Hands on with ‘The Order: 1886’

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The Order: 1886 arrived this past Friday with a whirlwind of mixed messages from media and devs alike. First, let me address the elephant in the room. The Order is NOT 5 hours long. Having played it, I can say with certainty that the game is in fact 7 to 8 hours long – no shorter than some Call of Duty or Battlefield campaigns. After the jump, wee go in depth with The Order: 1886.

To say The Order is a cover-based shooter does a disservice to the game. It is a story-driven game with a shooting mechanic.

Mechanically, this is a functional game; however, there are some glaring omissions in the menu UI. There’s no progress tracker for collectibles, no screen resize option or subtitle resizing, and let’s not forget that aspect ratio. Games like Uncharted, The Last of Us and even Dead Space have a way for you to track your progress of collectibles. Collectibles are a nice way to expand the lore and keep players engaged and exploring the environment. The problem is The Order is too on the rails to allow for exploration, and for some inexplicable reason the Ready at Dawn guys completely forgot that the PS4 controller has a speaker. Collectibles are in the form of phonograph cylinders that could have played through the speakers like in Killzone, but the game makes you stop playing to listen. The next issues are all tied together. From a presentation perspective, the widescreen aspect ratio is fine for movies, but for games you want to dedicate as much of the screen area to the game itself, and it seems like they are very dedicated to this aspect ratio by the omission of a resize option. I have a 48 TV, and I sit about 6’ from my TV – you think I can read those subtitles? I feel like I did when I took my first eye exam. There’s two very large black bars at the top and bottom of the screen; the subtitles could have gone there. Lastly, there’s an armory section in the menu which has not unlocked after finishing the game and there’s no explanation for it anywhere. My only guess is that it’s for the pre-order weapons, but that is uncertain.

Unfortunately for The Order, it’s too down the middle. This approach can leave players unengaged for too long resulting in a poor a experience. Another game that gets the recipe wrong is The Cursed Crusade. In The Cursed Crusade players were treated to a cut scene followed by a cut scene explaining the last cut scene, combat, puzzle, cut scene, and yet another cut scene. Sound familiar? Well it should, because it’s near identical to the formula that The Order uses. However, what it does better than the aforementioned The Cursed Crusade is tell a good enough story to keep one interested long enough to see what happens next. This game could have easily been a BBC drama series. The characters have personality, and what really carries this game is the acting. Your character, Galahad, is more than just a pair of pants you put on to carry the story forward. Equally, Igraine, LaFayette, and even Percival add a dynamic and texture to the story. There’s no forced banter, or shoehorned romance between them. Their personalities are well rounded enough to be believable, which is credit to the voice actors working with the script that they were given. The story and setting are by no means unique but in a stage of gaming where everywhere you turn there’s a new zombie survival game, it’s refreshing to see. The sad part is this is where The Order begins to lose steam. They built a gorgeous looking environment but fell far short of building a world. Though there’s small hints to what the world outside of London might be like, it generally feels like nothing else exists beyond the corridors of London which you traverse. The game is as insulated as The Knights Order itself is.

The Order is by no means a train wreck, but it did hit every branch of the niche tree as it came down. It has little to no replay ability, and it has no co-op or multiplayer mode or challenge single player mode. This game is best played in small bursts. It would have been better if this game came out episodically. An episodic version of The Order would have been better received by fans in it’s current state. Unfortunately fans are being asked to pay $60 ($70 CDN) for a game that feels like an epilogue of a much bigger game. Thankfully, it’s a PS4 exclusive, which means chances are it’ll be discounted for PS+ subscribers or even free at some point in the near future.

The verdict? Wait. Wait to see what Ready at Dawn is willing to do to support the game post-launch. At this point, there is no season pass or hints at expansions or content patches, so you are best served to wait and see. If you are eager to play it, be forewarned that the game is trying to be more like an interactive TV show than a full game at the moment. In closing on the subject of the 5-hour play through, the only way you’re going to clock-in in under 6 hours is if you play the game on easy after a few play throughs.

 Discuss:

Have you played The Order: 1886 yet?  Are there any other games you have felt have been positively or negatively represented?