This Post was originally posted on Slannxe Gaming back in January 2020.
Game: The Order: 1886
Publisher: Ready at Dawn
Genre: Third-Person Action-Adventure
Release Date: February 20th, 2015
Let’s take it back. The Order was shown off way back at E3 in June 2013. It was touted as a brand new IP for their new system. The Uncharted series is the main source of inspiration for the game, and looking back on it, yeah in terms of a big cinematic adventure story, that makes sense.
Here’s the thing. This game looked fucking rad. An alternate steampunk like reality with werewolves. The premise is awesome, the characters look cool. It had everything going for it at this point.
The game finally released on February 20th, 2015. I had actually bought the Collectors Edition of the game. It came with a statue, steel book, some DLC and the soundtrack. I really thought this game was going to be huge. I thought PlayStation had snagged such a huge, new IP. I wasn’t entirely correct. In fact, the game kind of became notorious.
The Order: 1886 had some issues. The main issues were the game was pretty short. Like, 5 hours short. Normally a campaign being 5 hours long wouldn’t be so bad if they had some sort of replay value to it. The Order was an only single-player game though, so it really was a one and done sort of experience. So the average buyer spent $60 on a five-hour experience and I can definitely see why they rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. This didn’t necessarily affect me as much you would think, especially since I bought the more expensive version of the game. I actually traded in old games over the course of a year or so towards my preorder, so the impact of it being so short never really correlated with the money I had spent on it.
*shrug*
There were a lot of great things The Order did though. It is still arguably one of the best looking games of this whole generation. The graphics were outstanding and on a technical level, for the time, was top tier. The world was super interesting, the story was engaging, and the game play, when you got to actually play the game, was enjoyable.
My problem with the game was how many cut scenes there were. How they kind of just… take control and you don’t really get to play as much as you would like. I really liked playing the game, but you could tell they really wanted to show off their technical and graphical achievements and it interfered with the actual video game aspect of the video game.
Here’s where we talk about why Ready at Dawn DESERVES the chance to make a sequel. The Order: 1886 is fucking cool still. Seriously. I’ve gone back to it numerous times just to experience the opening bits of that game. I’ve never beaten it a second time, but I still like being in that world.
A steampunk world fighting werewolves and vampires, an organization so old with its own sort of dirty secrets. It could absolutely go real deep in the lore, like Game of Thrones deep.
That is what Ready at Dawn needs to focus on this time around. More playable story! The game can look as beautiful as they want, but without giving full control to the players they will fall into the same criticism hole they had with the first game.
The Order: 1886 ends on a pretty big cliff hanger. Gallahad deserves his story to be told, to be finished at least. The game ends with London going into Marshall law, Gallahad renouncing his name from The Order, and a secret within the organization that could destroy everything the group stood for.
The story can go in several directions here. In the game, there is an elixir called Blackwater. This stuff can instantaneously heal you, and give you a much longer life span. So we could go quite a few years into the future, making the world develop even more and see where Half Breeds and The Order stand. Or we can pick up directly where we left it. With Gallahad being hunted down. I think there will be more of a time jump though since the sequel is supposedly going multiplatform.
I know there are a lot of people who have actually never played the game because of what they’ve heard about it, but the game is worthwhile playing. Obviously not worth $60, but if you see it on sale for $10 or under, go for it. Especially with all these rumors circulating about a sequel in development for both the Xbox Series X and the PlayStation 5, which is wild to me.
The Tired Obsidian 