User Review : The Order: 1886

Black & Gold.

Like a shiny medallion hanging around the neck of an unsightly drifter, The Order’s interpretation of London is one of distinctive duality. This is a city of great industry and progress, yet also one permeated by a lingering sickness that looms large over the simmering dockyards and thatched terraces alike. In the streets, effigies of the Queen are branded and burnt on hastily affixed gallows, whilst in the hallowed courtroom chambers, the towns influential elite deliberate and ponder to no end. But this isn’t simply a city wrought with the systemic issues of pestilence, crime and class warfare, with the alternate history London at the forefront of The Order 1886 harbouring a foe of far bigger significance and far greater detriment to the future of England’s capital.

The story of The Order revolves primarily around mans centuries old war against the mythical Lycans, a war that has now landed on the doorstep of Victorian London. As a Knight of the round table, it’s your job to ensure that the uprising of these beasts is quelled, and that their insurgency of one of the most prominent cities on the globe doesn’t come to pass. This is the basis for The Order’s plot, a tale that’s told in a linear style and with a distinct sense of familiarity. And although this may not necessarily be an impediment, The Order’s story disappointingly remains devoid of the certain reverence you’d expect from such a unique source material.

Part of The Order’s problem is the structure of its plot. Aside from its nonsequential opening, the games events play out like a day in the life of Knight, and for the most part shirk the overbearing Lycan threat. Rather than focusing on the blood-hungry pack of wolves that are skittering across Whitechapel roofs and preying on the weak, the plot veers in the direction of a war against rebels, with the Lycans relegated to just a series of cameo appearances. And for all of the build up that these half-breeds are given, their application in-game attests to very little.

At first, the very notion of a Lycan encounter is enough to leave you shuddering in a corner, the prospect of staring a snarling, man-sized wolf right in its blood-soaked mandibles being something that you’d actively strive to avoid. But after all of the subtle nods in the direction of a Lycan confrontation, their reveal is something of a let down, the beasts themselves attacking the player one a time, charging head first into your knees before reverting to the shadows and trying again. There’s no fear of being hunted, no quivering in terror as you hurriedly try to jam another magazine into the body of your weapon. Instead, there’s nothing but an underwhelming skirmish that is over just as quickly as it had begun, an exasperated Sir Galahad affording the creatures a far greater compliment than they probably deserve.

And really, that seems to be a somewhat recurring theme in The Order; a big, rousing build up, followed by a flawed execution that seeks only to subdue any momentum the game had accrued up to that point. The same can be said for many of its filler sequences too, such as pushing a wagon into place so that it can be used to boost Galahad onto a wall, or slowly navigating the rooftops of a rundown estate under the guise of a pursuit. Even in battles against rebels and mercenaries do things quickly devolve into predictable slogs, with enemy combatants either stupidly suicidal or annoyingly tentative and content to hold position for an exorbitant amount of time. These aren’t problems exclusive to The Order, but they’re definitely accentuated by the games staunch principles surrounding its blend of cinematic storytelling and gameplay. If a tetchy stealth section complete with archaic instant fail triggers loudly contradicts the rest of the experience, then it’s likely to break the level of immersion in the story that the game has built up, with this being a caveat that The Order struggles to deal with.

The Order’s issues are perhaps only punctuated by its much maligned depth. Outside of a solitary run-through the games campaign, there really is little to do beyond reverting back to select chapters in order to hunt for missed collectibles. And with Order’s narrative already concluding at a rather brief seven hours, much of the games post-release coverage has been directed at its general worth.

The climate surrounding ‘AAA’ console games right now is far less optimistic than it has been in years prior. This is partly on account of there being no game that, as of yet, has offered something truly befitting of this eighth generation of consoles. The wait for the likes of The Division and No Man’s Sky would be far less agitating had the likes of Destiny and Watch Dogs not already failed to live up to their billing, whilst those games, although far from the titles that they promised to be, at least had more content to offer than The Order. Despite its aforementioned flaws and lack of innovation however, The Order does bring a few things to the table that allow it to leave its definitive mark, with none being more overwhelmingly encapsulating than the games spectacular aesthetics.

Ready at Dawn’s incarnation of a London blighted by a legendary bestiary fits in well with the games emphasis on a cinematic experience. Black bars adorn the top and bottom of the screen, whilst a thin yet noticeable film grain makes the game feel decidedly like a nineteenth century film reel that wouldn’t be too far fetched in a world of projectile voltage weapons and militarised airships. What the emphasis on cinematic storytelling fails to do though is provide a meaningful place for the player in the events that unfold, as an expected focus on quicktime events serves only to detach you from the unfolding scene. And whilst the use of QTE’s may be far less scandalous than in many other games, their inclusion is just another check in the column of archaisms that The Order seems to revel in.

The world beyond the black bars of The Order’s letterbox perspective is really the games biggest achievement. A land of smog and smokestacks, of gold and gilded halls awaits as you venture forth to some of London’s most iconic locales, with every brick and broken bottle crafted with an almost painstaking level of detail. From a rooftop balcony, London is a bustling hub of rain-washed factories and industrial sites that stretch for miles, whilst between the velveteen curtains of a dimly lit brothel lies a microcosm of happiness laced with a thin cloud of smoke and dried puddle of Absinthe. In accordance with the stylings of its environments, The Order has clearly taken aboard the steampunk ethos, as an anachronistic, industrialised theme gives a marked influence to the games gadgetry, architecture and clothing. You won’t be likely seeing a host of mechanics donned in foggy, thick-rimmed bronze goggles or women bearing corsets affixed together with copper struts though, with The Order’s usage of the art style rarely evolving beyond that of a subtle yet noticeable influence.

The biggest success of The Order’s environments though may have to be the atmosphere that accompanies them. Through a delicate use of soft lighting, a controlled yet appreciable score and organic sounds such as the heavy thud of leather boots against a hardwood floor, each location brings with it a certain natural horror that connotes a perpetual sense of dread. It doesn’t tend to matter whether or not you’re in a bright, busy ballroom or skulking through a darkened warehouse either, as the ever-present threat of a Lycan bursting into view is enough to keep you constantly on your toes, and forever fearing the worst.

The Order’s shortcomings undoubtedly hampered my enjoyment of the game, but they didn’t make me regret playing it. Sure, the games story was at times a thin, lethargic affair that struggled to get off the ground, and its shooting galleries as uninspired as they were generic, but the world in which I waged a war against man and beast was both believable and beautiful. Everything from its decadent, ice white theatres to the burning copper furnaces of its boiler rooms was another piece of a gothic, horrifying London that added far much more to The Order’s narrative than its stealth sequences or its wave defence sections. And whilst the chronicle of The Order was one that left a lot of room for more to be told, it’s perhaps more important that any future title rectify the issues of its predecessor, with The Order 1886 existing as an impaired yet encouraging introduction to a world anew.

If you’re willing to accept the game for all of its defects, then The Order 1886, with its pristinely bleak world and delightfully dour characters may just entrap you within its maw, and leave you longing for just one more jaunt down the moonlit streets of a dreary, blood stained Westminster.