After a long period of silence BioWare returns to talk about Anthem with new details on the builds and progression within this looter shooter.
Through a new article on the official blog, the BioWare developers are back to talk about Anthem. After a decidedly subdued launch and subsequent support not up to par, the team decided they wanted to start from scratch to create the so-called Anthem 2.0 or if you prefer Anthem NEXT. BioWare has therefore selected a small team of developers with whom to discuss, collect ideas and projects in order to clearly define what the future of this video game will be.
In the past few months we have only seen some artwork and concepts, shared directly on BioWare’s social channels. Recently, however, we have been able to learn how the developers intend to improve the progression system of our javelins through new progressions of skills, builds, specializations, equipment and artifacts. Obviously everything is still “work in progress”, so something could still change before the official release, but let’s analyze in detail the new information released to try to understand what awaits us in the next big update of Anthem.
New progression system
According to the developers the current progression system in Anthem it is not satisfying enough. For this reason they decided to start from the basics, trying to change the supporting structure in this genre of video games. As you can see from the image below, the personalization screen of your javelin has already been sketched (in the Italian version called “javelin”). The interface looks a lot like the one in Destiny and offers 11 distinct equipment slots.
To our javelin we can assign a primary and secondary weapon with obvious differences between them, artifacts and mods that replace the current components up to other specific equipment and skills. The latter are no longer obtained randomly from objects in missions, but are unlocked through specific skill trees and can subsequently be enhanced with the use of mods. All this serves to form the so-called “build” of our javelin, composed of the synergy between specializations, skills and equipment.
The builds
Each of the four javelins featured in Anthem can level up and earn points, which can be spent to unlock skills, passives and stat bonuses. Starting from the first levels, the player will be able to invest the points in a tree of basic skills to master well the fundamental components of each javelin and become familiar with that specific type of gameplay. Then you can choose one specialization, which will differentiate the style of play and each will have a different skill tree with specific skills, upgrades and more.
Each javelin also wields a artifact, a weapon created using the advanced technology characteristic of the game world. This element adds to the customization of our character, giving us the possibility to further vary the gameplay. The artifact can be further enhanced and improved with other elements to make it more devastating and versatile against enemies. For example, the Ranger will have the rocket launcher as one of the artifacts, already present in the current javelin, giving the player the possibility to customize it according to the style of play.
