Last week, Christian Dailey released a blog post about developments regarding what is known unofficially as Anthem 2.0. Rather than rehash the post here, our hope is to highlight some of the exciting changes we noticed.
The first big change we are going to highlight comes from Christian’s tweets in the weeks leading up to the blog post. He shared with the community concept art for a new location and a new faction (pirates!).
As this is concept art, there’s no way to speculate how close the final version will match what we’re seeing. What’s striking, however, is the verticality of the new location. Flight in Anthem is second to none and some of their best maps hone in on the ability to access incredible heights in order to rain down destruction on those who would threaten Bastion.
Naturally, with new factions and new locations comes exploration and more insight into the lore that Bioware does so well. Right now all we have is speculation and it’s hard not to speculate. Will we get a new city to launch from? New strongholds to conquer? What new mysteries will we get to peer into? And, most importantly, what shiny new toys will we get to play with? So far the only piece of the puzzle Christian has given us has to do with the loot overhaul and hints as to what’s to come.
Many Freelancers will confess that the most exciting sound in all of Anthem is the pop of that yellow legendary and that the most disappointing feeling in the game is the revelation of that yellow legendary (Tesilar Trap or Black Powder anyone?). Currently, trying to find specific pieces with specific rolls can take hours and even then, some Freelancers will chase pieces and never get what they want or end up with pieces that are functionally useless. With that in mind, Christian offers a list of overhauls with the intention of respecting the Freelancer’s time. And as any Freelancer knows, time is money.
Since the list of planned changes is self-explanatory, the main portion we want to look at is the video clip embedded. It takes place in an as yet unknown location. The Ranger fights a fury which explodes in loot. What caught our attention was the list that popped up on the bottom right hand corner.
Without opening their bag, the Freelancer is able to see what they received. Interestingly it appears that they may be adding in pieces of armor to the Freelancer loadout. This particular Freelancer received Reinforced Leg Armor. Although we don’t know the details of the new loot, it appears the developers are committed to diverse and creative gameplay by providing more ways to customize our javelins.
And speaking of new loot, a very cool piece of concept art was included in Christian’s post:
Not only do we get a chance to compare the design aesthetics of each faction, we get confirmation that, like the revered Helena Tarsis, we could find ourselves facing the Urgoth horde.
That’s all we have for now. Stay tuned Freelancers. Strong alone, stronger together.
