Grieving with Anthem
This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #195. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.
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Finding digital grace.
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Grief is a funny thing. Sometimes you might break down crying over a loved one that’s passed on, a job ending, a relationship crumbling. Other times, you go numb. Your mind refuses to deal with the loss, but you’ll have to process it at some point. You find it dripping out in bits and pieces. Little things. The other night, for me, it surfaced thanks to a game. Because I said goodbye to a game I truly enjoyed, even as its code started crumbling around me.
Not a lot of people are going to mourn Anthem’s fate. Like many, I’m aghast at what the bleak reports of how awful the development cycle was. Still, the result was appreciated by some, myself included. If Battleborn and The Crew can be spared, then maybe Anthem as well. That’s not always a given. Sometimes what we care about goes away for good. Time unrelenting heralds change, and fighting against its heedless march gets you little.
Yet after all the drama that’s encircled Anthem, I want someone who worked on this game to know that it wasn’t for nothing. I want them to know that I saw the artistry behind the machinery. It meant more than something on EA’s balance sheet.
For the majority reading this who are unfamiliar – Anthem is the story of the Freelancer, so called by their professional because they’re customizable. The Freelancer was part of a Freelancer group striking into the Heart of Rage, part of a malevolent storm brought about by ancient technology of long-dead terraformers. Things go very wrong exceptionally fast, and in the aftermath, their group fails. The Freelancer and two others are among the handful of survivors, each going their separate ways.
They’re caught up in a world hurting, struggling to survive. The Freelancers lose their role as heroes for the two subsequent years, becoming little more than guns for hire in a world where humanity is, at best, surviving. Almost everyone you meet has lost something, trying to find some way to move forward, to rebuild. That becomes your mission, whether you feel worthy or not – to mend, grieve and grow.
The setting’s mix of mechanized Arthurian gallant knights crossed with sci-fi western atmosphere was fun to play around in. Fittingly, the game’s title is derived from the terraforming technology gone awry, the Anthem of Creation. Creativity spiraling out of control, fought over by a small group of heroes against a domineering opposition that wants to consume and control everything . . . yeah, I see what they did there. Throw in a little betrayal and begrudgingly healed friendships and it all made for a surprisingly solid opening act.
The cast of characters were inclusive, delightful and deeper than I expected. There’s a great deal of personality to each of them outside of missions, revealing the sort of quirks and opinions you learn from really working alongside someone. You couldn’t radically alter the fate of the universe with your contributions to conversation, but that fit the vibe. As with the many radio serials you could listen to at the main hub of Fort Tarsis, it was about living in your own Saturday morning cartoon for grown-ups. That delicate balance of melodrama that makes you feel something, paired with enough mirth to avoid becoming overly dour and depressing.
One minute, the local Arcanist has split himself into three quirky variants with an ancient relic. The next, you’re being sassy with a spy, or having to play along when an older woman thinks you’re her long lost child. Only to turn around and find one of the janitors is going to blow a gasket again about fort maintenance. Simultaneously whimsical yet grounded in the right ways. There were whole quests with just dialogue exchanges – no grinding for loot or anything. The performances were excellent, and your ability to reflect back on the cast with your choice was wonderful. No different than Dispatch’s approach, really. So, when I was told it’d be shutting down, I had to revisit Anthem before its time was up.
Except as I walked through the halls of Fort Tarsis again, something was clearly off. You see, my copy had started glitching. For all the fun I was having revisiting old haunts and the fluid combat in my Interceptor Javelin – that’s the sporty one that looks like a weaponized soccer player – the shaders began to break. I had to crank the brightness to 90% to balance out the intensity of the contrast, and the saturation that got worse with every boot of the game.
So, I didn’t get to play all the final days it existed. Instead, my memories of Anthem stop with a small conversation with Sentinel Brin. Gosh, Brin’s just the best. Adorkably awkward with people, pragmatic to a fault, loves her plants and protecting the innocent, and as I learned in my last moments with Anthem, she loves to write fanfiction. Fix-it-fic, no less, that she posts on a literal bullet-in board under a pseudonym. I just love that.
I’m sure in the grand scheme of things, whoever wrote this conversation was just having a fun little moment winking to the audience. It means a lot to me, though. It takes me back to months before my grandfather died. I knew something was off, at the time. Kept feeling like I needed to make time to be with him. And what hurts is I both remember us having a really good chat on the porch of my parent’s house at the time . . . but I can hardly remember what we discussed. All that sticks with me is the feeling. That connection.
When it happened, I basically shut down. I mentally curled up, didn’t let myself cry. Did such a good job that tearing up is actually pretty hard to do now. I never lost my faith, but it’s fair to say I drifted for a while there. Years later, I prayed about it. Always been of the mind that you can talk to God about anything. Sometimes I’ll even pray before writing a column, and then one that isn’t clicking will finally knit together.
That time though, it wasn’t a happy one. Because there’s other people I love who I know one day won’t be here, and it’ll take the wind out of my sails. Regardless, I know that it has to happen. I want it to happen justly, comfortably, after a rich life and stories to be shared for years, but we don’t always get that. Sometimes it’s not even a person’s life. Sometimes it’s a dream.
Part of the breaking point between the Freelancer and their old team is division over how things go down in the Heart of Rage. Blame, guilt, and pragmatism. The end of an age, one of several detailed in the history of Anthem. For all the jokes and brightly lit environments, you’re flying through the ruins of golden ages many hoped would never end, only to come crashing down when they least expected it.
Some dreams probably won’t come to pass. So, I was honest, and I asked God to be patient with me. Which I know might sound silly. From a Christian perspective, the existence of Jesus’ sacrifice fundamentally demonstrates God’s got my back. It’s always polite to ask, though.
That also doesn’t make the brokenness of this world any gentler. I might believe that there’s something better, and that in this world there is someone fighting for each of us through the dark, but that faith isn’t ignorant to what I feel. And sometimes, you have to feel things. Even if they’re brought to the surface by a videogame.
Anthem certainly might be made playable again by determined fans. But it also might not. My memory might be all that keeps it alive, like so many people I’ve known. No matter the cynicism of its conception, there was genuine art at the core of it, and for now, it’s merely a memory. Of mecha-knights, goofy techno-mages debating radio shows and a wonderfully dorky knight who liked to write fix-it-fic for her favorite radio serial.
So, I let myself feel the grief that came with that. It’s not like I processed all the grief lingering inside me from years prior, but for a moment, I just felt. It was an unpleasant ache. Yet as I lay there in bed, I also felt a clarity. The kind of focus that only comes when you’ve processed something.
As I wrote in Exploits a while back about finding the Gospel in ironically secular music, inspiration and feeling is a profound gift. Whether it’s intended or not isn’t important, it’s the meaning we draw from what we experience. Art is what shakes us awake at our foundations. It doesn’t have to be the best thing ever made, it just has to matter to you. Because like faith, grief is one of the most personal things you can feel. While the pain dulls, the moments that made it ache from the joy you once had can never be taken from you. So, hold that light close, and carry them forward.
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Elijah Beahm is an author for Lost in Cult that Unwinnable graciously lets ramble about progressive religion and obscure media. When not consulting on indie games, he can be found on Bluesky and YouTube. He is still waiting for Dead Space 4.
