Of all the grievances expressed by those who played the demo for the Anthem game over the weekend, the most surprising one relates to the main character's movement speed while exploring Tarsis, Anthem's story-focused, single player HQ experienced entirely from a first-person perspective.
Players who managed to get into BioWare's closed demo were surprised to learn that their character was limited to walking pace at all times, with no sprint button to speed them up on command. This aggrieved many who just wanted to get into their Javelin as quickly as possible, but Anthem's Executive Producer Mark Darrah recently told us in an interview that this was an intentional design decision to make players "feel a little bit underpowered, so you really felt that strong difference between out of the suit and in the suit."
"We want it to feel like walking", explained Darrah. "If you look at most video games, you're sprinting everywhere and we gave you a jet pack machine for when you're out in the world, and we really want it to feel like you're just a person walking around and now you are that person in Iron Man armour."
Even so, the studio has clearly heard fan feedback about the lack of a sprint button in Tarsis, and will be making the appropriate changes in time for Anthem's full release, as confirmed to us by BioWare's General Manager Casey Hudson in a recent interview with GamesRadar.
When asked about the sprint situation, Hudson explained that "there was a run speed that was in [the game]. And then for some reason it was out of the game for when that particular build [the VIP demo build] was made. It is back in, in the main game, anyway."
So there you have it, Freelancers. You will be able to sprint in the day one version of Anthem from February 22, even if you're stuck at walking speed for the third and final demo of the game later this week. Better yet, that won't be the only thing BioWare is hot fixing for launch day, as the studio works madly to sort out the server troubles that plagued the VIP demo over the weekend.
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