BioWare’s multiplayer shooter Anthem was terminated this week because EA no longer wanted to maintain servers for people to play the game on, and without them, no one can play the game. But the former executive producer of Anthem has revealed that BioWare had technology working, close to the game’s release, that would enable us to host our own servers to play the game on.

Mark Darrah, who left BioWare in December 2020, revealed the information at the end of a three-and-a-half hour video discussing “The Truth About What Happened on Anthem”, which he posted on his YouTube channel. “Anthem actually had the code for local servers running in a dev environment right up until a few months up to launch,” he said. “I don’t know that they still work but the code is there to be salvaged and recovered.”

This in theory presents a possible lifeline and future for Anthem, and local server hosting is a crucial part of Darrah’s even bolder plan for what could be done with Anthem now. His idea? To re-release the game as single-player and remove the multiplayer component entirely.

Darrah, an experienced executive producer, outlined a plan for doing this. You’d need a budget of about $10m, he said, and step one would be to bring the game up to date. This wouldn’t be hard. Shift it to current-gen consoles and enable the top-end PC game effects, and lock it at 60 frames-per-second. Step two: local servers. Get rid of EA’s need to host servers for the game. Step three: “Pivot to something that’s more about single-player storytelling.”

“Pivot to something that’s more about single-player storytelling”

Where players used to fill out groups in Anthem, you could instead have AI companions, as in other BioWare games. “And since this is BioWare,” Darrah added, “go all the way into making them companions.” You could use some existing characters for this and “promote” them, so to speak. “But I think you’ll actually find there’s a lower-friction route by making three-to-five new characters, with dialogue, with plot arcs, that are brand new to the series – that are people who’d go with you through the existing story of Anthem with their companion content,” he said. “Writing those characters: not very difficult. Making those characters move with you: that’s where a lot of the work is going to go.”

What you’d have if you could do that is a game much more familiar to BioWare fans, Darrah said – people who potentially skipped Anthem because it was too looter-shooter for them. “What you’ve essentially re-engineered is a BioWare game,” he said, “without romances, with a decent BioWare story, with companions, that can be played as a single-player game.” You probably couldn’t sell it for $70, he realises, but “for a pretty modest amount of work you could effectively create a brand new single-player game from what already exists for this game”.

“Is EA going to do this?” he added. “Almost definitely not.”

Darrah’s full video covers a lot of ground, chronologically running through Anthem’s development since conception in late 2011 or early 2012, through to release in 2019. It talks of the game’s originating pitch as being a turning point in BioWare’s history, and possibly the basis for all future live service problems to come. The video also highlights a project that crucially lacked a single unifying vision and identity – something ultimately born out in the finished game, as Oli pointed out in our Anthem review.