BioWare Officially Cancels The Anthem Next Rework

Anthem, the Games as a Service Action RPG from BioWare has had a tumultuous history since its release back in 2019. For the past two years, there has been talk of a reboot for the game, similar to how Destiny was revitalized by its expansion The Taken King.

Today, BioWare has announced that it will not continue with these improvements and that any overhaul of the game has been canceled.

BioWare Officially Cancels The Anthem Next Rework

This comes from Christian Dailey, Executive Producer of BioWare Austin. You can read the full statement here, but you can find an excerpt of the full letter below.

“In the spirit of transparency and closure, we wanted to share that we’ve made the difficult decision to stop our new development work on Anthem (aka Anthem NEXT). We will, however, continue to keep the Anthem live service running as it exists today.”

The game will continue to run as-is, for now, but there will be no significant updates to Javelins, skill trees, or anything in-between. Anthem was a game full of so much potential, but unfortunately was undercooked when it released back in 2019. 

The studio also cites COVID-19 as an additional hurdle the team had to work through, which halted progression.

“2020 was a year unlike any other however and while we continue to make progress against all our game projects at BioWare, working from home during the pandemic has had an impact on our productivity and not everything we had planned as a studio before COVID-19 can be accomplished without putting undue stress on our teams.”

While many will not be surprised by any of this, there were hopeful Anthem fans out there looking to return to the world with new life breathed into it. However, this will no longer be the case.

The BioWare team will continue to work on the next Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and their nearly a decade old MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Related: BioWare Store Is Back With Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Anthem Items

• Anthem Lead Producer Ben Irving Announces He’s Leaving BioWare
• BioWare Releases Beautiful Limited-Edition Garrus Vakarian Statue For Pre-Order
• GM Casey Hudson and Executive Producer Mark Darrah Leave BioWare

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