“We didn’t want to kind of just leak things out from zero all the way up to a hundred percent,” Hudson says. “We actually want you to be able to jump in and get a big experience that really establishes what this world is, and what the experience is. We’ve got all four Javelins and a big critical-path story.” However, he stresses that the critical path is not a resolution.
“With Mass Effect 1, we had something on the order of 40 or 50 planets that you could discover and explore. But the story was written as a race against time, so people would finish in 13 or 15 hours because of the nature of the story,” Hudson says. “The critical path serves a different purpose in Anthem. It’s meant to introduce you to this world that you get to continue living in, as opposed to telling a story that then is over. The critical path blends into the things that are meant to be dynamic and change from week to month, so it removes some of the pressure and finality of an ending.”