PlayStation 4 is getting perhaps its most intriguing exclusive from a very unlikely source. Ready at Dawn, the Sony-affiliated (but technically independent) developer, well known for its God of War games on PSP, has made the great leap from handheld to console. The Order: 1886

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“ The Order is about as far from a handheld game as possible.

“ …it was with that in mind that an exclusive next-generation title made sense.

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“ In The Order, players take control of Galahad...

“ Where did Ready at Dawn come upon this alternate history plot?

“ …The Order relies on a hodgepodge of elements…

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“ Real people from history are set to appear in The Order: 1886...

“ Just don’t call it steampunk.

In a conversation with IGN, Ready at Dawn co-founder and creative visionary behind The Order: 1886 -- Ru Weerasuriya – explained a great deal about his upcoming PlayStation 4 exclusive, including what it’s about and where the inspiration for the game comes from.The Order is about as far from a handheld game as possible. Indeed, from the looks of it, it’s a bona fide triple-A next-gen title. Not surprisingly, Ready at Dawn’s plan was always to take on a project this ambitious, broad, and complicated. “We’ve been wanting to scale up for a long time, to do something that we’ve wanted to do from the very beginning, when we started the company ten years ago,” Weerasuriya admitted.Before Ready at Dawn jumped into creating The Order, the studio “never felt like everything aligned” to undertake such a project. “We never felt like the team, the technology, the hardware, and the idea, we never felt until now, until 2010, right around then, when we started having conversations about the PS4, that’s when we felt like, funny enough, this is the right time.”“I never wanted to pigeonhole ourselves as being, you know, we’re just going to do one thing, we’re just going to be a first party, work with first party,” Weerasuriya confessed. “There’s always the question of what’s best, right? And the beauty of our relationship with Sony was that they’ve always done something that was right for us… it always felt like they always understood us. And we always understood them in some ways.”And it was with that in mind that an exclusive next-generation title made sense. “The jump to PS4 was a conscious decision, knowing that we could get the best out of a single piece of hardware. Our team is that kind of team. They can concentrate on one piece of hardware and take the most out of it, like we did for PSP” when the studio created Daxter and the two handheld God of War games.In The Order, players take control of Galahad, the bearded male prominently displayed in the game’s lone trailer. However, there are three other characters in the game that are part of his group, not surprisingly known as The Order. In the game’s lore, The Order’s existence spans a millennium of alternate history, as humanity finds itself in perpetual combat with a mysterious, decidedly inhuman force.“The Order is the group that has been watching over mankind,” Weerasuriya said, and the tides have recently turned in their favor following humanity’s headlong stumble into the Industrial Revolution. With all-new weapons at their disposal, humans have finally been able to hold their own against this mysterious threat, and it’s at this point that The Order: 1886 begins in earnest.“The genesis was really about trying to build on the common consciousness of people, like the things they know. But what if the things they know weren’t really the way they thought they were?”Meanwhile, there are blimps and zeppelins floating in the air decades before they were actually invented. In this way, The Order relies on a hodgepodge of elements that don’t necessarily fit together, but don’t quite look awkward alongside one another, either. Weerarsuriya believes that this combination of elements makes sense if you make the world around it believable. “If you sell it to people, if you show it to people, they’ll believe it,” he said.That realism transcends the characters in the game. Real people from history are set to appear in The Order: 1886, though that doesn’t necessarily mean that those people will be as they are in the real historical timeline. When asked if a character like Jack the Ripper would appear in the game, considering the game at least partially takes place in the London district of Whitechapel during the decade when the Ripper’s murders took place, Weerasuriya was evasive.The Order is a group that has a presence the world over – “the IP is broad,” Weerasuriya noted – but 1886 will take place entirely in England. “I’m a history buff, I love the Victorian era,” he later continued, noting that late-19th century Britain was the perfect place and time for a game that melds so many different, conflicting elements. Just don’t call it steampunk.“We didn’t want to make it to the point where it felt too futuristic. That’s why we wanted to stay away from steampunk. It’s not that far, it’s not [The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen],” he noted. “We picked this moment because it felt right visually, it felt right contextually, it felt right for everything we wanted to build.” Bladerunner and From Hell were two licenses that Weerasuriya admitted helped influence the game, especially the latter, “where you see the dark, gritty side of London.“We’ve never said no to anything. Our company is a one-game-at-a-time company, we’re not going to split off and do multiple things. Our technology does run on Vita, we’ve always made sure that our technology always kept up with anything that was out there. So, maybe? All I can tell you is maybe.”

Colin Moriarty is IGN’s Senior Editor. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN and learn just how sad the life of a New York Islanders and New York Jets fan can be.