Anthem’s lead animator has departed from BioWare, and in the gaming sphere it’s regular for someone to come and go. However, the amount of people leaving Anthem is catching up to that of Mass Effect: Andromeda, and is raising concern among gamers regarding EA and BioWare’s upcoming MMOTPS.
As noted above, it’s common for developers to leave during development of a game. Sometimes a dev has so many months to work on a title and then must leave to work on another game or to take a break. Moreover, we see the same devs come back to a project/studio after leaving, which is typical at times.
The reason why many gamers are worried about Anthem is that when Mass Effect: Andromeda senior development director Chris Wynn, lead writer Chris Schlerf, and others all left, the game launched with issues despite BioWare claiming everything was going well.
Now that we see the lead animator departing from Anthem, Steven Gilmour, it’s not strange to question the well being of both Anthem and BioWare given EA’s vision of “success.”
If you want a quick visual summary on the situation pertaining to Anthem’s lead animator departing from BioWare, YouTuber YongYea has a video explaining the situation.
If another cosplaying, inexperienced person gets the job of animating or helping the studio as leader, expect more wonky animations that will soon lead to video compilations of tired faces and ill-fit animations.
Given that Anthem is a year out from release, assuming it isn’t canceled by EA, we don’t know how gameplay and core features will be until its alpha, beta or a playable build launches for the public to test. If the game turns out decent, then it’s decent. If the game turns out to be a mess, well this may be the very end of BioWare, especially if the recent closure of Visceral Games is any indication.
With that said, what do you think of the amount of people leaving BioWare? Do you think that it’s just apart of a natural development cycle or do you think that things are going sour?