The newest issue of Game Informer – November 2013, Issue 247 – goes into great detail about the upcoming PlayStation 4-exclusive title The Order: 1886

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As was readily apparent when the game was first announced at E3 2013 , The Order: 1886 is beautiful. And Game Informer confirms that “the visuals on display in [the debut] trailer represent The Order’s in-game graphical quality.” Indeed, the technology behind the game and the game’s proprietary next-gen engine are quite impressive, as we noted when we saw the game behind-closed doors at Gamescom.Ready at Dawn’s co-founder Ru Weerasuriya has gotten help in writing The Order: 1886 from screenwriter Kirk Ellis , who is best-known for adapting David McCullough’s seminal history of John Adams into the critically acclaimed HBO series . As such, Game Informer notes that the game’s plot revolves around “an unusual amalgam of history, fantasy, mythology, and science fiction.”The story’s alternate history arc begins “around the seventh or eighth century,” Weerasuriya told Game Informer, as “humanity starts splitting” into two groups. A “genetically different” group called “Half-Breeds” begins to wage war against the rest of humanity, and this war rages right up into the late 19th century, when The Order: 1886 begins.The Order itself is created to buffer humanity from the threat posed by the Half-Breeds, and humanity wages a losing war against these mysterious monsters until a liquid known as “Black Water” begins to give The Order an advantage. “By imbibing the strange liquid, the knights [of the Order] gain incredibly longer lives and equally impressive abilities to recover from injury. The knights continue to age, but at a dramatically slower rate, letting them wage war across centuries,” Game Informer explains.Ironically, “These knights have sworn to protect mankind at all costs,” the magazine continues, “but they suffer an increasing distance from their own mortality as they watch all around them fade and die.” They now exist in a version of London that’s slowly being taken over by a movement to correct social inequality in the city, bringing a political twist to the plot.Game Informer expands on four of the main characters in The Order, including Sir Galahad, the protagonist we first met back in June. Galahad is in fact the third knight to go by that name – his first name is Grayson – and he’s one of the Order’s elder members and leaders. A younger knight in her late-20s, Lady Igraine, has some sort of blossoming romantic relationship with Galahad, though details there are scarce.The Order: 1886 also touches into real history, and twists it a bit. The third character introduced is none other than Marquis de Lafayette , as in, the real Marquis de Lafayette, the man who proved vital in both the American Revolution and the French Revolution. He’s still alive and kicking as of 1886, as is Sebastian Malory, titled Sir Percival, who is a relative of Thomas Malory , the famed British author.For much, much more on The Order: 1886, pickup Game Informer’s November 2013 issue As we discovered this summer , the game is due out exclusively on PlayStation 4 in 2014.

Colin Moriarty is IGN’s Senior Editor. You can follow him on Twitter.