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    The Order: 1886

    Game » consists of 4 releases. Released Feb 20, 2015

    A third-person shooter set in a steampunk-themed alternate timeline, with a dash of the supernatural. Developed by Ready at Dawn Studios for the PlayStation 4.

    The Order 1886: An Interactive Cinema Experience by Any Other Name, or: Great Art in Service of Mediocre Gameplay

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    bigsocrates

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    Edited By bigsocrates

    The Order 1886, a game whose best attribute is its beautiful graphics, starts with a first-person sequence where your character’s head is being held under murky water as he thrashes about and muffled voices murmur in the background. After what feels like an eternity, the character’s head is pulled from the water and some English guys yell at him. It becomes apparent that they are hostile. You’re in an ugly, dirty dungeon. There’s no real context or even characterization. It’s supposed to be immersive, I guess, but instead it’s boring and interminable. None of this feels important or interesting and it’s just so, so ugly. It’s like visiting an art museum where, before you get into the show, you need to stand in a back alley looking at and smelling a dumpster for 10 minutes. And it’s not some kind of commentary or wry joke. It’s just you, in an alley with a dumpster. It sucks.

    The first minute or so of the Order 1886 is mostly this. Were they proud of their bubble technology? What an odd choice.
    The first minute or so of the Order 1886 is mostly this. Were they proud of their bubble technology? What an odd choice.

    Eventually the dark, ugly, first person cut scene evolves into a dark, ugly, QTE. The game tutorializes QTEs, with such thrilling instructions as “hold down the triangle button.” Fantastic. You gain control over your character and are permitted to “scurry” (it uses that word) around the dungeon. I was ready to stop playing then and there, but felt that the game deserved more than five minutes to make its case.

    I hope you like staggering around ugly dungeons! Once again, this is how the game introduces itself. At least it tells you how to move, in case you have never, ever, played a video game before and this is your first one.
    I hope you like staggering around ugly dungeons! Once again, this is how the game introduces itself. At least it tells you how to move, in case you have never, ever, played a video game before and this is your first one.

    Fortunately, things do improve significantly, but the Order’s opening minutes are a microcosm of why this game has a bad reputation. It does a few things very well, and spends an inordinate amount, of its time, especially at the beginning, not doing those good things, but instead doing other things that it is mediocre at. It has world-class graphics and amazing art and much of its runtime is spent skulking through sewers and catacombs. You go aboard a magnificent airship and spend most of your time down in the dingy service areas. Some of the characters have interesting and even touching relationships, but instead of developing those the game separates them with misunderstanding, or kills one of them off. The game has some unique and interesting weapons, like a thermite gun that lets you spray gas into the air that you then ignite with a flare, but most of the time you’re just using standard rifles and pistols, many of which are frustratingly inaccurate.

    Does it have exploding red barrels? It's a video game from 2015. Why would you even ask? It also has lots of easy trophies if you're into that.
    Does it have exploding red barrels? It's a video game from 2015. Why would you even ask? It also has lots of easy trophies if you're into that.

    Did Ready at Dawn want to make a game, as opposed to a movie? Did they want to make this game? The Order is truly cinematic, with a widescreen presentation and gorgeous graphics. The game is played in close-up, which interferes with gameplay (you can’t see what’s behind you when retreating) but makes everything feel much more personal and gives weight and heft to the violence. Entire chapters of the game are just cut-scenes, which can stretch on for minutes. The performances are good and effort has clearly gone into the writing and set design. At one point, during a fire, dirt smudges the virtual camera, a very cinematic touch but an odd one for a video game.

    See the smudges and debris on the camera lens? Apparently it got dirty in the fire? Did Ready at Dawn want to make a video game or a movie?
    See the smudges and debris on the camera lens? Apparently it got dirty in the fire? Did Ready at Dawn want to make a video game or a movie?

    As for the gameplay, there are two types. One is wandering about looking for newspapers and photographs, which your character can examine carefully and flip over, often revealing nothing. There are also phonograph cylinders, featuring audio logs that are so damned slow-moving that I couldn’t listen all the way through a single one. This mode has some very rudimentary ‘puzzles’ but they are of the “push this cart against this wall” variety and require no brain power. I kept hoping the game would do something interesting with its non combat sections but it resolutely refuses. They are slow and plodding and the only reason I didn’t hate them was because the environments were so lovingly rendered and carefully designed that I enjoyed just aimlessly wandering through them. Art design stepping in where game design fell down.

    This game plays everything completely straight, and then this. It's very out of place. I guess it's slightly amusing though?
    This game plays everything completely straight, and then this. It's very out of place. I guess it's slightly amusing though?

    This mode also has some traversal elements, like a very rudimentary Uncharted. Unlike uncharted, however, there are no fail states in the traversal. You either can climb or jump on to a ledge or you can’t, and if you can’t your character won’t even try. It’s a half-assed forgettable traversal system and it mostly exists to show some cool jumps across gaps and ledges. Fair enough, but it shows where this game’s priorities are.

    Do you like clinging to ledges? Uncharted does it better but the Order does it halfheartedly from time to time. So..yeah.
    Do you like clinging to ledges? Uncharted does it better but the Order does it halfheartedly from time to time. So..yeah.

    The combat fairs a little better. It’s very standard, if pretty slow and plodding, third person shooting with some tiny tweaks. There are a couple interesting weapons like the aforementioned thermite gun and an arc lance that vaporizes body parts with a satisfying sizzle, but its mostly old guns. Once again the game’s graphics cover for gameplay that in a less gorgeous title would be sub-par. The gunplay looks cool, at least at times, and the game plays up its brutal violence, with blood textures appearing where characters are shot and melee takedowns having a satisfying crunch to them. At times it can be thrilling, like in a mid-game encounter on a bridge where I used the arc gun to plow through enemy lines. Mostly it’s kind of dull, and occasionally confusing and disorienting. Because of the tight camera angle it’s not always obvious who is shooting you, and shotgun flankers can get behind you and wreck shop. There’s a slow-motion auto aim mechanic like Red Dead Redemption had, and a limited self-revive. The game has systems, but they’re implemented half-heartedly, and the actual gameplay shooting parts feel a little bit like a sullen teenager’s begrudgingly turned in homework assignment. “Here you go. Here’s your shooty bang bang. I hope you enjoy it.” Meanwhile, like that same teenager’s class notebook full of intricate sketches and painstaking character designs, the artwork shines. Maybe the people who designed the gameplay for the Order were passionate about it, but that doesn’t come through in the game.

    The camera focus shows where this game's ambitions lie. There's a dude off in the distance just to the right of the statute, but I can barely see him because the game has a cinematic focus effect. Aesthetics over gameplay, all the way.
    The camera focus shows where this game's ambitions lie. There's a dude off in the distance just to the right of the statute, but I can barely see him because the game has a cinematic focus effect. Aesthetics over gameplay, all the way.

    The people who were passionate about making this game were the artists and the storytellers. If it sounds like I hated The Order, that’s because I did at first. It’s not a good third person shooter. Through the first third or so I was half watching the clock, remembering that Jeff said it was about 6 hours even if you look for collectibles, and wondering if I should even finish. As I played on I started thinking about it differently, though. I stopped expecting a third person shooter and started thinking of it as an interactive cinema game, like Heavy Rain or Until Dawn. Yes, it lacks the choices that those games have, but it does have the QTEs, and thinking about the third person shooter segments as interactive action scenes from a B-grade movie made them much more tolerable. I’m not going to say The Order has a great plot or anything, but it’s better than the Underworld films, to which it has many parallels, and as a 6-hour interactive cinema experience it’s actually pretty good. I ended up enjoying the game, and being a little sad when it ended. Even the forced stealth segments, which I usually hate, were okay when I thought about them more as skulking about in a Victorian lord’s garden than playing a stealth game. It didn’t hurt that they were pretty darned easy (the whole game is relatively easy, though I definitely did die from time to time.)

    The game can be breathtaking. I loved the look of this whole section.
    The game can be breathtaking. I loved the look of this whole section.

    As noted above, the Order looks great. Really really great. Even two years on I’d put this high on the list of best looking games of all time, with only the mediocre facial animations and the fact that relatively few items in the world are interactable really letting it down. I’d love to spend time in this world in VR, not shooting but just wandering around, looking at everything. While the game does spend an unfortunate amount of time in dimly lit, ugly and unpleasant environments (hey game-makers, we’ve seen enough dimly lit stone tunnels, okay?) it does have some environments that look phenomenal with its excellent cinematic lighting, and I can’t stress enough how much the game leans on these aesthetics. Some of the werewolf (yes, there are werewolves) transformation effects could almost pass for an actual movie, and they make up for the fact that werewolves in this game are very very boring to fight. Some games would be just as good even with pared back graphics and a lower budget. Not this one. This is one of those cases where the art team did way more than anyone else, and to the degree the game is remembered it will be for its art.

    Checking out the environmental deformation after the gunfight was at least as fun as the fight itself.
    Checking out the environmental deformation after the gunfight was at least as fun as the fight itself.

    Though I will also remember its violence. The Order is a brutal game, with lots of close up gunshot wounds, vicious stabbings, and even decapitations. It’s stomach churning stuff and one sequence in an abandoned hospital feels like horror more than the action that the rest of the game goes for. The visceral nature of the violence does add to the intentionally-dreary atmosphere of a besieged London, and the grayness of the characters’ morality. You start the game by fighting escaped psychiatry inmates, who you are told to only subdue but end up slaughtering. Later a character asks whether you should really be using lethal force on a bunch of security guards, to which your character’s answer is that there isn’t time to be non-lethal. Lots of other games have the old knock on the noggin one hit KO in their stealth sections, or at least an ambiguous choke out, but the Order is all about knifing and crossbowing fools when you’re out skulking about, even if said fools are just working stiffs doing their jobs. There’s also some non-erotic nudity thrown in for good measure, with desultory boobies and even a couple polygonal cocks. This is a game that can feel almost aggressively “adult” at times, as if it demands you take it seriously because it shows exploding heads and bare penises. It doesn’t really work but it does stand out from the crowd a bit, and helps push the Order into feeling even more like a movie than a video game.

    The game gets even gorier than this in places. It is not for the squeamish.
    The game gets even gorier than this in places. It is not for the squeamish.

    So how’s the plot? S’alright I guess. It doesn’t really go anywhere (the game famously cuts off just as your character starts to understand what’s going on) but it’s an okay pulp story and it’s got supernatural intrigue and forbidden romance. The Order itself is intriguing, long-lived but not immortal with different people taking on the names of the legendary knights and everyone carrying around vials of water from the Holy Grail, which they mix with their own blood and use for healing. You don’t find out much more than that, though, and lots of other plot threads are dropped as well. The Queen is apparently missing but there’s no explanation. Saving it for the next one? The performances and writing, as mentioned, are good. I am not surprised that one of the writing credits goes to a veteran Hollywood hand. For once a games company got what they paid for. Nikola Tesla’s in the game as a Victorian era Q because of course he is, even though to my knowledge he never lived in London. Tesla’s hot, now, though, so Tesla’s in the game. They brought in a Hollywood writer and he made the game seem like a Hollywood movie, for better and worse.

    Squint and this is a still from Underworld. The QTEs are very close to movie quality.
    Squint and this is a still from Underworld. The QTEs are very close to movie quality.

    And in the end that’s what the Order is. A Hollywood blockbuster. It’s short, mostly painless, and has its moments. As a $60 video game it’s too short and doesn’t play that great. As a $20 interactive action movie it’s honestly one of the best popcorn flicks I’ve seen in years. The characters alone are more interesting and likeable than anything from the Underworld series. You even fight along some badass women of color, and don’t hit on them! And they’re good characters with an interesting relationship.

    This game cares about its supporting cast even independent of their relationship with the main character. The faces aren't great, but I really liked these ladies' rapport.
    This game cares about its supporting cast even independent of their relationship with the main character. The faces aren't great, but I really liked these ladies' rapport.

    I liked the Order. I really enjoyed spending time in the rain-drenched Victorian London setting and I’m sad there won’t be a sequel for that reason. Removed from all the context of being a huge Playstation Exclusive and the dicey price proposition, it’s a fun time. You can shoot a guy and he’ll shout “Cor blimey!” before he expires. Go in with the right attitude and you’ll come out the other side satisfied. Anything you can say that about can’t be called “bad.”

    Plus, airship rappelling. It's a thrilling sequence with almost no gameplay. A The Order specialty!
    Plus, airship rappelling. It's a thrilling sequence with almost no gameplay. A The Order specialty!

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