THE ORDER REVIEW
The Order: 1886 was developed by Ready At Dawn and Sony Santa Monica and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. The Order: 1886 released on February 20, 2015 solely on the Playstation 4.
The game opens with Sir Galahad’s head being forcibly dunked into cold water repeatedly. After a few times, the guards in red take him back to his cell only to return the next morning to repeat the process.
This time, he escapes, killing both guards that were responsible for him. He ends up on the roof surrounded by guards and his peers. Threatened with death if he does not comply, Galahad responds, “I’m already dead” and falls off the roof into the water below.
We then flashback to Galahad looking over the city of London waiting for his next order. We learn there is unrest in the city and Galahad runs to join Lady Igraine to fight the anti government rebellion as well as the werewolves in the area called Lycans.
Successfully stopping both the rebels from causing any more damage and killing the last Lycan in the area from escaping, Galahad and the rest of his fellow knights return to the council at the Palace of Westminster and discuss the possible conspiracy of how the rebellion and the recent Lycan attacks are related.
After a vote against looking into the possible conspiracy, Galahad is convinced by fellow knight Percival to join him in a covert mission looking into the matter regardless of what had just happened in the council.
Thus begins your journey as Galahad, a knight of the Round table sworn to protect the realm, and your investigation into the rebellion and the recent Lycan uprisings and how it all connects.
STORY
First of all the story is straightforward. There are no underlying themes or the like. It is what it is.
The Order: 1886 is a story driven game and the game will direct you from moment to moment. There is no free roam or side missions. The campaign is chapter to chapter and you have no choice in the matter.
It is unfortunate though, that the writing for The Order: 1886 is flawed. For one, the characters are flat and boring. They show emotion and it feels genuine but it doesn’t feel deserved. You will never know the backstory of any of the characters throughout the game which makes it difficult to give a damn.
There is so little development for the characters that when they turn against you, help you, make lame jokes, die, survive and the like, that I felt completely devoid of emotion. When one character dies and Galahad is obviously affected by this person’s death, I can see that Galahad is obviously distraught but I kept asking myself, “Why do I give a shit?” This person gave me orders and was suspicious but I didn’t know anything about him or his relationship to my character.
With Lady Igraine and Galahad, there is a hint of an underlying possible romance but it’s never explained outside the cheeky one liners. They like each other but that isn’t enough for me to want them to be together or even care.
The lack of backstory isn’t the only problem either. Some characters are just poorly written, period. The biggest example of that is the Lord Chancellor, the man leading the council. He is the absolute worst leader that the round table could have because he shoots down every possible thing that is brought up to him. How the Order has lasted this long under his rule, is beyond comprehension. At the end, something is revealed and the Lord Chancellor tells Galahad to keep it quiet to keep the Order together but it feels like he’s just saving his own skin rather than letting a newer, better, smarter and more efficient Order coming from it.
I know the ending explains it just a little bit, but he doesn’t even try to hide his reluctance. His son does a far better job doing it than he does.
The characters aren’t the only ones that aren’t explained fully.
I honestly believe the entire idea of The Order and the Lycan half breeds is interesting but nothing is ever explained. The game assumes you know everything there is to know and while sometimes, I love the idea of something not holding my hand, The Order leaves you in the dust.
Who is the Order? What do they do? Do they fight the rebels for the government? Do they fight alongside the government? Do they only fight the supernatural? They can’t be completely secret if the police instantly recognize the knights as generals.
Who are the Lycans and what have they been doing up to this point?
The game starts in media res, but when the game goes to the beginning of the story, it still feels like we’re in the middle of a much bigger plot. If the game had begun with a cinematic in which they describe everything even if it were generic like “Since the dawn of time, there have been creatures that have attacked humanity in the dark. We are the Order and we defend the people against vampires and werewolves” then I would have been more knowledgable and more entertained. Even in The Witcher 3, there is a short cinematic in where a narrator explains why there’s so many creatures in The Witcher Universe. The Order would have benefitted from that.
The dialog isn’t too bad though. There are a few lines I had trouble with. The first one being at the beginning of the game after your first gun fight. The frenchman you’re with says something along the lines of “But you need passion to fight man,” and to which you, Galahad responds with “We don’t fight men.” I understand that he meant that they defend the common people against the threat Lycans but he says this literally after killing a bunch of human rebels.
The other problem with the dialog is what I mentioned before in that they’ll say a line and then it’s never explored. When you first meet the rebel leader, you learn she’s a warrior queen but then that’s it. Another example is when Galahad says Percival is a brother and a teacher to him but that’s never shown either. All you see throughout is a man who gives you orders and then you see him making shady deals with people in the distance. Third example is when Lady Igraine says that she and Galahad don't deserve this life and they deserve better together but then that’s it. There’s nothing else to back that up. What is the significance of the rebel leader being a warrior queen? Why even mention it if it doesn’t matter? Why is Percival so dear to Galahad besides being a brother and a teacher? Not even a small anecdote to prove it? That means as much to me as My father is like a dad to me. Why is Lady Igraine so attracted to Galahad? What was their history together besides being a teacher and a pupil?
There’s just a lot of throw away lines that are meant to add emotion and tension but just leave more questions than answers.
That being said, you take away the characters and focus on the story alone, it’s straightforward and has very few problems. At its basic form, the story is decent. A team of people fight against supernatural beings that is trying to gain power and spread their influence. There is a villain in the story that you go up against towards the end but there is no resolution with this person. You fail to kill him and then that’s it which is crazy considering he has such a huge role in the game even if it’s in the background.
It’s also obvious that this is intended to be a franchise. At this point in time, that is still up in the air but for the first game to leave this many questions, it is pretty bad and with a hasty ending meant to lead into a new game, it feels off.
GAMEPLAY
The gameplay is another potential problem in that when you play, it doesn’t feel bad but at the same time, the shooting segments feel generic. If you’ve played a good third person cover shooter, you’ve played The Order: 1886.
The Order 1886 doesn’t just hold you hand through the game, it shoves you violently from one scene to the next. It is the absolute furthest from a free roaming choice making video game. There are no choices in this game with the exception of a few quicktime events that determine how you will hit an enemy. There is an ability to explore a few nooks and crannies that are out of the way but they are few and far between. The game is basically one long hallway.
The guns feel great and punchy and some of them are actually incredible. Such weapons include an Arc gun that shoots a focused beam of lightning that can maim your opponents and a gun that can shoot thermite into the air which you can then ignite and set enemies on fire.
Unfortunately, these awesome weapons area only useable a few times in the game and you will otherwise be using regular rifles, shotguns and pistols which only adds to the generic feeling of the third person shooting.
This is not to be confused with the feel of it either though. The gunplay feels great and I never had a problem with the cover system, the camera or the shooting.
There is a feature in which everything goes into slow motion and you have a limited time to shoot enemies with a handgun but this only invoked Dead Eye from Red Dead Redemption, a game that did this mechanic far better than The Order:1886.
You’ll find yourself shooting humans more than what The Order is supposedly suppose to be fighting against. The few times you do fight against The Lycans, it’s lame. If you’re not fighting a large Lycan boss which is done through a quicktime sequence, you’re fighting smaller Lycans in the same exact way each time.
What I mean is that every time smaller Lycans attack you, you’re in a room full of stacked crates and they come from around the corner, you have to shoot, dodge, shoot, and then finish them with a quicktime event. The AI of the Lycan is flat out moronic compared to the human AI.
When you're not in full control of Galahad, you’re basically watching out for quicktime events to progress the story. Since the game is essentially one long cutscene, adding quicktime events is a way for you to stay involved because otherwise, you’d probably find yourself sat for an hour waiting for the next shooting segment.
Tone
The overall tone of the game is very moody. I liked the constant grey tone of London and Whitechapel but there’s very little humor in the game alone and the humor that is in The Order is much dryer than I’m used to. It’s also pretty inappropriately used in that Lady Igraine is meant to be the lady that jokes about Galahad’s older age but the way she says “Youth always prevails” it makes her look like a jumped up little shit. As for the frenchman who is constantly wooing women, it’s done poorly and is made to look like the one person you can never count on. These are my choices? someone who is constantly telling me how old I am or someone that is immediately distracted by any one who may have a vagina?
VISUALS
Visually, the game is sterling. It is beyond beautiful. In 2017, I think this game is still one of the best looking games out there. If the point of the visuals in this game was to prove the power of the Playstation 4, they beat that goal by a mile.
Sometimes though, I get the feeling that they put the tech ahead of the creativity in that they put more time and effort in the slick black admirable hair of Galahad than they did into the writing of his dialogue.
There are no cutscenes either in the traditional sense. The whole game looks the same with cutscenes playing out and then transitioning immediately into gameplay without any hesitation so you might find yourself sat for a few seconds waiting for the next thing to happen only to realize that you’ve been given control. This still holds up as well. Whereas in Max Payne 3, the frame rate drops and the increase in random tropical color highlights tell you that the game is loading, in this game there is nothing of that sort. The transition is seamless.
The smoky slums, the tiny pitter patter on the concrete, the slight moving hair physics, the motion capture all add to the game’s beauty.
It looks absolutely stunning. On the visuals alone, this game is a perfect score. Perhaps since the experience was more controlled and more linear, it allowed developers to focus more on immediate detail but that doesn’t mean they had to go as far as they did. Sometimes you can catch glimpses of the world outside the playable area and it really makes you wish you can go out there and see more.
All throughout this game, I had no issues with loading, screen tearing, frame rate drops or any visual glitches whatsoever.
AUDIO
The audio is just as fantastic as the visuals. The audio really comes to shine in the voice acting. As I mentioned before, the writing may not be entirely on point but the voice acting definitely is. Galahad and Lady Igraine’s anger along with the pomp and circumstance of the Lord Chancellor both sound genuine and its obvious these voice actors are professionals. There isn’t much to say besides that. It’s brilliant.
The music is another high point reflecting the grimy and moody tone the game establishes with the visuals. Two of my favorite video game tracks is actually “Agamemnon Rising” from The Order: 1886. It plays when Galahad and his associates are boarding a zeppelin and the sound of immediacy from the violins is an adrenaline rush. The second is “The Edge of Sanity” which is just a soft violin playing with a quick succession of strings in the background that feels almost like an undeserved welcome into the world of The Order 1886.
Jason Graves did a great job with the rest of the soundtrack too. The game has the sound of a proper orchestra as if it were a real Hollywood movie.
SUMMARY
I’m actually quite disheartened in the result of coming back to this game. When this game first released, I went ahead and had invested in the collector’s edition which came with a statue and a tin box. Regardless of what I had said and what I’m about to say, I do not regret the purchase.
I played the game twice in a row and I absolutely loved it and was ready for more all while completely deaf to the criticisms.
However, coming back to the game since its release, I’m sad I found so much wrong with it and the fact that I found all these things without looking for them. I was sat playing it and trying to get that feeling back but I ended up asking the questions I asked here such as, “Wait, there needs to be more detail on this…what happened to these characters?”
The idea of The Order 1886 feels like a genuinely great one. I won’t say original but definitely not explored heavily in the video game world. A secret society fighting supernatural beasts like werewolves while both coexisting in normal history? It’s almost like the Assassin’s Creed series and I find that actually interesting.
However, the execution of The Order 1996 was ultimately flawed. This game feels like it didn’t know what it actually wanted. I don’t mind being told a story i have no control in. That’s just about every game besides the TellTale series. However, that story needs to be told well if that’s going to be the case.
I recognize that this game was going to be a platform for a franchise to build on but this platform is already falling apart.
The gameplay is totally solid but I’ve played better third person shooters and this game just makes me want to go back to those.
This game shines in its visuals and its audio. It’s difficult to come up with a game that did both of those so well and so synchronized with each other.
In the end, I wished my opinion of The Order 1886 never changed so i could have shown my excitement but that is no longer the case. I am still hopeful for the game’s future and hope that in future installments they tell a proper story from start to finish and actually flesh out some of the characters.
My recommendation would be to simply watch a play through online if you can. If the game is on sale for less than 20 bucks, it would also probably be worth your time.
There is also little to no replay value and the only DLC is costumes which I got with my preorder and aren’t exactly the greatest thing in the world.
So the score I’m giving this game is a 5…out of 10.