The Order: 1886 is a shitty game according to just about
every reviewer with a keyboard and a reader base. It’s a waste of time. It’s a
linear slog full of quick-time-events and button prompts, and stale third
person gameplay that the developers tried to sneak by us with their pretty
visuals and carefully choreographed cutscenes. Kotaku doesn’t even think you
should bother with it.
What a joke. Look, you may feel disappointed because a
certain game did not give you exactly what you were hoping for, but many of the
reviewers out there who played The Order and didn’t think it offered anything
worthwhile just don’t understand gaming. Rather, they don’t understand what
does and does not make a game worth playing. Or maybe they just bought into
their own lazily crafted narratives?
The Order: 1886 is a linear game. If you go into it expecting
sidequests and wide open worlds to explore, you’ve been misled. This is not
that sort of game, but that does not mean that it sucks, or that it’s a failure.
Saying that The Order is not worth playing is like saying that Yosemite is not
worth visiting because it doesn’t have a hip nightlife. Every game is
different, and the best way to approach one (as a reviewer) is to take what it
gives you and determine whether or not it’s goals are worthwhile, and then
decide if the game achieved those goals.
Every game shares at least one common goal: to entertain the
audience. Maybe The Order didn’t entertain you, and that’s perfectly fine, but
if you can’t see why other people might be more appreciative of what the game
offers then you shouldn’t be reviewing it. Go write about it in your blog or
whatever, but don’t tell people that the game is objectively bad.
With that out of the way, I’d like to say a little bit about
why I’m so wonderfully impressed by this game.
The Order’s greatest achievement, in my estimation, is
somewhat subtle and difficult to detect if you go into the game with a closed
mind. That achievement, specifically, is the game’s meticulous pacing. Ready at
Dawn has provided us with a masterful example of how to pace a game of this
genre, and I hope other developers out there take note.
One of the first things I noticed when I started playing the
game is that there are relatively few collectibles scattered throughout the
levels. There are photographs, newspapers, trinkets and audio recordings to
gather, but they were hidden in such a way that I didn’t feel the need to
search every nook and cranny for fear of missing out on something. The
collectibles in The Order can be found in locations that make sense- say, on a
desk, in an office slightly off the main path, etc. As much as I enjoy earning
trophies for finding every collectible in a game, it gets tedious having to
walk your character into every corner in the hope that you’ll be prompted to
“hit x” to pick up some trinket that you wouldn’t have seen otherwise.
It also tends to pad a game’s running time, too, and you all
know how controversial The Order’s length has been. Imagine how much shorter
some other action/adventure games would be if we weren’t wasting so much time
looking for inconsequential collectibles. It takes away from the realism too,
as the player basically pauses the action in order to run around the room and
search for the last hidden treasure needed to acquire the achievement/trophy.
I really appreciated the methodical, purposeful pace at
which the game leads you along. You never really find yourself walking into a
room and taking cover while wave after wave of enemies flood toward you. Like I
said: there’s real purpose to every fire fight. Galahad (your character) is
constantly moving forward toward his goal. You take out your enemies so that
you can quickly advance to the next spot of cover or to the next room, and the
game is much more enjoyable because of this.
I’m also fascinated by the way Ready at Dawn meticulously
controls what the player can and cannot see, as well as how well he can see it.
When Galahad crouches into cover, the camera zooms in and realistically limits
your field of vision. It adds to the challenge and removes the familiar sense
that you are floating above the battlefield, unfairly able to spot every hiding
enemy and prevent them from flanking, rushing, spreading out, forming, up, and
maneuvering in order to gain an advantage on you. It goes a long way toward
immersing you in the action and forces you to focus on your own tactics as well
as the enemy’s. It’s really impressive stuff.
These techniques contribute to the overall sense that there
is a sort of invisible stick prodding you, the player, in the direction that
the game wants you to go. It’s invisible in the sense that you always feel as
though you are in control of your character, but at the same time the
developers are making sure that we experience the game as they meant for us to
experience it. Throughout the whole quest, I always felt as though I was in
good hands.
As the credits rolled after about eight or nine hours or so
I felt so satisfied with the experience, not to mention impressed at how the
game avoided so many of the “video gamey” tropes that we’ve become accustomed
to in other games. There are no arbitrary upgrades, you’re never given a new weapon
and then forced to play through a level that obviously had been constructed to
show off the weapon’s gimmick, and so on. It’s a deliberate experience, as I
mentioned, but it retains an organic feel that, along with the gorgeous visuals
and sound effects, make this a pleasantly realistic game. It’s easy to lose
yourself in this version of Victorian London and invest yourself in the
characters and the plot.
And it’s a good thing too, because the plot is gripping,
tightly paced and thought-provoking from beginning to end. I know that this
site is called Spoiler Club, but I really want to avoid spoiling anything for
anyone reading this who may not have played The Order yet. I’ll only say that I
really enjoyed Sir Galahad as a protagonist, and that the story’s conclusion is
a bit of a cliffhanger that successfully straddles the line between building
anticipation and feeling incomplete. There’s plenty of resolution but there are
also questions left to be answered. Needless to say I’m looking forward to a
sequel.
I suppose the game’s presentation deserves mention as well,
because it’s inarguably spectacular. This goes for any creative medium, but
have you ever read a book, watched a movie or played a game and felt blown away
by the amount of care and passion that went into creating it? You can just
sense that this was a labor of love, and it makes the experience all the more
enjoyable.
Every bit of detail in this game- from the menu screen
typeface to the smallest, most insignificant piece of set design has been
designed meticulously, and it shows. Game developers can really get away with a
lot of corner cutting while still making their game look good, but Ready at
Dawn went all the way. They really did. The Order oozes high production value
in everything from the beautiful vistas to the small scale set design, from the
orchestral soundtrack to the subtlest sound effects.
In case you haven’t picked up on it yet, I’m really
impressed by the nuance, the care, and the mastery that went into creating The
Order: 1886. Look, you don’t have to play this game, but if you do, make sure
that you go into it with an open mind. I don’t understand where a lot of the
game’s reviews really came from, but I have a feeling that many industry
journalists had it out for this game even before their review copies arrived in
the mail. Do yourself a favor and don’t make that mistake. There’s simply too
much to love about this game.
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