Thanks again to @VonVivianoV on Twitter for the Terrors of the Library title cards! I do plan on reviewing the Marvel's Avengers game... but the library has a waitlist on it and I'm number 15. I cut a bit of the skullduggery in the game's development for time, but a few more highlights: - Anthem's development builds were so unstable that Bioware couldn't play-test the game past basic QA - Bioware's different studios deeply mistrust one another and are led by people with giant egos, so when the Old Republic team that had experience with MMO's tried to help with the game, they were told to piss off. - There's a specific example you can point to for how not being able to redo the cutscenes boned the team: the quest with Sentinel Dax has a scene where her Javelin is inexplicably and abruptly destroyed offscreen, only to be perfectly fine before and after. - Almost immediately after this review went live, it was announced that 2 new ships are coming to Star Wars Squadrons- officially meaning the EA budget title has already gotten more post-launch support than Bioware's massive Triple-A release.

So, at the end there with the jab at the "Final Fantasy XIV is good now!" crowd, to the crowd's defense, Final Fantasy XIV was basically a completely different game after Naoki Yoshida took over. There is just a teensy, tiny, little, itty bitty problem with the crowd's mentality. Yoshi-P, lord and savior of Final Fantasy, is a man with personal experience as an avid player of online games (including FFXIV's rival, World of Warcraft), and a designer of other successful games (Dragon Quest, primarily). He saw the OG FFXIV, looked at its competitors, recalled all the time he'd spent playing other MMOs and online games (he's an avid gamer), and said "We're gonna do it MY WAY." Yoshida cracked the whip and laid out an incredibly tight schedule over the course of two years for rebuilding Final Fantasy XIV Online from the ground up. He had an exact vision in mind, and he was (and is still) a very competent leader, even able to navigate the utterly arcane minefield that is Square Enix higher-ups and representatives to get his way. Yes, he had to crunch his team heavily to achieve it, but it wasn't out of laziness, it was because Square gave them a deadline of two years and he knew everyone could do it with some direction. So, here's where the problem comes in. Remember, that teeny tiny little GIGANTIC PULSATING CANCEROUS problem I brought up before? Bioware doesn't have a Naoki Yoshida. Bioware doesn't have a functional company structure. Bioware doesn't even have their competent writers anymore. Bioware. Has. NOTHING. Yoshida crunched his team out of pure necessity; he already had the game they were going to make in mind, it just had to happen extremely quickly. Not only that, but he was a competent leader. Bioware, meanwhile, crunches their employees into complete mental breakdowns and works them to the brink of death...because of utterly incompetent leadership. There's nobody with a vision (of anything other than piles of money), they don't have anything to unite them, and they have no direction; this is the point where I will reiterate what was said in the video, that being Bioware itself didn't actually know it was making Anthem until the E3 hype trailer was released. EA was shockingly forgiving with the development of Anthem, but even they eventually had to put Bioware under the sword with a hard-and-fast deadline. That's the only time Bioware actually managed to actually start making a game. It took a gun to the company's head before they actually made the game they had started over half a decade ago. So when the woodworks' crowd comes clambering out to kick and scream about A Realm Reborn being a successful relaunch of FFXIV Online, it's important to remember the context under which it was made. That sort of second wind is lightning in a bottle; it took the perfect storm of a legend-to-be with a vision, Square Enix getting temporarily distracted with a shiny object long enough for a good game to be made under their noses, and a playerbase that was genuinely willing to return and give the game a second chance. Even under the philosophy of "Never say "Die"", I'm going to say it: Anthem will NEVER achieve A Realm Reborn's legendary revival status. There isn't a game to salvage, there was no vision in the first place, there is simply nothing to work with. Even A Realm Reborn still references parts of XIV Online and uses it as a base. What could Anthem do to make any of what it has workable? What can Bioware do to pull its collective head out of its ass? There's a very simple answer: Nothing. Nothing will be enough. Bioware has bled all of its talent. Anthem is dead. EA is on high alert, especially with how they keep getting sued up the ass in Europe. There's simply nothing that can be done; Bioware will close before 2021 is over, and it will be nobody's fault but their own at this point.

That's why I hate the term 'live service.' If you're game is an MMO, call it an MMO.

I'd originally call this the "Iron Man at home," but given how the recent Avengers game turned out, well...

I have an issue with the whole "it will get fixed later" excuse. If you're gonna release an overly broken, glitch-filled, poorly optimized mess, why even bother releasing it to begin with? That's what beta testers are for. Don't just dump an unfinished mess and expect people to eat up your shit. Games like Superman 64, Big Rigs: Over The Road Racing, and Ride to Hell: Retribution are examples of rushed development and bad optimization, but at least they didn't require an internet connection. And when your game is so bad that I'm defending Superman 64, you seriously fucked up.

You know what I'm reminded of when people bring up the argument of "They fixed it now; the game is good" (aka the For Honor Defense)? Final Fantasy 13. "The game gets good once you get out of Cocoon!" (Which is 25 hours in.) To quote Spoony, "Why can't it be good NOW?!"

7:00 Of all the comparisons to Warframe, I feel this is the most telling. Not only can I pause the game in solo, I can leave it for 8 hours and not be kicked. And that game is free!

It really says something when Titanfall 2, another EA title, was the better mech game.

When that "Anthem" song came on, all I could think of was that Sigma from overwatch trailer of him screaming "What is that melody!?!"

Anthem? Oh, you mean worse Warframe that you need to pay money for just to get it?

Around 6:00 with the being dragged to waypoints, which look like RINGS, I really wanted to hear "Oof, bad idea to slightly rip off Superman 64"

I know this game has been out and did it's rounds, but I still really wish Crunch time in game development wasn't blown off as "part of the job", really disrespectul to not worry about the people making a game for you

"Dad, can I have the new Iron Man VR game?" "Son, we have Iron Man VR at home." Iron Man VR at home:

I get the feeling that all the corporate executives that actively support “LIVE SERVICES” saw Spaceballs, which ACCURATELY predicted the true nature of “LIVE SERVICES” mentality. The whole “release now, fix it later” came from what Spaceballs called “Instant Cassettes”, in a sense, they’re out in stores before the products are finished. This came out during the 1980s btw. If even Mel Brookes could predict the failure of “LIVE SERVICES” and all who support them DECADES before video games became mainstream, you know the industry as a whole has FAILED. Better to burn the whole thing down and start again. The Second Great Video Game Crash is not only inevitable, it’s imminent. My prayers go out to all who truly love video games and want to see this industry return to prosperity and glory. But it can’t do that with the current hierarchy alive and intact.

Funny how Anthem shovels in so much lore into the game, nevermind that lore isn't the same as narrative. Just look at what happened to the Dark Universe (at least the DCEU has the first Wonder Woman movie and Shazam) and The Order: 1886. It's one thing to create an immersive world, but there has to be a way to implement a story into it without lumping it into rampant exposition. I'm a big fan of Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto franchise, the games have several lore by way of fictional radio ads and instruction manuals, but the reason why they work is because the games themselves have an actual story surrounding them. Even one of Rockstar's lesser-known games like Manhunt have better lore than Anthem, though I'm one of the few pedantic guys that is willing to give Manhunt some merit.

And this is why I'm always skeptical towards live service games.

What people don't understand about FFXIV is that, they didn't "fix" it, they scrapped the whole game and made an entirely new one that vaguely followed that previous one's story. A Real Reborn wasn't a mega patch, it was a new game altogether so stop saying that these kind of games can "make a comeback" with enough updates, sometimes you just have to know where to cut your loses and start anew.

God, BioWare was fallen so hard over the past decade. At least we'll always have the old classics they made already, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is probably my favorite game made from them.

Anthem is really the lowest point for Bioware.

Dude I got to tell you your reviews haven’t gotten old in the 4 years I started watching :)

28:24 He looks like blind Kanan Jarrus from Star Wars Rebels.

BioWare truly has fallen hard. Hopefully they get their shit together for Dragon Age 4.

"This is the third time I've checked this game out from the library" Jadow, why do you hurt yourself by having this take up space in your home?

I've played Anthem, I've beaten Anthem once...I quit Anthem, and have had months of regret getting it ever since. Bioware did say that they are rebuilding the game from the ground up and will make it the game it was suppose to be...but until then, this game makes Hunt Down the Freeman look like its Game of the Year material

The last 3 Anthem players realllllly got the magic over their head

Coming back to this what could be an interesting way to handle the villain would be if he was like Owen. He was considered worthless within his faction because he couldn't use their armors. So he took control of his own destiny and forcibly made the armor work through modifications and has been modifying his for decades which makes him nigh invulnerable thanks to how often he upgrades whenever anyone can manage to hurt him. He is seeking the Anthem of Creation as an end goal to take command of reality and make a world he deems fit having become so bitter at the state of things and still bitter that after all this time you as a rookie can be someone special inside your own faction. You were born able to use your suit while he worked so hard to get to where he is and he finds it insufferable you are somehow gaining enough power to start matching him. He becomes a god entity with the Anthem of Creation and begins reshaping the world while screaming in rage about the system you're a part of and how long he has put in to reaching this goal and even talking about Owen and saying that those on top like you would look down at him and smother him in the crib just because you can. You don't need much to make a villain who is an evil invincible asshole have some character and by making him be this extremely bitter asshole who has become exactly what he hates and can't realize it you would have a villain with only some dialogue changes have the potential to be at least somewhat memorable even in your few interactions by building him as someone who just keeps adapting and has a bitter streak. Then by killing him you somehow have managed to put yourself on a lot of people's radars by managing to kill an infamous asshole and bam you can even have post game content be different jobs you're hired on to do because your reputation makes you a valuable hire. Simple, effective, takes less than 7 years to come up with, and even helps work with a live service game's content feed. But no legendary Bioware with their many writers and EA giving them time to work on the game managed to bungle around so long EA was in the right for once to argue to speed a game along. Because if you're still not even in full production/development after half a decade then you're not making a project you're making a Duke Nukem Forever.

this is the problem with online games, you need to connect to it, if you dont have internet, or a shity connection in general, you pretty much cant play the game, or have special unlockables

The plot is dirt simple and near nonexistant but stuffed with a shitton of useless lore and info dumps to try to make it look deeper a.k.a. every cheap tactic that bad writers rely on to attempt and fail to sugar coat the fact that their stories suck.

It just utterly disgusts me that EA would abuse their employees like that. Just despicable. Anyway, great review! Been waiting for this one, and you didn’t disappoint!

No word of a lie, Jadow, but every time you upload a review, I get excited to see what gets thrown at you; you're an awesome reviewer, you definitely deserve more attention, bro!

Really disappointing to see Bioware having fallen so low. KOTOR, Jade Empire, and the original Mass Effect (not played 2 or 3 yet) are all great games, and it's sad to see that their latest was just... this. And there's the usage of crunch, which is just terrible for people's mental health.

Lmao i love your commentary, I laughed quite a few times. It reminds me of the old G4 X-Play reviews. I'm subscribing for more!

One of your best videos dude. I just want to say thanks and great work since I think you should get a lot more views than you do. These types of videos are a dying art form.

Calling this 2019’s biggest gaming failure is generous. More like this is the biggest gaming failure of the generation

This channel is gonna blow up!

Basically, if Warframe was on a budget and lacked creative design and lore

To be honest, I'm surprised Anthem didn't get the Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5 treatment... (I.E. Servers shutting down, The game being bricked and the game pretty much being a collector's item.)

I love the review, its so good 😊 I no joke ordered a copy online right after i watched this for the third time lol, the one class i was interested in was the storm class javalin tbh

Fantastic job jadow. A+ work.

I'm just still so happy you're reviewing games. Most reviewers I find that are really good and or funny seem to have abanden their channels. You should review Dragonball GT: Final Bout, the voice acting is another level of cringe, and the computer controled players can sometimes be really overpowered too

Jadow, you really do provide some very funny content during what is a very boring day for me. Also, I think the crappiness of the story in Anthem sucks even harder when you consider Bioware literally wrote one of the absolute best plot twists of any game when they made Knights of the Old Republic. They also made one of the most emotional trilogies with Mass Effect that really got you invested in the lore, characters, and story.

Funny enough, I never grew up with Bioware's games. I found out about about the company after watching big boss's video on EA talking about the problems that this game and Mass Effect: Andromeda had. I will say that I recently purchased the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition and am absolutely loving it. Sad to see what Bioware had become, but in the very least I can see that they were at least trying to salvage the franchise to warrant getting excited about the next Mass Effect game.

Legends say that they are still working on Anthem 2.0 to this day.

Glad u did a video on this, since I can't play the game anymore due to EA shafting my account and making invalid, that goes for all EA games too. Not missing this game one bit ever since I maxed out my interceptor.

Man i was waiting for this reveiw

Ok man, we get it, Krystal is your waifu, you are risking in people calling you furry with that.

Sees the title Me: Oh No

For the record, BioWare has officially announced version 2.0 has been cancelled sometime in 2021

This game has regularly gone on sale for $5 brand new. Still not interested in trying it.

Did you see the part where some of the Bioware employees think their fellow workers might have killed themselves because they left one day and never were heard from by any of them ever again? Don't know if it's true but the game's development was hellish enough to cause serious mental harm. I have no idea how EA let Anthem sit around in such a state for so many years. And considering FF14 comes from Square and Square runs on literal madness the fact Bioware claimed they would do one means they missed that FF14 was expensive and a miracle. Anthem should have been so cool, an Iron Man looter shooter should be awesome. Like if the weapon classes weren't just assault rifles and SMGs and more unique like maybe blade launchers and maybe an elemental based rapid fire weapon that lays on status effects rather than pure damage. But no because Bioware is ran by people who are stuck sniffing their own endlessly recycled praise they couldn't see that starting a game development full scale at a decent time was a smart idea. Crunch on that scale is a damning failure of management, and the fact that CD Projekt Red on Cyberpunk has been supposedly doing death march crunch yet the game is still being so hyped makes me worried that it will keep being seen as a good thing by people that don't understand working programmers to death doesn't solve shit.

I've never been this early before. And I love that is for this specific review.

and remember: if it's a bug, it's actually a surprise mechanism

Dude this my first video I'm watching of yours and fuck man is it entertaining got my notification an sub👍🤙

Not only a great review, but a great break down.

Live service games are getting really repetitive. BioWare management really messed it up with their incompetent and unforgiving approach in keeping their employees sane. Very few games turn out good when in development hell/crunch

I can't wait for Darklordjadow1 to review Mulan 2020. It recently got released onto KZfaq for $20

Never saw that coming. Great terror

They could've ripped of Red Eclipse's jetpack and parkour since they actually work

Another core example as to why EA is one of, if not the worst game company on the planet, outside of Konami and Activision.

Now that Mass Effect is getting a remaster, are you reviewing those? Seeing how those went from a massive epic adventure to retconning everything you did to make ME2 and then spit, piss and shit on its players for 3 and then... To Andromeda.

Maybe the Monitor was embarrassed by his height, which is why he grew a bit taller.

Perhaps this game is the employees getting back at the corporation.

Apparently the 12 or so Anthem fans left somehow were surprised that Anthem is dead.

I love Terrors of the library

37:17 - 39:02. There is also the fact that live service games tend to be like a three course meal where you're forced to eat literal shit for the starter, it doesn’t matter how good the rest of the meal is. YOU. ARE. NO. LONGER. HUNGRY.

I remember buying this and destiny thinking these were gonna be great games boy was I wrong lol

Haven't played this game but the story seems like it screws up on the basic level of "show don't tell"

0:41 This is where I started chuckling. 0:52 This is where I started laughing. 0:58 THIS IS WHERE I STARTED DYING XD! 1:16 I haven't even gotten far into the actual review and I know this will be an amazing video.

Holy shit. That fan art as soon as the video starts scared the fuck out of me.

evil faction called the dominion (rip off of star trek deep space 9) and a guy called the monitor (ripping off infinite crisis, at this point the comic)

Fortunately i didn't make the mistake of buying this shit, this whole javelin armor that can fly concept had me hyped, and then the game was released.... The bricked consoles are true, i had a friend who's ps4 literally crashed to oblivion and couldn't work at all because of this trash game but thankfully the console was still under warranty and he got it replaced, this is a first i have never heard of a game turning a console into a rock

This game had A LOT of advertising hype when it was first announced, and it's amazing as to how shit it actually is.

Just discovered you. Not sure if it's up your alley game wise, but I highly recommend playing the Just Cause 3 dlc story missions. One of them literally turns you into Iron Man, to a degree where I audibly asked "How has an Iron Man not been made yet?" The dlc also proves just how pointless Anthem's "one good element, the flying" truly was/is.

so why IS this show called Terrors of the Library? do you actually check out games from your local library like its a Blockbuster? Librarys do that??

So this review makes me have a bit of a burning hatred towards BioWare and Crunch Time. That's a first

This game is basically Borderlands in third person and not good

I love you don't have a long ass into to your videos.

Best line ever! in 28:32

I hope you do a review the new spiderman game

I forgot it existed

why does this visually remind me of Warframe...

14:41, Anyone else notice the Dragon Ball Z Abridged reference?

Not being able to pause while playing by yourself is probably the most simple and annoying problem in a video game

The real Bio-ware developers left the company after Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age Inquisition. The ones that made this game are just posers with the company name and rep. (kinda like modern Bungie).

This was a cool game the first time I played it with Warframe.

Wow I didn't realize how barren anthem was, Jesus

Is that Terrors of the Library title card new?

Unexpected Dune reference

Pretty depressing to see Bioware fall from grace with suuuch a brutal impact with the ground. After Dragon Age Inquisition... it's so depressing to see what they have become. And speaking of Bioware, planning to play Mass Effect 3 soon. Gotta see how the Trilogy saga concludes. To remember why they were once called the Kings of RPG's.(also to reunite with Garrus and Jack) And yeah, I'll brace for the endings too. See if they're really that bad. But at least I'll be playing one of their last good games.

Think you deserve some fun after this one. You mentioned that you liked Doom 2016 in your duke nukem review, what about Doom eternal? :>

the bad guys are called The Dominion, and are lead by The Monitor, BAAAAAAD idea ripping off star trek deep space 9 and DC Crisis on Infinite Earths (comic and tv event)

Well I'm happy he really enjoyed the game

ey, early! good to see you rip this trash game apart!

Personally I didn't mind the dumb story, the flying (Which I actually enjoyed) or the microtransactions. I did enjoy playing it... for about 3 days before I realised "Wow, this is really boring. I'd rather be playing Hitman 2"

Skip it 8:33

Can't wait for the same issues to worm their way into transformers with Transformers Online!

Shouldnt it be terrors the video game store? Libraries have books NOT video games However, They arnt scary in the first place and video game & movie stores are dead

Another great Review. Athem is what is wrong with the Industry as a whole. Its Comical....

Remember when it kept bricking and crashing your hard drive in the past? Yeah, for a while, it'd brick your console and you'd need to rebuild your hard drive.

Why do you have so many "The Simulation" games? Is that for a future review?