They like GONE HOME but not THE ORDER?

Common Criticisms of THE ORDER:

Lacking depth in gameplay.

Shallow Story

Not enough player interaction

QTEs

More focused on telling a story than allowing players to have more direct control

Game Length

Common Praise for GONE HOME:

Great and innovative story.

Interesting and deep characters.

Innovative design, that relies more on contextual action than actual gameplay.

Walking.

Now I have no real issue with the style of GONE HOME, yet the fact that critics would praise such boiler-plate narrative contrivances, lame and shallow characters, and non-existent gameplay, and yet in the same breath tear down THE ORDER is perplexing. Mostly because THE ORDER is leaps and bounds more interesting. It is doing such revolutionary things with cinematic concepts, and tying them in to some very solid and sometimes exciting gameplay mechanics. The visuals and voice acting alone are worthy of a more measured discussion than has been the trend in almost every review I have read. The people who work at Ready at Dawn have laid the groundwork for a solid and exciting future in cinematic gaming, and yet all I hear is length complaints, and surface level criticisms of narrative, made by people who enjoyed the story of GONE HOME.

It is almost as if the difference in name isn't the only difference between the two.

Oooooops, you showed your hand!

@slowbreakdown: i agree with all of this.ive been thinking this since the reviews came out,and knew it wouldnt be long before someone mentioned it.order 1886 isnt a great game,but it sure isnt as bad as what people have made it out to be.

Different games, different reviewers, different style, different genre, different intent behind the games.

Also different expectations

@shagge I agree that they are different games, yet it seems to me that a whole entire industry of critics seemingly all got on board for one game, and all of them got on the other side of a different game. I wouldn't be so perplexed if it wasn't so universal on both sides of the fence.

@nasp I actually love THE ORDER. I am totally in to the whole cinematic approach and I found a lot to love in the gameplay as well. Story ended a bit abruptly for my taste but I am resigned to the industry being a place where sequels are king.

It's almost as if, when you make a story focused game, people put more importance on the quality of the story. This honestly seem like a pretty silly comparison. One of those is a third-person shooter, for gods sake.

For the record, never played either game.

It's almost as if $20 is an OK price to charge for a story that lasts a few hours and covers narrative ground that video games rarely, if ever cover! As opposed to a $60 game in a well-trodden genre with far better options available!

Comparing a short, third-person, AAA shooter with a first-person, indie exploration game is a pretty darn fruitless exercise.

Gone Home is one of the only games in existence to do what it does and The Order is another entry into a long line of cinematic third-person shooters. Context matters to a review.

@ttthrasher Yea I mostly included that one facetiously. I don't really have an issue with walking simulators.

@deegee Reviews don't upset or excite me. They interest me. Dissecting them is more of an exercise than a reaction. But I doubt you will believe that, as it is easier to believe I am a petulant child who is upset because people didn't like the thing I liked.

agreed,a story in a story focused game should be the most important.thats why the op is correct,because gone home had a horrible story and the order 1886 had a ok story.yet gone home got all the praise,which is what the op is saying.

I seem to recall the $20 value proposition being a big thing when Gone Home launched. That coupled with the fact that nobody could explain what the game was without starting to spoil it (I thought it was a horror game) caused me to wait until it was 75% off to pick it up.

The Order might be a better value at 75% off as well, I dunno haven't played it.

Honestly neither game interests me...but The Order costs 3 times as much.

But here's the thing: one game is a $20 adventure game made by indie devs. The other is a $60 third person cover shooter by a major developer and touted as a major PS4 exclusive at a time when PS4 (and XB1) owners are starved for big releases. Outside of the reasons I mentioned in my last post, timing is a major factor as well.

I haven't played The Order, for the record. It looks like a game I'd greatly enjoy for what it is, and I plan to give it a shot some day. But I totally understand the backlash, even if some of it seems unfair or harsh.

What it all comes down to is: what works for one game may be completely inappropriate for another.

I wonder if people go on movie sites and ask why Birdman and Boyhood get so much critical praise, but The Expendables doesn't.

@shagge That's a fair point. And I understand that reasoning completely.

Comparing games from distinct genres with vastly different production values and design goals will alway be a fruitless exercise. If you think The Order is getting short shrift then by all means make that argument, but bringing up Gone Home to do so is a bit silly.

Boring game with a decent novelty facor and 90s pandering > boring game that wants to be a movie.

lol

How come critics really liked BRAID, but didn't like SONIC BOOM? Your move, reviewers.

...Checkmate.

I'm queer so Gone Home spoke to me in a way that something like The Order never could. Maybe if I contract lycanthropy I'll change my mind.

(I actually have no opinion concerning The Order. I'll probably check it out when it's $20-ish.)

@slowbreakdown: If you like it, why do you care if it gets middling to bad reviews? Also, even if the order was "doing revolutionary things with cinematic concepts", that doesn't make it a good game. The idea that games should aspire to be "cinematic" is incredibly dismissive of the unique strengths of the medium, and the games that go the furthest in trying to ape cinema are the ones that most flagrantly expose the medium's weaknesses. I'm not a massive fan of Gone Home, but it was far more interesting to me than The Order. It was so much more ambitious, and given that it was an indie PC title from a tiny studio with a shoestring budget, and The Order is a flagship, first party AAA exclusive on the fastest selling console of all time, that's really damning.

they do.ive seen lots of people say boyhood is boring,and then say that another movie they like is better.the raid 2 is my fave movie of 2014,yet it didnt get great reviews.alot of people are wondering why boyhood got nominated for best picture and the raid 2 didnt.so yes this type of stuff happens for everything.PS ide watch expendables 3 before ide watch boyhood.

Game length is not the issue, quality of experience is the issue.

Now, I realize that Gone Home is not for everybody. But many people (myself included) felt that Gone Home provided a high quality experience that could be completed in a few hours. It seems like the Order provides a boilerplate, generic experience that could be completed in a few hours.

If the Order played like, i don't know, Uncharted 2 only better, for those few hours, then I think the reviews would be much more positive.

A 79% on Rottentomatoes is a pretty good score, especially for a movie of The Raid 2's ilk.

These games are not directly comparable. One was a $20 game on Steam, etc, one is a $60 retail game for PS4. One is a linear shooter, one is about exploring an environment.

How come people like Burnout Paradise and hate Big Rigs?...

I wonder if theres a pushback from people to the idea that graphics are so important to the sales of a game, that everything else should be made in a way to squeeze out as much graphical fidelity as possible.

Imagine if The Order was actually a great , critically acclaimed title. 9/10 , 10/10's everywhere, customers are raving about the graphics that they've seen on their tv's.

This means that your new Infamous / Uncharted / Tomb Raider / Final Fantasy / Kingdom hearts needs to at least look on par with The Order. Since that's only possible by decreasing the resolution, companies might tend to include more black bars in their games. which is not a future a lot of people are looking forward to.

Evil Within already had a lot of backlash against it because of the bars, and The Order is getting the same treatment.

Ofcourse it's also amplified by the fact that theres nothing else to shit on at this time of the year. The Order is an easy target.

@believer258: it is good,but boyhood got a 98%,big difference.boyhood also got alot of nominations,raid 2 got none.yet alot of people including me think the raid 2 was the best.its alot like the order 1886 situation,except the raid 2 is amazing and got robbed,while the order is just ok and is just getting unfair scores.

The expectations for Gone Home weren't over blown by a major corporation looking to make the next big hit game for their newest system which was (at the time of The Order's announcement) starved for new games. The Order ended up being a generic third person shooter with a semi-competent story that looks really pretty, so naturally people would be disappointed. Gone Home was a game that exceeded peoples expectations. It's story treads ground that very few games touch, it subverted genre expectations (looks like a horror game, actually an adventure game) and kept that player engaged by constantly presenting interactable objects. Gone Home was a pleasant surprise, so people gave it high scores.

The only quality these games share is a lack of interactivity; therefore, I'm not bothered that the opinions are vastly different. I was more bothered during last years' GOY discussions where Bioshock Infinity's use of audiologs were described as lazy storytelling while the use of these very contrived letters scattered about the house from Gone Home was given a pass.

This is getting way off topic, but The Raid 2 is just an action movie. Now, I love The Raid 2, it's probably one of the best action movies I've ever seen, but at the end of the day it doesn't cover any themes or ideas that have never been covered before. As with The Order 1886, The Raid 2 is just a new movie in a long line of movies not too dissimilar from it. Boyhood, however, was filmed over a period of 12 years and a child grew up in the movie. Audiences see him grow just as he did in real life. It's worth noting that I haven't seen Boyhood, but even attempting something like that is admirable, and that they seem to have pulled it off is even more noteworthy. Boyhood and The Raid 2 aren't even comparable, they're vastly different movies, one of which will be made again under a different name with different actors.

To tie this back into the topic at hand - Gone Home and The Order 1886 are both short experiences with a heavy emphasis on narrative, yes, but the former is almost unique and The Order has plenty of contemporaries from which to choose. Hell, you could go through the entire Gears of War trilogy for less than the cost of the order and all three games are longer than The Order by themselves, plus they have multiplayer and co-op components if anyone's still playing. There's also Uncharted. Or Tomb Raider. Or The Last of Us.

The Order is like 3 Gone Homes in a werewolf costume.

Take this shit back to Gamespot where it belongs.

Seriously. It's not new to hear this, but opinions. You can dislike others views of it and not understand why they feel that way when you feel the way you do about it, but it's just something you have to accept and be okay with. If you love it, then great. If you want to tell people that it's worth playing, perhaps you should focus more on telling others why you think it's worthy of playing, instead of talking about how angry you are that other people don't have the same views as you.

Your condescending attitude quite literally added nothing to this conversation.

I'm actually surprised at how much actual shooting and traversal game play The Order has. I was tempering my expectations and thinking that it would be more along the lines of something like Beyond Two Souls, and it actually is, but with a healthy dose of Uncharted thrown in there. The only argument I can see that can be made against what the OP is saying is the cost of the product, with Gone Home being a $20 product and The Order being $60. Although I think the increase in graphical fidelity is a good counter argument, as we are seeing one of the first games to truly look next generation.

Evil Within's framing was wonky and seemed to be added in the last second in order to alleviate performance issues. The Order's framing is much more well thought out and integral to the visual design process from an early stage, with vistas and landscapes that look and feel truly wide and panoramic, ala a 2:35:1 aspect ratio movie.

I'm an alternative history take on the Knights of King Arthur and I love Gone Home. That game packed in more rotating objects and looking at stuff than The Order ever could. Then again, Gone Home didn't have any guns or quick time events.

Woe is Lancelot 1886!

What if instead of your girlfriend being a lesbian she was a werewolf?

What then, I say.

DUDE THEY GAVE TWILIGHT PRINCESS AN 8.8 WHAT THE FUCK.

It is incredible ignorant to suggest that because reviewers didnt love the narrative in the Order they should then hate all other narrative driven games by default.

Disagreeing with someone is one thing, but dropping in to leave an insulting or dismissive comment is another. No reason to be a jerk to someone you disagree with.

Locking this down before more people jump on the insulting statement bandwagon.