Nvidia tapped ‘Anthem’ to help showcase the graphical muscle at their CES 2019 keynote. And it’s a good choice. EA/BioWare’s take on the loot shooter looks so damn good. The gaming community is crossing their fingers it plays just as good. Let’s take a look.
First off, despite Nvidia’s YouTube description that is not a new Javelin. It is a new visual customization of one of the four javelins we’ve seen so far. But the enemy at 0:44 does look new. I haven’t been keeping up with all the latest footage of Anthem, but I don’t remember seeing this one before.
BioWare’s Global Community lead on ‘Anthem’ (Andrew Johnson) confirmed there will be four javelins at launch.
The short trailer also reveals ‘Anthem’ will take advantage of Nvidia’s DLSS. Here’s a quick explanation on what that is via Nvidia:
We’ve created a new rendering technique called Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS). It boosts performance by a significant degree, can improve image quality, and its anti-aliasing has better temporal stability and image clarity compared to commonly-used Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TAA) techniques.
Sorry RTX peeps, no plans for Ray-Tracing. At least, not yet. I imagine the hit to performance would be way too much anyways.
If you’re still on the fence about ‘Anthem’ or aren’t sure what it’s all about – head on over to the game’s Twitch page. The developers did two one-hour long livestreams over the past month.
IGN also uploaded a recent 15-minute clip showing off an early mission teaching flight and combat mechanics.
‘Anthem looks’ fantastic, and EA hasn’t managed any self-inflicted wounds with it so far as they did with Battlefront 2 (microtransactions) and Battlefield V (marketing, missing features at launch). I’m feeling optimistic.
Everyone will get a chance to play it with an early demo starting on January 25 (for EA Access/Origin Access/Pre-orders) and everyone else on February 1. ‘Anthem’ launches on February 22, 2019 with EA/Origin Access kicking off on February 15.