According to a recent report, the development of Anthem has suffered greatly from the use of the Frostbite engine. Many originally planned features could not be implemented based on the engine.
For some years, Electronic Arts has been mandating that all major games be developed on the in-house Frostbite engine, which was originally developed for the Battlefield shooter series. Meanwhile, the engine is also used for role-playing games such as “Dragon Age” or “Need for Speed” racing games.
And BioWare also used the engine in the shooter shooter Anthem. Although you can hardly complain about the graphics features of the engine, there are other weaknesses. Apparently, these have also significantly contributed to the fact that “Anthem” apparently is not what the developers had originally imagined.
The editor Jason Schreier of Kotaku has shown in a report that BioWare originally wanted to provide a lot more game mechanics and systems in Anthem, which were not feasible with the Frostbite engine. So the developers had to deviate from their vision for the game.
Problems with the Frostbite engine
“Part of the problem was that you could put enough into the engine to show what was possible,” said a BioWare developer, who preferred to remain anonymous. However, the actual implementation of a feature took much longer, in some cases, and was not possible at all. “Then you would see, ‘Oh my God, we can only do that if we reinvent the wheel, which will take too long.’ It was sometimes difficult to tell when to leave something out and continue.”
According to the report, even the fix of simple bugs was very time consuming. As a result, developers developed a reluctance to try new things because it could cause bugs that could be very costly to fix. One developer said, “If you need a week to fix a small bug, it discourages you from fixing the bugs. You start to find a way to get around that instead of repairing it properly. “
Another developer explains that the engine is too complicated: “I would say that the biggest problem I had with Frostbite was how many steps you had to take to do something fundamental. With another engine, I could do something myself, maybe with a designer. It’s a complicated thing here. “
While the developers had to cope with the intricate engine, Electronic Arts pulled off some of BioWare’s most talented developers to let them work on the FIFA series, which also switched to the Frostbite engine at the time.
BioWare has already posted a statement on the official site in response to the report. However, this is more about the hard work in general and does not specifically refer to the Frostbite engine. How much truth lies in the report of Schreier is not clear.
However, there have been reports from other studios before that showed that the development on the Frostbite engine is complicated because it is basically a shooter engine that had to be adapted to the other genres.
BioWare has already posted a statement on the official site in response to the report. However, this is more about the hard work in general and does not specifically refer to the Frostbite engine. How much truth lies in the report of Schreier is not clear.
However, there have been reports from other studios before that showed that the development on the Frostbite engine is complicated because it is basically a shooter engine that had to be adapted to the other genres.
