The Order: 1886

[krulmichael]

Just a week and a half away, right?

[Swarley]

Until you mentioned something, I didn't even realize this game had a Friday release instead of a Tuesday.

Can't wait to pick up that $80 collector's edition!

[Twigg4075]

Yeah, Friday is weird but I think releasing next Friday as opposed to this one is just dumb. A lot of people have off next Monday and I bet they would get more sales with a three day weekend. It seems like such a missed opportunity.

[Pitty]

5-7 hours long? Wtf.

[SethMode]

Long or short doesn't matter, in my opinion, as long as it doesn't overstay its welcome or seem unfinished. If 5-7 hours is all it is and that 5-7 hours is amazing, then I personally don't care.

This game, however, looks far from amazing regardless.

[Pitty]

Long or short doesn't matter, in my opinion, as long as it doesn't overstay its welcome or seem unfinished. If 5-7 hours is all it is and that 5-7 hours is amazing, then I personally don't care.

This game, however, looks far from amazing regardless.

I agree, but if it's 5-7 hours I don't want to pay 60 dollars for it, regardless of the story quality.

[Handleit_44]

[nickp50010]

Fucking awesome. lol

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B-A8wGRIUAA0n1Y.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ4e3Xyh1dE

The Order: 1886 developers talk about game length, uncanny haterade and how YouTube is changing gaming.

A week ahead of the launch of Ready at Dawn's first new IP, The Order: 1886, Develop seized the opportunity to chat with game director Dana Jan and technology director Garret Foster (pictured above left to right) about the shift from handheld to home console development.

This is your first new IP that you've worked on as a team. What drew you to this particular project? What made you want to go down this path?

Dana Jan: I mean a lot of things were appealing about getting the chance to do a brand-new fresh IP. One of them is just being able to shape everything about it and take all the things that make you excited and scared at the same time and put them into something you love. We've been lucky enough to have worked on some games that are based on franchises that were extremely successful, and that's definitely a nice way to grow a team and figure out how to make good games without having to worry about the substance, so to speak. It was also around the time we were working on God of War - it was obvious [to us] that the idea and the escapism that a different mythology or alternate history provides you is really alluring, because you get to play with people's expectations of things they know or think they know about that material, but you get to put your own spin on it. And for us, for our game, that's really interesting because we raid historical characters. There's an appeal in having the player play through these things and pause and think 'wait a minute, is that really something that Tesla worked on?' And they go and research it. Or they just fully buy-in -- because of the way we've put it together -- so they just accept it as fact, and later somebody tells them 'You're an idiot, that's not really how it happened.'

Garret Foster: To touch a little bit more on that, you kind of want to establish your identity as a developer too. You know, when we made God of War and Daxter, that was awesome, those were amazing to develop, they're established IPs and we were just along for the ride in a lot of ways. With this we're setting up our identity, and it's everyone's dream to make something new, something interesting, something in line with how we expect things. And to touch on going from PSP to PS4...

Dana Jan: It's the same system pretty much. [laughs]

Garret Foster - [laughing] Yeah, they're pretty much identical. [The PS4] is actually 47 PSPs stacked on top of each other in that little box. No, but we compare it to, like, we used to make office buildings but now we're making skyscrapers. We're going from this smaller form factor to something much bigger, and the problems are usually a scaling problem. We have to do this much more, or that much more and you start running into hardware limitations where people's desktop workstations can't move that amount of data efficiently, so they can't really do any work. The tech for everything is more complicated, the content is way, way, way more detailed than what the PSP could ever have. I always joke that if you take the eyeballs in [The Order: 1866] they're bigger than the PSP, just the character's eyeballs are bigger than the PSP.

That was one of the learning curves there -- when we were first talking about budgets on the game, for example, I started telling people numbers and they weren't really getting it, and then I told them in terms of PSPs and it immediately clicked, and they'd go "Wow, I'm asking for a ridiculous amount of resources." So it was fun to go through that as a team, and when I had that first meeting and everyone latched on to it, it was very cool.

Did you find that your original budget estimates got blown out because of the scaling factor?
Garret Foster: I think our budgets were pretty close, we took what we did on PSP, we took the ratios and scaled those up as our initial guess. Then we also did a lot of talking with other studios to see what they dedicated certain resources to. Then at the time when we were starting this process there weren't any PS4 games, because it was early on in development -- we actually started the engine before the PS4 existed. So when we were talking to people we were basing things on PSP and PS3, our own experiences with those. We worked from there and adapted in later, and I think we finished within 10% for each group.

The rise of Pewdiepie and Lets Players has changed the face of gaming. You guys have created a game which is a linear, story-driven shooter, the interactivity is skills-based. How do you feel about the way YouTube is changing how people consume video games? Do you have to develop around it?
Dana Jan: It's an interesting topic because I think there's always going to be someone who is completely satisfied with watching a game. Games are an interesting thing because I think for everybody who really likes games, half of it involves their interaction with [the game], no matter if it's a sports title or a cinematic, linear driven shooter or an open world type -- some of the gratification has to be 'I want to do that thing when the opportunity arises', rather than 'Oh PewDiePie you should have gone that way, why didn't you?' I think they want some say in that choice.

Garret Foster: PewDiePie is also sort of Mystery Science Theatre for video games... maybe if you could play it on mute... You watch him for the humour of him playing the game, I don't think it's really to digest the game.

Dana Jan: More than anything I think it's a way for people who are on the fence about a game, if you see somebody playing it and they're having a good time you might think 'Man I want to do that'. I guess it's still going to be some time before we get some real data on how that effects gaming, and if gaming was something we started to view as very passive then I think you're right, it would be like the question of 'How does YouTube hurt sales of movies?' or 'How does the Internet hurt sales of books?' but I think there's a level of tactile interfacing that is only gratifying if you play a game.

Garret Foster: I don't actually know what the actual impact of it is, but from all the things I've read at least online, a game like ours which is super story-based, I think a lot of people are kinda lumping in to how they would approach a movie, where they don't want to know about the story before hand. I wouldn't want to know the plot twists in a movie. You might watch it, but it might be better for a game that's more gamey? It's still hard to say.

A youTuber has played through [The Order: 1886] and finished it in five-and-a-half hours.
Garret Foster: That's a quick time... he beat my best time. Obviously as a programmer you've got to get to areas quickly to diagnose the area. So the last build of the game I speed ran through and I wasn't even close to that time -- I needed to play through the game from beginning to end before we sent it to manufacturing, right!?

With that time in mind, I want to talk to you about value judgements and video games. Every game is different, obviously. Dark Souls can be finished in under an hour if you are fast enough, while other games blow all the way out to 100+ hours. They all cost the same amount of money. How do you know at what point you've created something that people will feel they get value out of. Not to say that time exclusively equates to value for money, but for the purposes of this question...
Dana Jan: It's funny, we were talking about this at lunch. It's really the strange dilemma of video games right now, but I don't think you can have a discussion of quantity without quality. So our game is extremely focused on the gameplay to the story-telling to pretty much everything. Frequently I'm saying when you play our game you're going to be on a rollercoaster of variety, twists, turns, there's no filler, you're never grinding in our game. Each encounter you go to you're going to go 'Wow, there's different weapons this time. Wow, there's different enemies this time.' We took the idea of 'Let's put you on the best possible experience ride that we can and let's never have you sit there doing the same stuff over and over again.'

I guess I think about it like this. If you go and you eat a steak, if you pay $100 for a steak that tastes like the best steak you've ever had in your life but it's only 200 grams versus paying the same price for the worst steak you could want -- but it's all-you-can-eat. There's an argument to be made that one is better than the other depending on who you are. If you just want to be full all the time then all-you-can-eat terrible steak, maybe that's for you? I'm not saying it has to be that polarising, I'm just asking why do we feel like we have to always measure things first and foremost in terms of quantity. Which is why for our game we targeted a very good length for the game, but it wasn't our priority. It's not something people are going to think is short. A lot of what we're hearing about is a case of it either being irresponsibly or inaccurately reported or putting the game on easy and skipping through and speed-running the game.

We have this uncanny 'haterade' for our game no matter what. People are looking for something to throw at our game, some reason to hate it. I'm excited to hear what people who have actually played the game think about it, how do they feel about the quality and the quantity? I think by and large that most people are going to be satisfied.

Garret Foster: Our game is a game that you get lost in, you get immersed in the world and the gameplay, and we've done so much research and devoted so much time to making every little detail meticulously refined, that nothing stands out so your brain just gets completely submersed in this whole time period and storyline and these fights. If someone could sit on their couch and get in that mode and have the ride of their life then I think we've done our job.

Dana Jan: To sum it up, I mean we didn't make this amazing quality game that's 30 minutes long, that's absolutely not the truth. The truth is, if you've played other games that are in the same genre as ours, third person shooters you're in for the same length of ride as those games, but possibly of a higher quality depending on what you're looking for.

You talked about the uncanny haterade you get. Do you think it's a case of focusing one console over another?
Dana Jan: Surprisingly it's not. I'm not seeing people indicating that it's a Xbox vs PlayStation thing.

Garret Foster: I'm sure there's a minute fraction of people...

Dana Jan: Yeah, but I really haven't seen it at the forefront of any of it. It's more just shocking that for a game that isn't out yet, for a franchise that is brand new, the amount of negativity is just... we have a joke where someone will post on the website NeoGAF something like "Sony released new screenshots of The Order" and we place bets on what post number we think is going to be the first one where someone says something unfoundedly negative. Like 'oh looks like it's going to be failboat' or something like that, and we'll guess 'maybe it's going to be post 20' and we'll see how close we are.

I just feel like these days it's so easy to be negative and I think the internet is the new playground for bullies. Who goes out of their way to really go and say something positive, right? If you go out to a restaurant and you have a good time, do you go online immediately to post something? But if you have a bad experience, you'll jump on because you want to warn people about it right? It takes a lot more effort to say something nice than to say something negative, and I think people are excited to jump on some bandwagon of negativity. I really actually feel for the people who go on there and say 'Hey guys why don't you chill out, it's not even out yet, why don't we wait until some people get review copies or you've played it yourself before you pass judgement on stuff?' It's just for the people who are excited for this game, I feel bad for them that they have to sit through this ecosystem that the internet has created which is full of negativity, it's really kind of gross.

I don't think people need to go out there and be unbiased supporters of our stuff or anything either. I want them to make up their own minds about the game period. It just seems like the pendulum swings the other way so frequently. I mean, we'll see, right?

What's next for the team? Will we see The Order: 1887? 1888?
Dana Jan: The really cool thing about this is that the amount of work we did to create the world of The Order: 1886, the backstory and all the characters... there are important events that happened prior to the game and are destined to happen after the game. That was one of the things that we knew, in order to be successful we knew we had to set up all that ground work even if we just did one game. So it didn't seem like we would have to ask ourselves 'why did this happen' and answer 'I don't know, we just winged it.' Right now we're just focused on this game coming out, but if it's received well it will certainly be a talking point for us to see where it goes in the future.

http://www.develop-online.net/interv...antity/0203245

http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/2waz3g/a_ps4_exclusive_the_order1886_is_five_hours_long/

[Twigg4075]

I agree, but if it's 5-7 hours I don't want to pay 60 dollars for it, regardless of the story quality.

This reviews says it took him 8 hours on EASY, so I'm thinking around 10+ hours for the average. That seems more than enough considering I recently played the original GoW over again and felt like it was a fairly long game. My gameplay timer when I was finished was just barely under ten hours. Spec Ops: The Line was a great story driven shooter that barely took six hours to finish but I never noticed. I think Halo 4 took barely four hours and I will agree that it was way too short. I think Gears 2 and 3 clocked in at around 6-8 hours with the first game being shorter than that.

http://www.psnation.com/2015/02/19/review-the-order-1886-ps4/

Title: The Order: 1886
Format: Blu-ray Disc / PlayStation Network Download (31 GB)
Release Date: February 20, 2015
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Developer: Ready at Dawn
Original MSRP: $59.99
ESRB Rating: M
The Order: 1886 is exclusive to PlayStation 4.
The PlayStation 4 disc version was used for this review.
A copy of this game was provided by the publisher for review purposes.
PS Nation Review Policy

Audio Review:
The audio review for this game is available on Episode 411 of the podcast.

** This is a completely spoiler-free review. All screenshots have been carefully selected so as not to give anything away. **

Let’s get started with obviously the most important piece of information (can you smell the sarcasm?): the game is longer than five hours, even though random unsubstantiated Internet rumors would have you believe different. As with many story-driven games, I usually play-through on Easy to assure that I can get all the way through in the short amount of time we usually have to get these reviews posted. On Easy it took me about eight hours to complete the game. I also restarted the game on Medium and it’s definitely tougher to get through, so I would expect that the completion time would take even longer (yes, I started a second playthrough already). I hate that I had to include this statement by the way.

Gameplay:
The Order: 1886 is an interesting concept, telling its story from the foundations of Arthurian Legend which took place in the fourth and fifth centuries. Many characters that you’d recognize are present, and you’ll take control of Galahad as you defend the crown in 1886 (obviously). Everything is played from a third person perspective and controls should feel very comfortable. My one complaint though is that there’s no option to swap L2 -> L1 & R2 -> R1 which may take some getting used to for veteran PlayStation gamers. Other than that though, controls are solid and responsive and everything is intuitive throughout.

The Order: 1886_20150215211123

As in other third person games you’ll be able to duck into cover with a simple press of the Circle button. Melees though aren’t performed with a simple press of R3 as you’d expect. Instead, the melee is a timed event. If you are able to sneak behind an enemy or if he/she is on the other side of your cover position, a prompt for Triangle will appear on the screen with a circle shrinking into the center. If you time the button press correctly it’s an insta-kill. But if you time it wrong you’ll either get into combat with the foe or they’ll notice you and ventilate your head with a bullet. If you approach from the front the game will prompt you to hit Triangle which will then set a cinematic and brutal kill in-motion, but this could also result in hand-to-hand combat.

The hand-to-hand combat can include a mixture of timed button presses (I would tend to steer clear of the ‘QTE’ label here) and as shown in some previews, instances where the action pauses giving you an opportunity to look around for items to interact with. For example when it pauses you use the stick to look around and find at least two indicators to choose from. So in one instance you can either choose a knife off to the right or choose to bash your attackers head into a fire extinguisher on the wall. These decisions directly affect how the battle continues, which adds some to the replayability of the game.

… THE WEAPONS SEEM TO BE ROOTED IN STEAMPUNK BUT THEY’RE NOT …
Gameplay overall is much more methodical than most others in the genre and even though you can run, most of the time you’ll choose not to. There are collectables littered throughout the levels in the form of crude phonograph recordings (audio logs) and random items to inspect, most of which help flesh the story out even more. This isn’t a game to rush through which for me is usually completely opposite to my approach.

The Order: 1886_20150215210816

I never found myself feeling rushed though so I felt a lot more comfortable exploring at my own pace. Even so, I apparently missed something since the trophy for finding everything never popped. The good news is that once you finish the story (on any difficulty) you’re given the option to start at the beginning of any checkpoints within each chapter. So once those trophy hunting guides hit you don’t have to go through the entire game again to find everything.

I’ve seen a lot of people mention that the weapons seem to be rooted in Steampunk but they’re not. The idea instead is that the parts the weapons are made from all existed in that time period but the weapons themselves never did. So there’s a bit of fantasy when it comes to the weapons available but everything feels like it’s from 1886.

Firing most weapons results in sparks flying out of the barrel or from the back with a good amount of smoke blowing out as well. Aiming is affected by the fact that these aren’t finely tuned weapons that you’d get in a modern shooter (except for the sniper rifle of course). Instead, if you’ve seen the movie The Patriot you’ll need to teach yourself the concept of “aim small, miss small” as they did. Not to say that you’ll never hit an enemy, but there’s definitely a wider margin for error than with more modern weapons.

The Order: 1886_20150215210903

The great thing is that enemies aren’t the typical bullet sponges like in some other third person games; get a headshot and he’s down. Obviously, it’ll still take a couple more shots in the body to take someone down and the fact that the hitmarker will flash red when you get a kill is incredibly helpful in bigger firefights.

… THE LIGHTING AFFECTS LITERALLY EVERYTHING …
Based on previews and trailers some may feel that this is more of a horror game than anything else but I’m happy to report that it’s not (because I’m not a fan of horror games). There are some horror elements included for sure, but overall you really do feel like a Knight fighting to defend the crown. Some friends were on party chat while I was playing, and everyone got a laugh at a certain point in the game though as I was attacked from behind with no real warning.

Don’t get me wrong though, nothing feels cheap and the only possible disappointment is that it does seem to use a tripwire system on occasion to kick-off waves of enemies. These instances are incredibly rare though and don’t detract from the experience at all. Heck, even the stealth mission didn’t bother me as much as it has in other games due to the solid mechanics and overall pacing of the game.

The Order: 1886_20150215212204

The thing that will grab you the most though is the incredibly deep story. The narrative is well thought-out and if you’ve ever read any of the source material you’re in for a treat that will also keep you guessing. I’m finding it incredibly difficult to write this review without discussing the story especially since it’s my favorite aspect of the whole of the game. The pacing is perfect, the set pieces are jaw-dropping, and the characters are handled with great care.

Visuals:
I’ll just say it, this is the best looking game on the PlayStation 4 period. The amount of detail on the characters and NPC’s is outstanding and the animation is second to none at this point. Not only that, but the numerous environments are built with an incredible attention to detail and scope, and the lighting affects literally everything. Even better are the darker scenes when your only light source is a handheld lantern which accurately throws every shadow that you’d expect in real life.

There were more than a few times where my friends in the party chat overheard me mutter things like “wow” and “holy crap, look at that”. The game was built with the premise that the transition from cutscene to gameplay would be seamless and even though it isn’t perfect, this is the closest it’s ever been. The only indicator of said transition is a small pause before your control inputs are detected at that point. If you were watching a recorded video you’d never know.




The characters are animated with an immense amount of accuracy, including facial expressions in both cutscenes and gameplay and even some other instances that I won’t mention in fear of spoiling some story elements (there’s a LOT that hasn’t been revealed at all about the story and I’m not about to start here.)

The one thing I did catch though is a small visual cheat that’s more of a curiosity than anything else. Mirrors and cabinets with reflective windows are strewn throughout the environments but your character doesn’t reflect in any of them even though your handheld lantern and whatever else is in view will. We joked that Galahad is actually a vampire or something, but no, nothing points to that in the story.

… THE TECHNICAL STUFF WILL BLOW YOUR MIND …
Audio:
I played both with full surround sound and with some nice gaming headphones and I wish there was a way to convey how much the audio design complements the rest of the game. With a wonderful score composed by Jason Graves (Tomb Raider reboot, Dead Space) the music fits perfectly with what’s happening on the screen evoking even more emotion at every turn.

The score stood-out to me which doesn’t happen in every game that I play. Mix that in with detailed sounds from knocking over a bottle, to how these early guns sound when fired, and the incredible voice acting, and well it feels like you’re in a brand-new theater that surrounds you with speakers. The audio design in The Order: 1886 makes as much of an impact on your experience as any other piece of the game and that’s not something easily accomplished.

The Order: 1886_20150215212038

Online/Multiplayer:
The Order: 1886 is single-player only and does not have any online or multiplayer elements.

Conclusion:
I’ll be honest, I’ve been very hot on this game since the first time that I saw it, and thankfully it didn’t disappoint. The gameplay is solid, the technical stuff will blow your mind, and the story, oh the amazing story, has quickly become one of my favorites in videogames. The timing events may catch you off guard occasionally but that’s how they’re designed and luckily you won’t be punished much if you die.

Ready at Dawn has exceeded any expectations that I had with their first foray from portables to a full-fledged console. If you were happy with your purchase at the end of an Uncharted or God of War game you’ll be equally happy with spending your cash on this one. When I finished the story my first words were “when is the next one?!” Unfortunately, no one answered.

ps: Make sure you watch through the credits at the end, you won’t be disappointed

Score:
9.5

I'd take the 9.5 score he gave with a grain of salt considering they are a PlayStation-centric site.

FYI, the embargo was lifted minutes ago so the reviews should start pouring in.

[Twigg4075]

The "big" site's scores aren't looking too hot.

IGN: 65
Polygon: 55
Gamespot: 50

[Twigg4075]

Some people, it seems mostly Xbots, are saying this game is "PS4's Ryse", all flash and no substance. I enjoyed Ryse but was glad I only spent like $35 on it. Let's hope that isn't a fair comparison.

[Handleit_44]

I'll still be picking up my copy tomorrow but damn you, internet...

[tigstah]

I'll still be picking up my copy tomorrow but damn you, internet...

lol....too funny

[Twigg4075]

Today!

[krulmichael]

I'll be trying it out once I get home. All this internet stuff is being a buzzkill, but I'm still optimistic that it will be a solid game.