The Order’s story is too short. The Order’s cutscenes are too long. It is a Gears of War clone.
Blah blah blah.
The question I asked myself after finishing The Order, despite all the previous complaints from other reviews being true, did I have fun with The Order: 1886?
Yes. Yes, I did.
Alright. Good review. Thanks for coming.
In all honesty, some of the crap that has been heaped on The Order is founded. I would have liked less cutscenes and more gameplay. The story stops right when it gets to a good start. I will play devil’s advocate here and say that while these things irked me, they also had a somewhat positive effect.
The cutscenes are beautiful (like the rest of the game) and gave me time to appreciate what may be the best looking PS4 game yet. It is so much so that, more times than I care to mention, I would sit there for an undisclosed amount of time thinking the cutscene was still going when my character was standing there in gameplay wondering in his A.I. brain, “who the fuck is this artard that gets me shot in the face and doesn’t know when to move?”.
Playing as Galahad in a steampunk Victorian London for an order of knights that trace back to Arthur all while fighting werewolves has to be the most drug-induced game idea ever and since The Order was announced I have wanted to go to there. The story’s characters and plot are not the problem, pacing is. For the first two-thirds of the game The Order meanders around treating your playthrough like it is the first two hours of a twenty hour adventure. You should know that it is actually the first four hours of a six hour story.
Here’s the thing; the last two hours set up a sequel that I fucking want to play. I just wish the developers had known when to push the gas pedal down instead of puttering along like an elderly lady on a Sunday drive.
Gameplay is nothing new. By nothing new, I mean it is basically Gears of War. While some may mark off for this, for The Order, it is just enough. I am being shot at. I do not want to be shot in the dick, face or elsewhere so I need something to take cover behind. The mechanics and actual controls of the game are serviceable and can be expanded upon if there is a sequel.
When Sony unveiled The Order: 1886 over two years ago with a spooky trailer that made you wonder what was in the shadows, it made you think it would be Sony’s next big franchise. I was expecting more after such a long development cycle, but it turns out what was in the shadows wasn’t big and scary, just disjointed and underdeveloped.
The Order: 1886 might not be the game we expected, yet there is still a decent time to be had despite its shortcomings. A franchise is here somewhere. We may just have to wait until 1887 to get it.
