The Order: 1886

The Game Room
1

Has anyone else played through The Order 1886 yet? I rented it this weekend and I’m about 4 hours in. This games production values are interesting to me. Basically it’s not that much fun and it seems like they maybe intentionally left out the game aspect in order to make it more cinematic. It’s much more like a movie that you sort of control than a game.

The thing about it that’s interesting is the developer really seems to have put a lot of effort and money into the game, but as a whole, it just doesn’t work. the graphics and music and basically the entire presentation is amazing. Even the shooting and cover systems are really good. Its like the developer went so far to get all these pieces in place, but when they came together they ignored the game as a whole And as a result it just isn’t fun. An analogy i would use to describe the production on this game is like when you hand write page after page of text, the first page all the letters and words look nice and straight and and by the 5th page the letters all start looking sloppy and half baked. I think the developer put tons of effort into the graphics and presentation and when it came to the end of production and actually making the game fun, they just didn’t.
Has anyone else played it? What did you think?

2

It’s been critically panned, which is good, because it’s not a good game. It seems the game press has been finding their collective balls recently and not just scoring a game an 80 because it’s got a huge marketing budget or is a first party game from Sony or Microsoft.

The “game” IS a movie. Someone actually clocked the cutscenes at over 2 hours out of an approx 6 hours of game. And the the rest of those 4 hours sees you just walking down corridors and “engaging” in quick time events.

Even the few spots where it seems that the game will actually give players the agency they need to be PART of the game, they flub things badly. Ina few spots it almost looks like the game is about to give the player a puzzle to solve… but then it takes it all away by making the “puzzle” just about holding down the triangle button.

The third person shooting is mediocre at best. The levels don’t do a good job of setting up the action they way you’d see in a game like Gears of War or Mass Effect, the AI isn’t very good, and there isn’t enough enemy variety. The shooting devolves into digital whackamole right quick, complete with call of duty triggers that you can almost see spawning/despawning the enemies when the player cross that invisible line.

You’re right, it looks like they concentrated on getting the most out of their engine and the PS4 visually as they could, and apparently forgot about trying to make their game fun, engaging or interactive. It also doesn’t help that the characters are pretty dull, the story isn’t very good, and to top it all off has one of the most dissatisfying endings in a long while.

Won’t spoil it for you, but basically, nothing is resolved.

I don’t understand what they were thinking or what they were doing. Apparently the game took 5 YEARS to develop. Jeebus, EPIC, 80 hour, in depth RPG’s with setpice, tactical combat, winding narratives that the player can shape with deep conversation trees, and huge open area to explore have been created with LESS money and in LESS time.

Boggles the mind.

3

Hmm, I’ve noticed that too. I think the Assassin’s Creed: Unity thing really threw people off.* Now, some websites have said that they’ll never agree to any stipulations like Unity had, Kotaku now only releases reviews after they’ve had time to play it, Eurogamer has done away with numbers (although Yahtzee has said that it’s still a type of scoring system), and I’m sure there are many that I’m not remembering.

To go further, though, will probably hijack the thread. And I definitely don’t want to bring up “ethics in gaming journalism,” lol.
But yeah, I’ve heard nothing but bad things about this game.

*For those who don’t know: Ubisoft demanded that in order for places to get the game early they couldn’t release the review until at least noon on the day the game was released. Many places agreed to that stipulation only to find, come release day, that the game was horribly broken and, according to some, not very good.

4

If it does come out on PC eventually, I’ll pay $5 for it when it goes on sale.

5

I almost feel bad for not liking it. You can tell they put a ton of work into it. Like everyone involved did an amazing job, but somehow it just didn’t come together right. Almost like the entire team was on different planets or maybe the budget ran out halfway through or something. I watched a couple of “the making of” videos on YouTube before it came out and it seemed that this developer was looking to make an experience that might rival the last of us, but what they’ve come up with isn’t even close. Chapter 6 and i think chapter 8 didn’t even have gameplay. They were just extremely long cutscenes. I’m still not finished So please don’t spoil it for me. (Playing on hard) But i could probably guess after the first meeting of the Knights at the round table what the ending is going to be.

6

Isn’t it the PS4 equivalent of Ryse? A dumb, boring game with great graphics to show off the graphical capabilities of the console?

7

I must say I’m kinda glad to hear it’s nothing to write home about – this was one of the few PS4 exclusives that made me hesitant to go for an XB One first. I don’t mean this as a “console war” statement (ugh); it just means I don’t have to rush out and try to justify buying a PS4 just yet.

8

Ya, from what I’ve read about Ryse it is the same kind of game where the graphics are everything and the gameplay itself is kind of half baked.

I really wanted to like this game. But it’s just not there. I would only recommend maybe a rental and only then just to see it, because the graphics really are amazing. I’m a 3d artist myself and i know the labor that went into the character models and levels and i can tell you that those artists were top notch. In fact the clothing materials and threads were all scan data from period cloth. They went all out on the art and atmosphere in this game and it shows.

9

The materials shaders and overall lighting int he game is top notch. They’ve added a lot film blur which is not to my taste, but it also sure does get rid of jaggies.

Probably the best looking console game so far, with AC: Unity coming in second.

10

Pretty sure Sony foot the bill for this one, so no PC port. If it was Microsoft maybe.

But really I’d recommend youtubing it if you really want to see it. Again, the ending sucks so I’m not even sure if it’s worth the 3 hour investment.

11

I had a $50 Gamestop gift card that I got for Christmas which I applied to the purchase of this game, so, all told, I was only out about $14 of my own money. Judging by (most) of the reviews for this game, that seems about right.

I’m only on the second chapter right now, but my feelings towards the game right now are mixed. On the positive side, yes, the graphics are fucking amazing and the setting is awesome as Hell; really, everything about the production of this game is resolutely top notch, and I don’t necessarily have anything to complain about in that area.

But beyond that…yeah, I dunno. I mean, I understand where others are coming from in criticizing this title for not being interactive enough, and even I’m having trouble coming down on one side or the other in terms of whether The Order is a game or an interactive movie. I think the actual GAME parts of it are genuinely fun; it’s just that they’re so damn linear and limited in their interactivity.

I’m sure that I’ll have a more firm opinion on it by the time I beat it. Note that I’m not coming into this game with any preconceived negative biases; no, I was quite looking forward to it, and I specifically held off on blowing my gift card for two months just so that I could use it ON THIS GAME. But yeah, it’s a mixed bag so far.

The story does seem pretty sick, though.

12

I watched someone livestream this over the past couple of days. $14 would be stretching it in terms of value, IMO.

QTEs are always too much laserdisk-Dragon’s Lair for my taste, but this seems to jump right past that and into 90’s “OMG, we can put video into a CD-ROM game!” territory.

Seems to be a lot of places where the QTEs are just fancy pause buttons, there’s no failure condition, it just waits for you to do the only thing it allows you to do. I guess the idea is to try and make you feel more immersed or something, but some of those things are just mundane and/or stupid. “Press Triangle now to pull the lever and release the liferafts that people are evacuating to in an orderly and calm fashion!”

And a heavy story-focused game would be OK if the story was really well done. But it’s like they couldn’t find a tired cliche they didn’t like. Villain monologuing that “his people” aren’t any more evil than humans (but the story gives absolutely no evidence of this)? Check. Ooh, it’s an alternative English history with conspiracy and supernatural elements, have to shoehorn Jack the Ripper in there somehow! The post-credits scene only needed a bat signal to be complete.

The characters are mostly assholes that I don’t care much about, and thus don’t feel too much about if they die or get betrayed or whatever. Tesla was about the only one that seemed sympathetic (hey, super-science in the 1800s, of course we have to have Tesla!), did his connection at the end ever actually get explained, or was the “will explain later” bit meaning in the sequel?

So very pretty graphics. Poor writing, poor storytelling, a setting that has potential but held back by the writing and storytelling and a lot of, in the words of the streamer I watched, “Oh, it looks like we’re going to get some gameplay soon. Oh wait, not yet, have to watch this scene of them going down a lift first.”

13

For comparison, I just spent a few bucks for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2(it was $12 and came with 11 other games).

I finished it easily in 5 1/2 hours and I still feel ripped off.

If I had spent $60, I’d be ready to file a lawsuit!