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The following are my opinions, if you choose to believe me and repeat them, that's your responsibility.
TL/DR: Meh... its cool... could have been a lot more.
So, I put my 8 hours in. Got to level 17, spent the last few hours exploring the open world. I played on PC with an Xbox Pro Controller. I would recommend using a controller, the flight-controls are a poor-port that reminds me of the 2d thumbstick from mobile games. Instead of self-centering, you have to treat the mouse like a joystick with no auto-centering springs. Its not a twitch-pvp shooter, and the guns aren't a major focus, so to me, it feels more natural with a controller. If you have one with back-paddles, even better, I find flying more fluid with paddles than stick-clicking.
I haven't watched any reviews, or gameplay commentaries, this is my raw opinion.
First, Anthem is beautiful, the visual director for the game should get an award.
The backstory is amazingly well developed and detailed, they obviously put a lot of work into the history of this universe.
Other than that, the game is seriously lacking. Its pretty, its cool, but that's about all it has going for it.
I come from Destiny 1/2, they are the only real MMO-lite games I've played. I call Destiny and Anthem a MMO-lite, because they have open exploration, to some extent, while other GAS games like BF or CoD don't. That being said, I figured Bungie changed the playing field. When you make an improvement that can easily be translated and increased the quality of the experience, I expect others studios to follow. Which brings us to the Forge, AKA the equivalent of 1/4th of Destiny's "pause" menu.
The Forge & Equipment:
This is where you choose and outfit your Javelins. To get to this menu, you have to go through a loading screen. And you visit the forge basically after every mission, unless you're unlucky, especially if you're getting increased rewards on "Hard" AKA Sponge-mode. This day and age, this should be one of the 'pause' menus, and accessible at any time. Equipment locking in-mission is OK and good, make players plan. That is the modern standard I feel was set by Bungie.
TL/DR: Meh... its cool... could have been a lot more.
So, I put my 8 hours in. Got to level 17, spent the last few hours exploring the open world. I played on PC with an Xbox Pro Controller. I would recommend using a controller, the flight-controls are a poor-port that reminds me of the 2d thumbstick from mobile games. Instead of self-centering, you have to treat the mouse like a joystick with no auto-centering springs. Its not a twitch-pvp shooter, and the guns aren't a major focus, so to me, it feels more natural with a controller. If you have one with back-paddles, even better, I find flying more fluid with paddles than stick-clicking.
I haven't watched any reviews, or gameplay commentaries, this is my raw opinion.
First, Anthem is beautiful, the visual director for the game should get an award.
The backstory is amazingly well developed and detailed, they obviously put a lot of work into the history of this universe.
Other than that, the game is seriously lacking. Its pretty, its cool, but that's about all it has going for it.
I come from Destiny 1/2, they are the only real MMO-lite games I've played. I call Destiny and Anthem a MMO-lite, because they have open exploration, to some extent, while other GAS games like BF or CoD don't. That being said, I figured Bungie changed the playing field. When you make an improvement that can easily be translated and increased the quality of the experience, I expect others studios to follow. Which brings us to the Forge, AKA the equivalent of 1/4th of Destiny's "pause" menu.
The Forge & Equipment:
This is where you choose and outfit your Javelins. To get to this menu, you have to go through a loading screen. And you visit the forge basically after every mission, unless you're unlucky, especially if you're getting increased rewards on "Hard" AKA Sponge-mode. This day and age, this should be one of the 'pause' menus, and accessible at any time. Equipment locking in-mission is OK and good, make players plan. That is the modern standard I feel was set by Bungie.
The game has the same problem Destiny does while leveling, you're constantly cycling through weapons, unless you're lucky enough to get the weapon archetype as a drop, or find the blueprint.
The Story:
The main story line is interesting so far, but the secondary dialogues with the NPCs are largely forgettable and are more stereotype than archetype. The staple of a BioWare RPG was forcing the player to make moral decisions. It seems most of the dialogue choices here are between being cocky or supportive, two choices is not adequate. The light-dark/good-bad slider is the foundation of a good story game, a strong story challenges the morals of the participant and changes the outcome. A good story should be built like a bush, a minor foundation, and hundreds of end-points. I've barely scratched the surface of The Witcher 3, and I've already made choices that will affect what happens in the future.
As a secondary point, I hate stories in MMOs that paint the player as some unique character in the history of the world. Its not that hard to make a story that makes sense in an MMO setting, lets players be themselves, and earn standing based on their accolades, not some pre-written history. You shouldn't be special, until you make yourself special. Otherwise, you should just make a P2P co-op RPG.
Hard Difficulty / Death:
Enemies have more health, you take more damage. To me, its easy to stay alive. When you've been playing action-games for 15 years, you learn how game the games. A the level I am now, its back to the demo-level sponginess for shielded enemies.
The Hub:
Fort Tarsis looks great. The first few times you explore it, you don't even realize how slow you are walking, because the detail is so high. Then it becomes familiar, and you realize how slow you are walking and how small it is. You can hit Right-Stick to move a little faster, or so my brain tells me, its such a small change, its hard to tell if I'm going crazy. Some of the dialogue feels like it was shot a long time ago, especially the vendor voiced by Kristen Schaal (Last Man on Earth) who speaks to "new stocks" yet sells the same crafting materials all the time, and is accessible through the vanity store as well. The way the character speaks, I expected a rotating stock of equipment for sale.
The World:
Its instanced with loading screens for every "dungeon", which, in 2019, takes 5/10 points away right off the bat. Again, Destiny showed us how this should be done.
The Microtransactions:
I have never had an NPC try and shame me into buying cosmetics. Your 3rd mission, is to activate the forge (crafting) and MTX store, while getting told basically "the cool kids have decals on their javelins" 20 times, which he brings up in every further dialogue(so far). From the early leak, they more than cut the Shard cost in half, increased the Coin cost by half, and started the player with 40,000 Coins. Yesterday, I earned ~15,000 through gameplay, but that was early gameplay and they always pile up rewards early to change perceptions. I was feeling hints of mobile games here. Especially using the limited specials. I wish they would just put everything in the store until the game gets shut down, unless its a seasonal event. Now, about the starting 40,000 coin I find it interesting that this is the coin price of the cosmetics in the early leak. The game starts you off as basically an out-of-work freelancer that is barely scraping by, so having that much coin on hand doesn't make sense. You should start at 000,000,000.000 coin. I won't talk about how fair the system is, as we need the end-game coin-acquisition-rates, but is definitely triggering my scum alarms. My Rule-of-Thumb is a player should be able to earn the equivalent of $1.00 per hour of normal gameplay.
In Conclusion:
They obviously spent a lot of time on this game, developing the backstory, creating the world. Then I think, suddenly, they needed to make a game faster than they thought they were going to... EA saw its collapse in the future and needed something strong. The story feels shallow, due to the lack of real moral choices. It feels like they are trying to delay the player more than anything else. Even the menus are slow, and that's something that should be lightning fast. I know the following isn't reality, as I understand conformation bias, but it felt like I was sitting in a loading screens more than playing the missions. Destiny spoiled me with being able to access the pause menu and character screen during loading, and made this game less appealing.
The Story:
The main story line is interesting so far, but the secondary dialogues with the NPCs are largely forgettable and are more stereotype than archetype. The staple of a BioWare RPG was forcing the player to make moral decisions. It seems most of the dialogue choices here are between being cocky or supportive, two choices is not adequate. The light-dark/good-bad slider is the foundation of a good story game, a strong story challenges the morals of the participant and changes the outcome. A good story should be built like a bush, a minor foundation, and hundreds of end-points. I've barely scratched the surface of The Witcher 3, and I've already made choices that will affect what happens in the future.
As a secondary point, I hate stories in MMOs that paint the player as some unique character in the history of the world. Its not that hard to make a story that makes sense in an MMO setting, lets players be themselves, and earn standing based on their accolades, not some pre-written history. You shouldn't be special, until you make yourself special. Otherwise, you should just make a P2P co-op RPG.
Hard Difficulty / Death:
Enemies have more health, you take more damage. To me, its easy to stay alive. When you've been playing action-games for 15 years, you learn how game the games. A the level I am now, its back to the demo-level sponginess for shielded enemies.
The Hub:
Fort Tarsis looks great. The first few times you explore it, you don't even realize how slow you are walking, because the detail is so high. Then it becomes familiar, and you realize how slow you are walking and how small it is. You can hit Right-Stick to move a little faster, or so my brain tells me, its such a small change, its hard to tell if I'm going crazy. Some of the dialogue feels like it was shot a long time ago, especially the vendor voiced by Kristen Schaal (Last Man on Earth) who speaks to "new stocks" yet sells the same crafting materials all the time, and is accessible through the vanity store as well. The way the character speaks, I expected a rotating stock of equipment for sale.
The World:
Its instanced with loading screens for every "dungeon", which, in 2019, takes 5/10 points away right off the bat. Again, Destiny showed us how this should be done.
The Microtransactions:
I have never had an NPC try and shame me into buying cosmetics. Your 3rd mission, is to activate the forge (crafting) and MTX store, while getting told basically "the cool kids have decals on their javelins" 20 times, which he brings up in every further dialogue(so far). From the early leak, they more than cut the Shard cost in half, increased the Coin cost by half, and started the player with 40,000 Coins. Yesterday, I earned ~15,000 through gameplay, but that was early gameplay and they always pile up rewards early to change perceptions. I was feeling hints of mobile games here. Especially using the limited specials. I wish they would just put everything in the store until the game gets shut down, unless its a seasonal event. Now, about the starting 40,000 coin I find it interesting that this is the coin price of the cosmetics in the early leak. The game starts you off as basically an out-of-work freelancer that is barely scraping by, so having that much coin on hand doesn't make sense. You should start at 000,000,000.000 coin. I won't talk about how fair the system is, as we need the end-game coin-acquisition-rates, but is definitely triggering my scum alarms. My Rule-of-Thumb is a player should be able to earn the equivalent of $1.00 per hour of normal gameplay.
In Conclusion:
They obviously spent a lot of time on this game, developing the backstory, creating the world. Then I think, suddenly, they needed to make a game faster than they thought they were going to... EA saw its collapse in the future and needed something strong. The story feels shallow, due to the lack of real moral choices. It feels like they are trying to delay the player more than anything else. Even the menus are slow, and that's something that should be lightning fast. I know the following isn't reality, as I understand conformation bias, but it felt like I was sitting in a loading screens more than playing the missions. Destiny spoiled me with being able to access the pause menu and character screen during loading, and made this game less appealing.
I get the feeling, giving BioWare some benefit of the doubt, that the detail of the world is the cause of most of my distaste. I think they were over-ambitious with the graphics, and created a system that couldn't be conventiently compartmentalized for the players benefit. I can't imagine what the loading times are like on a 7200RPM HDD, I'm running Raid0 M.2 drives that max out the PCI bus and the load times are unbearable. They probably wanted a seamless world, but introduced too much detail to make this a reality on modern consoles, if this is true, I wish they waited for the next-gen.
I wish more companies would follow CDPR, you can't get away with shady stuff or half-assing it these days. Make everything benefit the player fist and complete your games, or the talking YouTube heads will find you and point at you.
EDIT/ADDITION:
I forgot about one thing that stuck out:
The Voice Acting:
Not the quality, but the quantity. Especially the ambient stuff (and the NPCs use too many words, but I am a dude and we tend to have less conversational fortetude). My one complaint about the Witcher 3, is the repetition of the common-folk. I don't like hearing the same thing over and over again. Spiderman (PS4) did this pretty well, I was in the last map-clearing phase when the 2 last gangs pop up, when I started hearing repetition. God of War (PS4) was great in this respect as well, I loved that Mimir had something new to say every time I got in the boat, until my last map-clear phase (a pattern is forming). If they're going to go hard RNG on the loot, go hard RNG on the dialogue, the ambient dialogue folder should be bigger than the rest of the audio combined.
By the end of your first game-day, the following will be burned into your brain:
"Did you know, I once hid in a mound of rotting fungus to avoid their patrols? Rashes for Days..."
Because the NPC says it every time you walk away from them.
I wish more companies would follow CDPR, you can't get away with shady stuff or half-assing it these days. Make everything benefit the player fist and complete your games, or the talking YouTube heads will find you and point at you.
EDIT/ADDITION:
I forgot about one thing that stuck out:
The Voice Acting:
Not the quality, but the quantity. Especially the ambient stuff (and the NPCs use too many words, but I am a dude and we tend to have less conversational fortetude). My one complaint about the Witcher 3, is the repetition of the common-folk. I don't like hearing the same thing over and over again. Spiderman (PS4) did this pretty well, I was in the last map-clearing phase when the 2 last gangs pop up, when I started hearing repetition. God of War (PS4) was great in this respect as well, I loved that Mimir had something new to say every time I got in the boat, until my last map-clear phase (a pattern is forming). If they're going to go hard RNG on the loot, go hard RNG on the dialogue, the ambient dialogue folder should be bigger than the rest of the audio combined.
By the end of your first game-day, the following will be burned into your brain:
"Did you know, I once hid in a mound of rotting fungus to avoid their patrols? Rashes for Days..."
Because the NPC says it every time you walk away from them.
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