypher, a skilled Javelin pilot, and participated in the assault on Freemark that created the Heart of Rage. The Monitor executes Tassyn's spy and takes a Shaper relic that they were hiding. Tassyn surmises that the Dominion is collecting relics for another attempt to reach the Cenotaph, and rehires the player to reach the Cenotaph first. She also notes that Haluk and Faye have spent the past two years developing a new plan to deactivate the Cenotaph, recruiting the pair to Tassyn's mission.
Faye and Haluk believe that the only Javelin able to survive the Heart of Rage is General Tarsis's legendary Javelin of Dawn. Within her tomb, the player's obtains Taris's signet, which acts as a key to the Fortress of Dawn- the site of her last stand and the Javelin of Dawn's resting place. At the Temple of Dawn, the player is challenged by trials of skill and resolve. After reenacting the last stand, an apparition of General Tarsis declares the player to possess the qualities of a Legionnaire of Dawn and grants access to her Javelin. Before the player can take possession of the Javelin of Dawn, their own Javelin freezes up. Owen appears and takes credit for sabotaging their Javelin so he can take the Javelin of Dawn for himself. He plans to accept the Monitor's offer to spare Fort Tarsis in exchange for assisting him with the Javelin of Dawn, and accuses the player of keeping him from his dream to be a Freelancer. Before Owen leaves in the Javelin of Dawn, Faye scans its unique shielding module, the Shield of Dawn, hoping that it can be duplicated so the player can enter the Heart of Rage with their own Javelin.
Haluk and Faye succeed in building a copy of the Shield of Dawn, but are unable to activate it. At the same time, Tassyn arrives to announce that the Dominion are nearing the Heart of Rage. Tassyn reveals that she hired the player at Faye's own request in order to replace Haluk's role as a Javelin pilot. Upset, Haluk flies his Javelin to the Fortress of Dawn to find a way to activate the Shield of Dawn, but is ambushed by the Dominion. The player arrives to find that Haluk was saved by Owen, who apologizes for his betrayal. As a peace offering, Owen gives up his own Shield of Dawn before leaving.
After activating the Shield of Dawn on their Javelin, the player returns to the Heart of Rage, with Faye and Haluk providing remote support. The player discovers that the Monitor has built a conduit to merge with the Anthem, and is forced to fight him. After the Monitor dies, Faye uses her powers to deactivate the Cenotaph and close the Heart of Rage. While celebrating in Fort Tarsis, the player is pulled away by Tassyn to see the corpse of an Urgoth recently discovered and killed inside of Bastion's borders. Suspecting another crisis, the player is asked to be ready to help again.
Development Development of Anthem started in 2012, after the release of Mass Effect 3, under the supervision of Casey Hudson, the executive producer of the original Mass Effect trilogy. Internally, the project was codenamed "Dylan" by BioWare, in reference to Bob Dylan in hopes that it would be a name that would be spoken about years later. The working title, up through 2017, was Beyond. According to Mark Darrah, a former producer at BioWare, Hudson had pitched the game to Electronic Arts as a new approach and change of direction for BioWare, incorporating live-service elements, with the potential to have monetary returns similar to the FIFA series, as to appeal to their publisher. Hudson had called it "the future of storytelling" in pitches to EA, but according to Darrah, no one at BioWare, including Hudson, had a firm idea of what that meant.
While BioWare did not have any strong ideas at the start of Anthems development cycle, they knew they wanted an action game that players could play cooperatively, and which moved away from their Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises. An early idea that focused the direction was the use of robotics-enhanced exosuits, akin to Iron Man's, to be able to survive on a planet that acted as a Bermuda Triangle that drew in all types of hazards and dangerous creatures to it, with the players having to survive these. It was initially stated to be a kind of mission-driven survival game rather than a loot shooter: players would team up with friends, go onto missions fighting their way to and from the site, collecting resources to upgrade their suits; all while behind the scenes, BioWare could pull various world event triggers to keep players surprised and alert to these events. The idea was that players after completing these missions would be able to share their stories with others. This was the state of the game as it was presented during EA's Electronic Entertainment Expo 2014 event. A primary concern at the early stage was scaling-up the concept in gameplay, art, and technical feasibility within the Frostbite engine.