The Order: 1886 Offers a Quick Glimpse of its Dark World

Can't wait.

That didn't really leave me feeling anything.

The visuals in the gameplay footage that broke embargo not long ago were extremely impressive, but that's about where it ends. I trust Ready at Dawn to make a quality game, but thus far Sony are doing a poor job making me care about it.

They'll have to bring more than steampunk rifles if they're going to beat Rambo - the video game.

I really like the vibe of this game, but the snippets of gameplay that were shown kinda cooled my hype. It doesn't seem to be aiming for anything more than being a cinematic TPS - including QTEs - which is a valid direction but not one that interests me, personally.

By the way, did anyone of GB go to the preview event? Jeff has been on some press trips lately, hasn't he?

The only thing this game seems to have going for it is its graphical prowess. Everything else from what they've shown thus far seems rather rote, and its lack of any multiplayer isn't helping its cause, either. It's like the PS4's own equivalent of Heavenly Sword, or for a more recent example, the XB1's Ryse.

tbh, I'm pretty happy about the lack of multiplayer, it means that they will really focus to make it an engrossing single player experience... not that there is anything wrong with multiplayer, but there's not necessarily anything better about it either, unless it's very well done. (also, as a reminder, Ryse did have multiplayer)

However, I'm kind of with you on the rather uninteresting "gears of war-esque" gameplay, I hope they mix it up with other aspects, to make it a less generic cover based shooter on its core.

All said, it looks so pretty *o*

I really like a lot of the design and art direction going on here. Definitely interested to see more; hopefully there will be a great game underlying the interesting world they seem to be setting up. Time will tell though.

I actually like the setting and the set up for the story. It's the fact that it's another third person shooter that turns me off (just a little). And I'm surprised to here it doesn't have MP, it being a TPS and all.

If the QTEs are going to be like that, it's more like "make your decision after thinking for a second"-events rather than "hammer button like you're suffering a seizure". Which is great.

It's still a third person shooter and as kickass as many of them are I guess most of us are awaiting details on what may enhance replay-value?

(Self-proclaimed videogame journalists praise the MP-only $60 Titanfall but crap on this. That's fun.)

@yyziggurat: yeah the steampunkish industrial revolution London is a most exciting setting, that's why I hope they do more than just pew pew through it... Although after the train section in uncharted 2, maybe pewpewing through awesome places isn't a terrible idea...

Anyhow I can't think of many games that have actually dealt with that time period either... ( maybe only alice madness returns, or thief.... and not really )... so this is probably my most anticipated game of his year... all things considered.

Although, there's the witness.. and maybe rime comes out this year.

This continues to seem visually impressive yet uninteresting.

@sydlanel said:

There are plenty of games out there that are able to provide both an engaging single-player campaign and a full suite of multiplayer stuff. Even besides the obvious examples like the Gears series, you've got stuff like Uncharted 2 that succeeded on all fronts. Hell, even The Last of Us had some surprisingly great multiplayer.

Now ordinarily I wouldn't mind so much, but they're currently not showing much of this game outside of it looking like a pretty standard TPS--mechanically speaking--which often thrive in multiplayer -- coop specifically.

So far they're not really making it appear as if playing it solo would make it any better than if you had some mates at your side. Though maybe it'll have some sort of tactical element to it ala Mass Effect/The Bureau, or will at least feature a story that perhaps wouldn't have the same weight to it with others players roaming about. Hopefully you'll also at least get to play as each of the four main characters in some capacity, rather than having them exist purely as a trio of invincible dialogue dispensers.

If not, then what was once a pretty intriguing little game is going to fall pretty sharply off my to-buy list for whenever I get a PS4.

EDIT: Also, while Ryse does feature multiplayer that is supposedly kinda 'eh', the difference there is Ryse is this slow-paced hack n slash brawler thing, whereas The Order is of course a shooter.

Shooters (especially slower, cover-based ones) are still one of the easiest genres going to successfully build around multiplayer, so if your shooter is going to be completely single-player, then you damn well better come up with a good enough justification for it.

She prefers her slaughter to be discriminant.

IT'S NOT STEAMPUNK.

I really don't get all the hubbub around this game.

Some of the leaked stuff I saw makes this game look amazing. Ready at Dawn is a solid developer and I have faith in them to bring out a good game. Hell, even if it ends up being a generic TPS it'll still be super pretty and possibly a fun rollercoster ride.

Cool trailer. Not sure why people are debating about the game's quality now.

@yummylee:

Well I don't see why they need any justification other than: they are not a huge studio, and balancing and structuring the interactions of a multiplayer game to make it proficient and competitive AND coherent with their game design, requires a lot of effort ( as much as twice the dev time ).

Yager and Spec-ops the line had a similar issue, the multiplayer got outsourced because Yager simply couldn't handle it and didn't want to include it. "BUT ITS A TPS! it needs moar multiplayers because reasons!" Said some silly investor. So the game shipped with a multiplayer component that actively undermined the message of the game, making it a worse package for having it.
Dead space 3 also pretty much butchered what made the original games entertaining by adding multiplayer ( and they even turned it into more of a 3rd person shooter to justify the mutation ), and it clearly didn't make the game any better.

In the end As I said, if it's thoughtfully and carefully designed, it's great to add multiplayer, but it can perfectly become a bloated unnecessary cancerous appendix. For now it is too soon to say, hopefully there will be more than what this trailers are showing, I hope that it's not as shallow as it looks. But I definitely don't see the lack of multiplayer as a downside.

Nice trailer. Now if they would only release one with game play in it I can really get excited.

@sydlanel: Uh, I think a first-party developer owned by Sony has a little more of a budget than whatever something like Spec Ops: The Line had to work with. Even the game's single-player looked kinda... well, not bad, but it resembled a budget game. I wouldn't call that much of a fair comparison in any case.

Plus, Dead Space 3's added coop is also a really poor example because that game's issues weren't related to the coop at all. And not to mention that the Dead Space series isn't what I'd call a regular cover-based TPS anyway, whereas The Order is rather commonly being compared to the Gears series.

However, yes, it's too early to say one way or the other if The Order can make up for its lack of multiplayer. But as of now, they're doing a really poor job of trying to market its appeal beyond some pretty graphics.

the shooter scene has gotten pretty stale, but shoot stuff + steam-punk is enough for me

@meatball: There is gameplay in this trailer!?? It seemed all CG to me?

Must say I'm looking forward to this, but I'm worried if it'll live up to the hype after all. I really hope for Sony that it will turn into a success, 'cause right now they really need those exclusive titles to hit the mark.

Wait, are people not realizing that you play this game as Knights of the fucking Round Table? How can you not be excited to be Galahad with a fucking steampunk machinegun?

I was kind of hoping to see gameplay this time rather than more story setup.

I can't wait, now i just need to get a PS4

That was all in-engine folks. All that black liquid flowing, ooze spilling, rocks forming, glass forming, whatever forming, paper printing, sword pointing.

Eat your heart out, Killzone.

Cinematic trailers do absolutely nothing for me. I want to see more of this game. I can't have an opinion on it yet since I don't know anything about it.

I'm sure this game will look amazing, but what has been shown so far hasn't interested me. The setting has promise, but this trailer was pretty awful and it needs to be more than another TPS "with a twist" for me to care. I'll remain sceptical.

@yummylee I love Spec Ops and will not tolerate any disrespect thrown that game's way.

And besides, blowing the graphics budget of Spec Ops on that absolutely kick ass soundtrack is worth the trade off, in my opinion.

@sydlanel I get what you're saying and fully support a MP-less universe of next gen games. I know that's not what you said, but I'm a big proponent of supporting games without MP. Even if I'm not that interested in The Order, I'll buy it simply because it doesn't have any multiplayer shoot-banging.

Talking: the trailer. And yet, I'm hyped for this game.

This trailer does nothing for me. I am curious about the game but not as a result of watching this trailer.

@auto: yes. just yes. i got the chills watching this

Yeah I loved that bit of self important nonsense coming from the dev. The game looked interesting from that first trailer, some of it because it traded in obvious imagery from a well established genre.

The trailer doesn't do much for me, but mainly because I have no interest in game trailers that don't show any actual gameplay. I will be very glad when video games move past trying to imitate movies.

Hopefully the mechanics live up to the setting as I think 19th century steampunk London sounds great. It would be a nice surprise if there is more to the game than just a straight up third person shooter.

Twenty bucks says voiceover guy is the for-real antagonist.

"This is for the players" sounds somewhat awkward, but I can appreciate it.

Sweet mammy, that looks awesome!

Same here. I was really disappointed after they teased that a new trailer was coming out and all we got was this cinematic. Then I read a preview of the game from CVG that amounted to "THIS IS THE FIRST TRUE NEXT-GEN GAME... (because it's really, really good-looking.)" Like, literally, the entire preview was just talking about how good the game looks and didn't touch gameplay pretty much at all.

But there's actual gameplay footage out there now if you're willing to hunt on YouTube a little bit, and honestly, the game looked basically like a straight-up third-person shooter like any other we played last generation, only with branching QTEs.

So I don't know. It's a cool setting, but I really hope they show off something that gives me hope that this generation isn't gonna be ruled by standard FPS and TPS again. I'm so bored of that.

@yummylee: Even if the single-player is standard, I'd prefer we start to buck the trend that every game needs multiplayer as a value-add, even if that multiplayer is going to be boring and only keep people from trading the game in for another like three days or a week. Save the money. Games need to be profitable, and the best way to do that is to streamline development as much as possible, something the industry is embarrassingly terrible at.

Keep teams together longer so they can get comfortable and efficient with each other rather than laying everybody off after each game and starting from scratch. Don't pad out games with extra length by repeating crap over and over just for the sake of making the game longer at the cost of extra development time especially given the absurdly low percentage of people who finish games anyway. And for god's sake, unless you honestly believe your game either a) is as big as Call of Duty, or b) has something truly unique to offer, then don't just shove multiplayer in there.

Case in point: Spec Ops: The Line.

@whatisdelicious: I swear, is anybody even reading what I'm saying??

No, every game ever should not have multiplayer shoe-horned in, but The Order is currently looking like a rather standard TPS, and if it keeps up that appearance, then it would be a shame if it didn't at least benefit from 4-player coop being thrown into the mix ala Gears. Also, citing the shoddy multiplayer of Spec Ops: The Line as an argument for why multiplayer should clearly be exempt from The Order is absurd. Just look at the two games you're comparing here. Like, literally look at them. It's plainly obviously that Spec Ops was basically a full-priced budget game as opposed to The Order's rather grandiose presentation.

@yummylee: Spec Ops was a far more interesting game than most full-priced games, so I don't know what you're getting at with that unless you're trying to reduce your entire argument down to, "Spec Ops was ugly so it didn't need multiplayer. The Order is gorgeous so it should have multiplayer."

Co-op might make The Order more fun. Competitive might make The Order more fun. But that's clearly not what this game is about. Unless multiplayer is a strong focus for a game, they probably shouldn't bother. It's super expensive to develop and maintain, and if you don't invest heavily enough, you end up with a crappy multiplayer mode that does little to deter people from trading the game in.

If The Order is going to be a standard, kind of generic TPS, then I definitely don't want multiplayer in it. I instead want them to concentrate on making a strong story mode that keeps me engaged even though the gameplay might be kind of rote, something Spec Ops did a marvelous job with.

@whatisdelicious: I'm saying that The Order is very clearly more likely to have the funds to actually sustain a well made multiplayer suite, whereas Spec Ops could only barely gets its single-player off the ground. I really like Spec Ops, and it made it at my No.7 of 2012, but it's not exactly much of a looker, and the animations and controls can be a little awkward at times. It's not an especially well made game.

@yummylee: Yeah, but keep in mind that one of the reasons why Spec Ops barely made its budget was because the publisher decided it needed a multiplayer mode, which adds a lot of stress onto the development team because then they have to split resources.

The Order is being published by Sony so yeah, they probably have the budget, but even Sony isn't made of money (quite the opposite) and there's no reason to add cost unless they're serious about The Order being a multiplayer powerhouse. If they see the game as more of a story-focused experience and don't want the fiction devolving into generic characters fighting each other in TDM or whatever, I commend them for it.

Like, I get what you're saying. They could probably have separate co-op missions where you control members of The Order and fight monsters. They could have interesting competitive modes where you control either The Order or monsters. But that's a gamble, and realistically, not that many people are going to play it for very long.

The Last of Us has a very niche multiplayer market, Killzone: Shadow Fall's multiplayer numbers are pretty depressingly low despite that game making multiplayer the focus of that game, and Far Cry 3 tried co-op missions that were fucking garbage and completely unnecessary because it had such a strong, addictive single-player component.

Basically what I'm saying is this: Unless your game is part of an established multiplayer powerhouse (Call of Duty, Halo, Battlefield), or a new game made by the developers of an established multiplayer powerhouse (Titanfall, Destiny, Battlefront), or you have a crazy new idea that will reshape games as we know it (Demon's Souls, Assassin's Creed, Rust), you're probably better off just saving the money and helping to make the industry a more efficient, more profitable, less hostile place for both developers and consumers.

Or at least investing that money in developing cool DLC. I'd much rather have continuing episodes of The Order than multiplayer.

@whatisdelicious: Spec Ops multiplayer was actually developed by a completely different studio. And I dunno, unless it can truly stand out and does something legitimately unique--like Vanquish for example, a TPS that can very easily stand on its own as a SP-only game--is maybe a ''taction'' TPS, or at least has a really engaging story, then I imagine I'm probably going to be really disappointed and will be left sourly imagining ''what could have been''.

As someone that absolutely adores the Gears series, I was hotly anticipating The Order to be Sony's answer to Gears, because of its CG trailer and the way it framed The Order as a 4-player steampunk shooter thing.

@yummylee: It was developed by a different studio, but by "resources" I meant like "financial resources." Double the studios doesn't mean double the budget. Less budget = less time.

Yeah, I get what you mean about Sony needing an "answer" to Microsoft's games. I think they banked on Killzone : Halo :: Uncharted : Gears, but neither really worked out that well. I really loved Killzone 2's multiplayer, and I flirted with Uncharted's multiplayer for a bit, but it was ultimately disappointing.

Obviously the potential is there for The Order to be Sony's Gears, but it's being developed by Ready At Dawn, guys much more familiar with making engaging single-player experiences. I've been a big fan of their work with God of War so far. If I had to guess, I'd say they look at the four characters idea as "characters to get invested in" rather than "characters to inhabit," if that makes sense.

But I do get where you're coming from. It'd be cool for Sony to commission a new powerhouse multiplayer exclusive, but so far, they haven't been successful in doing that because they classically favor interesting single-player experiences.

@whatisdelicious: Well that sounds disappointing. Hopefully, most of the focus on the game being a third-person shooter is simply because they don't know how to market games to a larger audience without being "accessible" (or whatever buzzword people are using).

Definitely disappointed to hear that CVG (or anyone else) is concentrating strictly on how good the game looks in order for a game to be considered next gen. Personally there are two things that I would much rather see the new generation work on: framerate and enemy AI. This is a perfect opportunity for the new consoles to approach that pc framerate, or at least get a stable one so that it isn't dropping every time the action picks up onscreen. And I am very tired of poor AI in games at this point.

Some of what we have been seeing over the past few years and what I have heard/seen about the XBox1 and PS4 have me tentatively optimistic that standard FPS and TPS won't dominate this generation the way that they did the last. The rise in prominence of indie (whatever gets crammed into this category now?) games, multiple options for releasing games online (not just pc but on the new consoles as well) and people seeming to be more and more willing to take a look at games in the $15-40 range make me hopeful that this generation might see a return of the mid-tier game, to some extent at least, and the broader experimentation in gameplay that would come along with it.

@meatball: If yo played previous games in the series, you dont need convincing haha