It’s a little over a month before Bioware’s eagerly awaited Anthem launches on February 22 and some new footage from IGN showing off Fort Tarsis’ gameplay.
Like all of you, we are hungry to know a lot more about the game, especially Fort Tarsis, the central hub of the game.
It’s here that Anthem’s RPG elements will play out. In Fort Tarsis, you get to interact with the games central characters, taking on missions and engaging in whatever political intrigue the game’s story is hiding.
This is also where you can craft and upgrade your javelins.
Fort Tarsis, the heart of Anthem
The footage introduces your Javelin Mechanic Zo, who will be responsible for taking care of your Javelin and making sure it’s tip-top.
We also meet Prospero, the man who sells himself with this bold statement:
Who wants to fly into battle looking plain and simple? Not when you can fly in, looking like a steel thunder come to life. A fist full of lighting in one hand and a hailstorm full of pain in the other. It’s what I do.
He’s clearly the man to talk to about aesthetics of your Javelin decals, shaders, and all of the things relating to your Javelin’s appearance. He clearly gives you a mission to reactivate a forge (Destiny players groan) of some sort and will teach you how to craft items.
Then there is Commander Vohl, a baritone character who clearly wants to hire you for some work but thinks Freelancers are unreliable. There’s a definite story angle that develops from this relationship.
Conversations so far look good with no signs of Andromeda’s terrible facial animations. It’s still rather odd that you can’t see your own character and it gives that whole disembodied voice feel that’s a little jarring to me.
Regardless, I’m already loving the vibe, Artdeco and style of Fort Tarsis. It’s nice to see a diversity of characters and there seems to be a lot of interesting, albeit totally platonic, relationships to be formed here.
On top of that, it seems BioWare has made Fort Tarsis fairly malleable with spaces changing a little bit depending on player choices in the story. Details are a bit sketchy but the footage shows a place that was initially cluttered and changed with a jump forward in time.
It will be interesting to see if the effect is as blatant as Dishonored 2 where the city of Dunwall would change dramatically over the course of the game depending on how you play.
Anyway, here’s the video.
Anthem launches on PC, PS4 and Xbox One on February 22, 2019. Pre-orders are live with buyers getting access to the VIP demo that comes out January 25-27. This will be followed by an open demo for general pop on February 1-3.