Anthem is now about two months and a half from launching. We just got a new story-focused trailer at The Game Awards 2018, while the developers handled the first Closed Alpha test during this very weekend.

　　In an interview published a few days ago by Entertainment Weekly, Game Director Jonathan Warner revealed that the developers won't put any obstacles between you and playing with your friends. For instance, there will be difficulty scaling behind the scenes if there's too much of a difference in level between players; you may even elect to go ahead and play with friends a story mission you haven't done yet, provided you don't care about the spoilers.

　　If you’re ahead in the story and I’m behind, we allow you to do that. We’re not trying to socially engineer that experience. So, you’ll get a little warning that will say “Hey, you’re about to play a mission that’s ahead of the story, and it may contain some spoilers for you,” and we leave that choice to you.

　　We do some difficulty scaling for you so that it won’t be a horrible experience. We look at your pilot level, and we do some scaling based on that and who you’re with. It will be a good experience for you, no matter what. Especially with a game like this, you’re not always fully coordinated with your friends. You always have one person in your group who is playing all the time and who is much higher level, and we don’t want to discourage you from playing together, so we’re going to allow that to happen.

　　The free Anthem demo has been confirmed to be available on January 25th, 2019 for those who have pre-ordered the game or have an active Origin Access (on PC) or EA Access (on Xbox One) subscription. Everyone else will be able to download and play the demo from February 1st, while the full release date remains scheduled for February 22nd, 2019.