Rocket Man: Creating Flight for Anthem

In this 2019 GDC Animation Bootcamp talk, BioWare's David Hoang and Daniel Nordlander the process of creating some of the unique traversal system of Anthem.
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[@jorgeloredo100]

People don't get that devs still have talent, passion and are amazing at their work, a work that gets screwed by the mismanagement of the higher ups. Thanks for sharing

[@GonziHere]

@@S.... Hearing that Anthem sucks even though your work was great is not pleasant (I imagine) but is also understandable and manageable. But getting downvotes on GDC talk is something else entirely. This talk is aimed at fellow developers and it's a really bad venue for venting of the player's frustration.

[@JoonasSariola]

Feel bad for Anthem getting shut down, the flying stuff was best part of it.

[@heliosup6869]

The game was one helluva cluster poop.

[@MrSTVR]

The flying was great. If only it wasn't in Anthem.

[@freffo3407]

Imagine a Iron Man open world, maybe boring in the long run. And yet another lisence that is huge that could become a bad title in the end.

[@Audiotrocious]

Honestly, I loved the flying. Do I wish I could fly for longer? Yes. Did I have fun flying? Yes.

[@beardedghinzu4336]

Metoo

[@dicksonZero]

29:20 gravity rush doesn't have a ceiling, so you definitely can fly over the city. however they have 2 things to not let it be too OP: 1. limited flight juice 2. lots of interesting stuff are underground so yea, anthem's natural habitat thing forces them to make ceilings

[@Taartin]

I played anthem and dear god do I love the animations, especially the interceptor, it feels so fucking great to play, I would literally just jump around, in and out of flight just because it felt amazing

[@AKThem06]

been waiting for this since it got uploaded on the vault Thank you!

[@VictorPitchPlays]

Man, you can *feel* the pain in their voices.

[@gospodindpakoh4200]

No you cant. They are pretty chill. Tho after reading Jason article you can pretty much never avoid looking at anything Bioware\Anthem related without pain. Curse of knowledge.

[@Patabot]

Thank you for sharing this. I enjoyed a lot of things in Anthem, and the animations definitely are one of them!

[@GonziHere]

Thanks for sharing, great, inspiring talk :-)

[@k.k.a]

Omg I was hyped when I found this, even though this game didn't do so well it inspires so much

[@PolygonHive]

One of the best 3Cs in recent video games! Despite the state of the game on launch day... Thanks for sharing 😉

[@anhilliator1]

Anthen can best be described as this: Great bones, but no meat. Believe it or not, Anthem's combat and flight mechanics are *stellar -* it feels fluid, and the combo system is actually really well done. It's just that there really isn't much in the way of content to do stuff in.

[@scrumptiouslettuce6604]

Excellent animations. Never played the game though, didn't hear great things about it

[@hayatojp1249]

they took 6years and a few hundreds of developers working on it and the only good thing is flying good job bioware

[@AdeptusForge]

The biggest component here is that the movement physics itself isn't even carrying the system that much. The majority of the system is carried by the animations and the piles of camera tricks that are all going on simultaneously. It's probably gross as hell under the hood, but damn if I wouldn't want to see it.

[@Gandalfmandalf]

Best part of the game was flight. If Desnty brought these mechanics in it would take off. Pun intended

[@rubeeno8055]

if only this game was finished. i played the beta and loved the flying. An iron man game with these flight mechanics would be great.

[@etchasketch222]

Overheat mechanic was what made the game go from cool to insta-suck in my mind. Dark Void had better flight mechanics and that game out in 2010

[@netc5937]

anthem was such a pity

[@foulplay99]

Anthem was so badly mis-managed I still feel huge buyers remorse. My own fault for assuming Bioware and EA would release something worth of the price. This is what happens when your management have two different visions of two totally conflicting game ideas, and the designers are shouted down if they even speak about referencing the competition. Behind the scenes this was doomed to failure and EA still decided to hype it up and throw it to the wolves.

[@Spacecookie-]

Super-heroes? What? I never got that from Anthem at all. And there are people who fly all the time, we already have a word for them, it's pilots, or passangers. Did someone not realise we had invented flight capable craft quite some time ago, and they aren't fantasy robots?