BioWare is committing themselves to "a longer-term redesign" of the Anthem experience, wherein they "reinvent the core gameplay loop with clear goals, motivating challenges and progression with meaningful rewards." To put it like that, to type it, to think and know it, means that it didn't have those things. Those are fundamental things. I wonder how long that sentence took to type.

I guess the strip is mean or whatever but it's nothing they don't know over there. And being nice isn't gonna fucking help anybody. I don't think sentiment can survive this next bit. They need to be looking at the biomass that game represents in the way that a falcon looks at a hare.

I've seen nothing turn into something more times than I can count. I've even done it, on occasion. But they aren't even starting from nothing: a lot of the thinking in terms of how things feel, the tactile aspects of the game, aren't the problem. The Javelins aren't the problem. The look isn't the problem. These parts of the game's loop actually held Mike's interest for a significant amount of time, inside a disjointed, staccato world and activities he endured because he wanted to be in there so much. That's not nothing.

I only hope they're actually allowed to do what they've undertaken here; I can't even imagine what the pressure to embody and ennoble a BioWare in decline must have been, to make good on that Faith. They must have felt it like a physical weight. Look, I love a good redemption arc. I want to know it's possible, for all of us. I want them to have it. And I think they can.

(CW)TB out.