Many BioWare fans were bummed when the studio confirmed there are no romance options in Anthem, its upcoming shared-world looter shooter. As lead producer Mike Gamble told Game Informer, "we're moving away from that for Anthem." However, BioWare general manager Casey Hudson told VentureBeat that romance isn't necessarily dead.
"The question is, are there going to be romances in Anthem?" Hudson said. "We’ve been saying no, but—the nuance is, of course we do want relationships. It’s just more in an action genre of storytelling."
Hudson likened the situation to the evolution of the character Garrus from the original Mass Effect. "It turned out that people loved Garrus so much that they wanted romances with him, so we built that into Mass Effect 2 and people loved it," he said. "That same opportunity exists here. If people really like a character and they want to spend more time with them, want a relationship with them, that’s definitely in the cards for the future."
EA and BioWare have billed Anthem as an always-online "live service" which will receive regular updates after launch. Perhaps one of those updates will add back some BioWare-brand smoochin'?
