Probably more floundering. An EA exec told them at one point that their demo was crap (and based on word from other devs, he was probably right), so they reintroduced flight, which IMO was one of the best aspects of the game. EA didn’t force a new story or concept on Bioware, though. All that was Bioware’s own fault between lack of leadership and staff burnout.

A long read, but this article goes pretty in-depth on what happened during the development of Anthem: kotaku.com/how-biowares-anthem-went-wrong-1833731…