Before I dive into what I saw at E3 this year let’s rewind back one year to the reveal of The Order: 1886 at the Sony press conference at E3 2013. Excitement was buzzing with the announcement of new consoles and the PS4 was ready to show off its upcoming library. The words ‘The Following Trailer Was Created In Engine’ flashed across the screen and what followed was the prettiest game I’d ever seen for a console. It was so unbelievably pretty that most of the people I was with turned to each other and said ‘There’s no way that’s actually gameplay, this is just a CG fluff trailer’. Flash forward to a year later when I got the chance to sit down and play a tiny sliver of Ready at Dawn’s (Daxter, God of War: Chains of Olympus, God of War: Ghost of Sparta) first foray on to the PS4. I can admit, even if the reveal happened to be CG, this game will take the undisputed crown as the prettiest looking game on your PS4 when it releases in early 2015.
First, let’s set the scene for those of you who may not know too much about the game (what rock have you been living under you sad excuse for a nerd!?) and fill in some back story. The Order is set in what is basically an alternate version of the bleak and dreary London in the year… 1886 obviously. Players get to step into the shoes of Sir Galahad, a brave Knight of The Order. It is a brotherhood that has been protecting humanity against dangerous and violent half-breeds (human/monster hybrids reminiscent of werewolves) since the days of the Knights of the Roundtable. Unlike our version of 1886 London, this one is full to the brim with technological advances (hooray for steampunk!) and The Order is using these advances to finally tip the scales in their favour against the half-breeds. Of course it can’t just be that easy so The Order is also dealing with a full blown rebellion on the city streets. Facing adversity on all sides The Order desperately tries to keep the peace despite the odds not necessarily being in their favour.
Now that we’ve set the scene let’s get into the blood and guts of it all, the gameplay and presentation! As previously mentioned this will be the crown jewel in your game collection when it comes to showing off what the PS4 can do in terms of graphics. Everything you’ll see is painstakingly detailed from characters to weapons to set pieces and it’s all put together in such a way that it feels like more of a movie than a game. In fact, the cinematic presentation is something Ready at Dawn was very much shooting for over the development process. A lot of people will notice (and a few might complain I’m sure) that the aspect ratio for both cut scenes and gameplay is set at 2.40:1 rather than 16:9. When speaking with a member of the dev team he told me that this really opened up the game to give it that movie feel. Panoramic set pieces with a huge field of vision are something I can appreciate even if it means keeping those black bars on the screen all the time. In all honesty I didn’t even notice it until a colleague of mine pointed it out to me so that goes to show how well that screen space they do have is utilized. What impressed me most was how seamless the transition from cut scenes to gameplay were. The game itself looks so good that often times you couldn’t pick up on the transition at all apart from noticing an aiming reticule on screen. Yes, it looks THAT good.
The small portion of the game we were able to play was certainly enjoyable if admittedly a little familiar. It was standard third person, cover and shoot mechanics that we’ve seen many times before and in no ways remarkable. The weaponry was fun in that I was able to use a Thermite Rifle that spewed flammable dust which I could in turn ignite that blew my enemies to hell but still, hardly ground breaking material here. After the initial shoot out intro Galahad was set to rescue a comrade in the middle of the battlefield and the demo lead into a more exploratory and quiet area. Of course after that it was right back out on to the grimy London streets for more bullets flying. Speaking of bullets there’s a ‘Blackwater’ potion that knights of the Order can drink that not only heals their wounds but enters Galahad into a Matrix-like ‘bullet time’ phase where super slow motion and auto aiming helps you peg off targets in rapid succession. As much as I hate to say it though… nothing new!
Of course let’s be fair here, this is just a minuscule portion of the game as a whole and I, for one, have a lot of faith in what Ready at Dawn can bring to the table. The dev team has promised unique gameplay features that we’ve never seen before so I trust that there’s still a lot more to be revealed over the coming months. Despite the apparent lack of anything I haven’t already seen before I still found myself wanting more when the demo came to its end. I’m a sucker for steampunk so that helps but the presentation is so top notch that I can’t help but want to see what else is in store. At the very least, from what we’ve seen so far, we know that The Order: 1886 is beautiful, well-acted and has a strong narrative to carry it along. With a release date set for Feb 20, 2015 it’s going to be a long wait to get our hands on it again but it will undoubtedly be worth it.
