Anthem executive producer Mark Darrah is answering questions on Twitter

Anthem executive producer Mark Darrah talked to us about BioWare's upcoming Destiny-like last month at E3. More recently, he's continued to answer questions about the game on Twitter, snapping off short answers to quick inquires across a wide range of Anthem-related topics. 

What GPU was the Anthem E3 demo running on? Two 1080 Ti cards, enabling 4K/60fps. Arabic language support? Not planned, but people are asking. Will the lead character be voiced? Yes. And so it goes. 

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A lot of it is understandably vague, but there are some usefully specific (or at least interesting) answers in there too. Each class of Javelin has "some form of damage mitigation," Darrah said, such as the shield on the Colossus. There will be a hard level cap "that will change over time in the service," and there will be no Wildlands-like AI companions to accompany you when you're playing solo—when you're on your own, you're on your own. 

In response to a question about whether pre-planned groups are required for endgame content, Darrah said that the drop-in/drop-out matchmaking can be used "for everything." That might be a little bit of a dodge: Being able to match up with random Anthemites doesn't mean it's necessarily an effective strategy. Relatedly, players won't normally be penalized for failing to complete Stronghold missions ("Depends upon how you exit but you will usually get the rewards to the point you got," Darrah said), but obviously you won't score any of the good stuff that awaits at the end. 

It's a lot to sort through (quite a number of answers are repeats) and I haven't noticed any Big Secrets left lying around, but as a sort of ongoing Q&A it's a pretty good source of info. Anthem is currently scheduled to come out on February 22, 2019.

Andy Chalk

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.