A Lesson in Mediocracy

This review was written on September 20, 2017 for version 1.02 of The Order: 1886



Before their main console debut, Ready At Dawn was best known for their work on the PSP God of War games. Naturally, not many knew who they were, yet they had a firm seat in the Sony family as an in-house developer. That's why, during the Sony Press Conference at E3 2013 when a virtually unknown developer announced their new console exclusive named The Order: 1886, nobody really knew what to expect other than the fact that Sony was introducing a brand new franchise to their already iconic roster. The choice to develop a third person shooter seemed like an obvious response to Microsoft's success with the Gears of War franchise, and fans were eager to get their hands on the game and see what the console would be able to do with its new hardware, but somewhere along the line, Ready at Dawn seemed to forget a vital step in game development: making a game.



The Order: 1886 is a third person shooter that takes place in an alternate history timeline where King Arthur's knights continue to wage their war against their ancient lycanthropic enemies called half-breeds well into the nineteenth century. You play as Sir Galahad, a knight of The Order, armed with the finest in modern weaponry and experienced in suppressing rebellions, slaying half-breeds, and dancing around the law. As a knight, Galahad and his comrades operate separately from the British military and law enforcement, yet still act as a branch of the government and struggle with all the complications associated with bureaucracy, gentry, and formalities. It's because of this that when Galahad's close friend and mentor Sebastien "Sir Percival" Malory approaches him with a potential lead on the insurrection ravaging London, Galahad and his squad are forced to act beneath the eye of the government to perform their duties as knights.



The game opens with a dizzyingly disorientating torture sequence that takes place chronologically after the bulk of the game and acts as a sort of prelude to what's to come. It's here that we get a taste of the cinematic design choices that plague the entirety of the game throughout. In a grand attempt to be cinematic in its presentation, The Order blends QTEs and cutscenes almost seamlessly together, which creates a messy mishmash of active gameplay and passive storytelling. You can't really sit back and enjoy the cinematic parts of the game because you're constantly on edge waiting for a QTE to pop up, yet they happen infrequently enough to keep you from fully enjoying what would otherwise be decent storytelling and cutscenes.



It's because of the frequent and annoying QTEs that The Order feels more at times like an interactive movie rather than a video game. It wasn't unusual for a cutscene to go on just long enough for me to let my guard down, only to be reminded that I can still die suddenly and without warning because of a completely unnecessary QTE. This design philosophy of blending cinematography and gameplay extends into the greater narrative as well. Slow-walking during dialogue, extraneous environmental traversal (ledge shimmying, rappelling, etc.), and narrative focal points are all handled in a way that leaves you in control of Galahad during what would seem like an obvious cutscene, yet restricts almost all elements of gameplay for extended periods of time. Finally, there are multiple times throughout the game where you're completely in control, but have to stand around and wait as your AI allies perform a task or talk to each other. This is something that shooters have struggled with for the longest time, yet it's an embarrassingly noticeable issue with the game's core design.



It's a blessing that the story was a treat because it was one of the only things that held my interest as the game progressed. The majority of the main cast is also well written to a fault, and if you can put up with a lead character who's as charismatic as a piece of wet bread, then the character drama alone should be able to hold your interest. The established lore and world building presented to the player over the course of The Order is nothing short of phenomenally engrossing, with bits of current events and topical in-game happenings being spoon-fed to the player in the form of newspaper clippings and journal entries found throughout the levels. Walking through the streets of alternate-1886 London felt layered in context and fake history to the point where I was surprised to find myself completely immersed in more than a handful of situations.



The immersion is aided by perhaps the game's strongest boon: its apparent photorealism. The game is simply gorgeous; there's not much more to say. The lighting, textures, moisture, and attention to detail look as similarly to real life as I've seen in a game thus far, and the intricacies of the game's world brought to life during the quiet moments of alleyway traversal and rooftop travel develop the game's tone and atmosphere sometimes better than the actual dialogue and narrative. The Order's impressive visuals are aided tremendously with the inclusion of a fantastically competent photo mode, which allows players to pause the action and separate a floating camera with a press of the touch pad. From here, players are free to take screenshots, surveil the scenery, and - for the crafty - locate enemies during firefights.



After about a half hour of cinematic walking and half-cutscenes, players are finally rewarded with a tease of shooting gameplay in the form of piss-easy cannon fodder rebels, where a whole slew of other questionable design choices come to bare. The actual shooting, while potentially decent on its own, is bogged down by the game's constant cinematic angle. Combat and vaulting animations are slow and clunky, the camera view of the environment becomes a blurry, incoherent mess while in cover, and the camera is always positioned uncomfortably close to Galahad's shoulders. All of these factors come together in a shooting system that significantly obscures the player's periphery, limits the player's gameplay options, incentivizes tunnel vision on one target at a time, and makes poor use of the game's already deplorable amount of enemy diversity.



The faults of the shooting mechanics are only further hammered into the experience by the game's poor level design. The majority of the game's settings can be best described as claustrophobic, which works well from an artistic perspective, but seriously hampers the game's potential once the shooting starts. For a cover shooter, The Order has a hard time determining the difference between too little cover and too much. Most of the early game's fights are narrow hallway engagements with a few foes at a time, where I found wrestling with the camera to be a much greater challenge than actually shooting the enemy. Later in the game, engagements evolve into all out gunfights, but they never shake the "hallway" feeling that the first half of the game had. The enemy AI is extremely stagnant and the threat of destructible cover is almost a nonissue, meaning a passive playstyle is a safe way to progress through the entire game. If cover-shooters ever once felt like a procedure puzzle, The Order is an excellent example: snipers first, then shotgunners, and then everyone else; take your time because the enemy won't pressure you as long as you stay in cover.



Additionally, The Order is filled with minigames that add nothing to the overall experience: lock picking, map traversal, and power surge segments of the game simply feel out of place most of the time. Other parts of the game are broken into sluggish stealth segments, atmospheric horror sequences, and bombastic set piece action episodes. Considering the pacing of the game is already very slow, it doesn't suffer too much from the game's constant red light-green light, but it does highlight how strange the pacing and narrative direction of the game is overall.



Finally, aside from finding all of the collectibles and completing all of the trophies, The Order offers next to nothing in terms of replayability. You can play through the game again on a harder difficulty, but there's not too many options for shaking up the gunplay mechanics. Every subsequent playthrough will, more or less, look identical to the previous one. All of the coolest weapons are only available during specific parts of the game, and even then their uses are limited. I'm not one to complain about a single player focused game not including multiplayer or extra game modes, but considering the length of the campaign and its ghastly lack of replayabiltiy, it's difficult to justify The Order as a reasonable purchase.



The most accurate comparison I can liken The Order to is, oddly enough, Ryse: Son of Rome. Despite belonging to completely different genres, both games act first and foremost as tech demos for their console. I enjoyed playing through The Order, and it was certainly gorgeous to look at, but in a market as competitive as the third-person shooter genre, there's no reason besides visuals to play it instead of something with more mechanical complexity or replayablility. What limited mechanics The Order does have are constantly marred by the game's questionable technical design, hosting a deplorable number of QTEs and awful camera work. However, as adequate as the game may be, the world building and narrative drama convinced me that this franchise needs a second chance. The game world is simply too rich and interesting to let go to waste, and while the story suffered from pacing issues and left plenty of questions, it left me wanting much, much more.









I'm not even sure why lycans are in this game

Rating: 6

Product Release: The Order: 1886 (US, 02/20/15)