User Review : The Order: 1886

“Waste of time if you ask me.”

*Note #1: You will be wading into MAJOR SPOILER territory in this review. Given the issues I will be raising with the story, I can't avoid spoiling many big plot points while also trying to provide an honest evaluation on the game. If you want a fresh experience on all the game has to offer: avoid this review for now.*

*Note #2: Review reflects experience of the 1.02 version*

Because why not have my first PS4-focused review be on one of its most galvanizing exclusives? Truth be told, I’m quite surprised to see myself in this position. Between the marketing hype, E3 showings, and the vainglorious developer quotes of them reconciling a lower framerate and a letterboxed image as “artistic choices,” I wasn’t exactly on the best of terms with developer Ready at Dawn (RAD); despite that, I figured game critics would just do the usual: praise the heck out of yet another exclusive game with hardcore cinematic affectations. Lo and behold, even critics admonished consumers from early purchasing (publisher ad money or no). So where that left me was an exciting position to see where I’d land on this ‘filmic’ game; unfortunately, I came away with a much more derisive opinion than expected, to the point where I’m willing to categorize this as the PS4’s Lair (post-update giving it analog controls). The Order: 1886 (TO: 1886) may be more polished than that compared example but it also feels much more design-by-committee too, akin to final movie chapters that are getting split into two parts.

The setting is an alternate historical London in 1886. Started by Kind Arthur and The Round Table long ago, this old order of knights continue to try to keep the world safe from half breed monsters (essentially werewolves and vampires). Through a mysterious turn of fate centuries earlier, the Knights discovered “Blackwater,” a mystical liquid that significantly extends their lifetimes and gives them remarkable healing abilities. The fight was looking pretty dire, even with Blackwater, until The Industrial Revolution (present day) gave The Order some significant advantages. Sir Galahad, the playable protagonist, is a near-immortal soldier with The Order.

Considering nearly one-half of the game is comprised of cutscenes and RAD’s previous statements, there’s a greater focus on narrative versus gameplay; and yet, it’s shocking to see so much stock put into a story that could still be so unengaging and fundamentally broken. TO: 1886 starts in medias res fashion: Galahad’s imprisoned and being tortured but after a short, uninvolving QTE segment and slowly trying to make his way out, he’s eventually cornered into making a desperate last ditch effort. What makes this one of the most vacuous storytelling decisions in the game is in how much it answers before questions have even been asked. Seeing as how he’s cornered by almost every significant member of The Order here, any suspense is already sapped in life-threatening moments that could occur to those characters BEFORE this point since we see them here in fine health.

Now with the transition to the chronological beginning of the story, we see Galahad doing his diligent work of shooting an armed underclass that are being a bit too meddlesome in…not wanting impoverished conditions, I guess. Okay, not exactly the enemies I was hoping to battle but even the destitute need to be put in their place by 'The Man' every once in a while. It’s easy to tell who the bad guys are with them having the only attire they can seemingly afford and living in slums versus our gallant warriors’ wonderfully-outfitted wardrobe and working for those living in the refined uptown area. If my acerbic jabs weren’t obvious enough just let me know. Needless to say, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that this battle between The Order and 'The Rebellion' isn’t as straightforward as what initially appears—especially when, you know, the first sequence in the entire campaign is about escaping those same people in The Order later on. What follows is a story of Galahad unraveling a cluster of banal yet pointlessly expositive set of conspiracies.

Perhaps this all wouldn’t feel so convoluted and boring if so much of the storytelling wasn’t relayed through people talking to each other in rooms about super-serious political stuff via unskippable cutscenes. Come to think of it, these parts often reminded me of the politics in the Star Wars Prequels. Heck, if even bringing those slivers of the movies up could have you foaming at the mouth against George Lucas then you’re in for a similar treat here; but rather than having some kind of visual stimulation in the form of fun costumes, aliens, and locales, you’ll be treated more with close-ups of well-rendered faces, mustaches, and…nose hair. And that’s really one of the story issues that hurt The Order the worst for me: having this interesting and fresh concept for a new IP and making it all feel incredibly boring.

Even the characters are often bland clichés. Galahad’s a boring ‘gruff military man’ cardboard cutout, Lady Igraine does pretty much all of her ‘badass chick’ shtick through telling rather than showing, and there’s hardly a single side character I even exhibited interest in other than the French bloke who should’ve gotten much more screen time. Granted, his personality is just the debonair Frenchman but that attitude was put to clever use a few times. I guess it was initially neat to see Nikola Tesla act like 007’s Q here as well; but at this point, making historical figures act as important side characters has lost a lot of long-lasting mojo with me altogether. In this case, it almost felt as if there was some kind of manual fire alarm near the writing team that said “break glass in case of lacking creativity” just so they can insert someone who’s actually interesting instead of doing the hard work in fleshing out new characters.

Ludonarrative dissonance is a term used to describe a disconnect between story and gameplay. And while it’s been improperly used in the past for specific video games, there’s one clear example of this occurring when Galahad’s intentions come crashing head-on with how the game wants to move forward. In order to sway Galahad’s opinion of the obvious evil corporation, he’s impelled by someone to join them in sneaking through company’s private docks for evidence. The one rule he has before heading out: they don’t harm innocent men until he says otherwise. What does the game decide next? Wholesale slaughter on dozens of possibly-innocent men that are in your way to get the proof he so desires.

I know I’m jumping to different points erratically here but I can’t stress enough how this narrative is one of the most scatter-brained I’ve seen for such a simplistic, silly premise. The thing is: simplistic and silly wouldn’t be so bad if the game bothered to indulge itself in a more cheesy tone for maybe a nanosecond. Even the premiere trailer had that sort of edge I was hankering for when showing off these electricity knights shooting at a pack of werewolves. Along with the funny moustaches, that early showing hit a chord that felt just right. But when considering the dour atmosphere set early on here, the overabundance of super-serious talking, as well as all the dramatic scenes that ring hollow, there’s less enjoyment to be had because TO: 1886 tacitly believes this mess could actually be considered meaningful and arty.

All this prattling and I haven’t even gotten to the rotten ending. As mentioned before, TO: 1886 only feels as though there’s half a story here. Many games before this have structured their stories to leave possibilities open for a sequel or have one part of the storyline for players to latch onto in anticipation. But this “special” game doesn’t do anything in half-measures. It cuts itself off just as all the big pieces are falling into place. Whether it’s the Rebels possible future, Lady Igraine, the main antagonist, to the very Order itself hanging in the balance, the plethora of dangling plot threads left here feels like a much more sinister cash-grab in comparison.

I haven’t even indulged in other specific issues like the inconsistency of Blackwater’s healing—which also harms moments meant to be suspenseful, the bloody boxed-wined dialogue, or even the mediocre cinematography because those—sadly—feel like small gripes in comparison. Overall, the story seems like the first half of some high-schooler’s creative writing assignment that somehow got greenlit by a big game publisher.

Many reading this may be saying “Yikes!” from this harsh critique of the story, but considering that I wanted to get as much out of the ephemeral experience as possible skipping the cutscenes would slash the game’s runtime down from roughly seven hours to four hours. The runtime would be even further cut down by over an hour if Galahad wasn’t forced to saunter at a snail’s pace during many of the game’s forced walking segments. And that’s an important thing to keep in mind: it’s not just that this feels a bit short (even on hard difficulty), it’s also that RAD desperately used artificial ways of padding the entire experience to even reach that unimpressive runtime.

So then, what could be so bad about these segments of strolling around compared to a game like The Last of Us? Considering just how compact of a campaign this is, it feels like the most walking I’ve ever done in any shooter or action game before. This is exaggerated further by the fact that no human being with two fully-functional legs would ever walk like Galahad does too. A bigger distinction to make from TLOU: at least I could choose between—actual—walking to take in the scenery or start a brisk jog AT MY OWN VOLITION. Here: sometimes Galahad is enabled to do a little canter (L3 button), but oftentimes it’s arbitrarily locked away. You’ll be consistently hammering away at that button while ennui quickly develops and the reasons you bothered to pay money to partake in this adventure start to become an evanescent memory altogether.

Ecstatic about this overbearing control from the game yet? Then you should be happy to know this sort of regulation is more the rule rather than the exception. The ability to dodge roll is allowed—and ONLY allowed—when the X button prompt will appear on-screen. Crouching is only possible behind chest-high walls or whenever the game makes Galahad crouch for you. Gluing your back to cover is removed during the segments Galahad’s forced to hold a lantern in one hard and a pistol in the other. Even the very ability to draw your weapon isn’t allowed without the expressed written consent of the developer first!

At its core, The Order is a third-person shooter that dates back beyond Gears of Yore. Bad joke, but I have to stress just how mechanically one-dimensional this game feels. The list of things to do against enemies in shooting segments: stop-n-pop fire behind cover, blindfire behind cover, and sometimes fire at them while not in cover. I stress to continue this thorough examination of the shooting because…I just did already. That’s all of it…right there. Admittedly, the sensation and feeling of shooting works well enough. There’s the standard catalogue of armaments between pistols, shotguns, sniper rifle, a remote-detonated grenade launcher, and a couple of creative weapons: a lightning gun and the thermite gun. The thermite gun in particular is a nifty device: your primary fire shoots projectiles that release a highly-flammable gas while secondary shoots a flare. It’s a nice one-two punch that could afford you some creativity at times. A shame that creativity is often snatched away since the game’s very choosy in ever allowing these weapons to be used. With just the standard weapons considered (majority of shooting), I never got much enjoyment in experimenting with them. My go-to whenever possible was having an auto pistol and the one-shot “coach gun” that's ridiculously overpowered.

In the ever-growing litany of things The Order made me audibly say “why?” while playing, there’s also another feature that slows down time to a Wackowski crawl and just auto-targets any enemy for easy kills; you know…just in case anyone would become too distracted in actually playing the game to get back to more enjoyable tasks like watching paint dry or filing taxes. There’s also some ledge traversal segments where you get to jam the control stick to the right for a bit as Galahad sluggishly makes his way across. We also can’t go without some uninteresting forced stealth segments where you can either shoot an enemy with a crossbow (during the nighttime mission only), sneak up behind them, or trigger an instant fail state if caught. Of course, having the patience to sneak up isn’t enough as you also have a hit the stealth kill button prompt at the right time or a cutscene auto-triggers it as an instant fail state as well.

Perhaps having a patchwork template of gameplay tropes is used here to make unique levels and fight a bunch of werewolves, then? Not really the case. Lycans are very rarely a part of this experience altogether and feel the least threatening because hitting the dodge prompt is all that’s needed to evade them and wait as they keep running from one end of the room just to turn around and charge Galahad again and again and again. The technically-detailed set dressing doesn’t really do much either since it’s all extremely static. Even when you’re in an awesome zeppelin, the best on offer is really decorated hallways and galleys with chest-high cover. Fighting against human AI for the majority of the game barely registers as engaging until the very end where a significant amount are thrown at the player, but then soon thereafter discarded. Even in those best circumstances the enemy AI’s underwhelming anyways. The variety’s split between droves of bland identical baddies sometimes sprinkled in with bullet-sponge men-of-armor most often equipped with coach guns that just rush your position to give some false sense of complex enemy waves.

Oh yeah, there’s also quick-time events (QTE’s). Lots of them. Make no mistake though, I’ve never loathed the idea of QTE’s altogether; in fact, quite the opposite. For me: it’s just another tool in the developer’s toolbox that, when used wisely, can make the experience work well. Their more careful use in certain TellTale games often elicit some emotion that’s contextually sensible with the action you’re tasked to do, like desperately reaching for a bullet and loading it into a shotgun in The Walking Dead Season One. Other times, an abundance like in Heavy Rain works because of all the unique uses and the sense of consequence carried with so many of them. The Order fails at that bit within the first few SECONDS of their introduction. Having been momentarily distracted and failing to perform the “mash the X button” prompt on-screen, I noticed this specific sequence was looped. Anyone could make up dinner and come back to see this same dumb drowning part still waiting for the player to engage in its game of Simon Says. Now the majority of QTE’s here aren’t like that, but it became so easy for me to look behind the curtain for those never-ending ones. Toying with the game like that brought me more enjoyment than any of the QTE’s themselves. As for being sensibly used to convey some kind of emotion…well, no; it’s more like the exact opposite. It’s unbelievable to see the pathological need RAD seemed to have in forcing QTE’s into so much of the game with little rhyme or reason. The worst offender being where the player would actually have to press triangle TO SPEAK. To top it all off, the first big boss fight with an Elder Lycan mid-way through is just one big QTE battle; worse yet, the final fight with a different Elder Lycan is just a carbon copy of said earlier battle.

I’m left utterly stunned I’ve been able to expatiate what’s on offer here. At times, I could almost sense just how little activity was going on in my head while playing and considering what I was doing. Even with condescending tutorial pop-ups smattered across the ENTIRE campaign (which can’t be turned off), standard TPS reflexes I’ve acquired over the years just did everything for me as if I was driving or grocery shopping. TO: 1886 can just be considered Every Other TPS Since 2006: The Game except for a couple fun distinctions like some cool weapons or an insta-kill nut punch melee move. Worst of all, because of the officious railroading, constant jump back to cut scenes or ludicrous hacking mini-games, arbitrary removal of player abilities throughout, waiting for friendly AI to unlock doors for you, etc., the whole experience feels stultified by atrocious pacing.

As savage as I’ve been here I’d be lying if I said there aren’t any noteworthy positives. A shame my biggest compliments mostly come from what’s typical in a big-budgeted ‘cinematic experience’ but they’re praises nonetheless.

On a visual standfront, there’s no denying this currently being one of the best looking exclusives on a technical level with very fews bugs in sight. The forced walking segments may be stupid, but it can be gratifying to view some of these grand skyboxes or the detailed layout within house interiors. Where my complaints would be more focused is on certain artistic decisions made. RAD’s going to spout whatever bunkum about ‘filmic’ aspirations, like the unchanging widescreen aspect ratio, the drab color grading to most environments, and the copious amounts of motion blur throughout, but at the end of the day these moves only serve to cram a higher-quality graphical output and marvel at some overdone aesthetic. Aside from those issues, I liked the world that was crafted: the unique little gadgets, the special weapons, and an almost-steampunk sort of background. I may take issue with some unique visual design elements, but I can’t deny the whole campaign was combed over several times to weed out almost all imperfections.

Sound would be the next big positive of The Order in most regards. As much as I like Marquis (the Frenchman), whatever sort of weird American/French mix accent he was trying to make would sound quite strange at times. Aside from that, the rest of the voice actors performed more consistently and a much better job than this script really deserves. Sound design was well-done with each gun indicating a lot of oomph in them. Beyond the shooting, sound has given appropriate detail when walking around and interacting with the environment. But the soundtrack was, well, just another soundtrack at the end of the day. Only a couple of tracks pricked my ears up at all, really.

That’s TO: 1886 in a…big nutshell. In some ways, I’m actually surprised to even offer up some semblance of an examination to such an experience that feels both this functional and this hollow. As a result, it feels like a different kind of low than any other third-person shooter I’ve previously covered. In nearly every chapter of this game—at least the ones that weren’t just a cutscene, my mind would yearn for some fresh gameplay scenario that’d make better use of the environs. The only answer TO: 1886 seemed content to give was just another funneled stop-n-pop shooting gallery with a mostly-generic soundtrack booming in the background throughout, at least until the next walking or mini-game segment interrupted that.

If you weren’t seething with rage halfway through my story complaints and stopped reading at that point, you may have caught my mention of the relatively short runtime for this single-player campaign. There are some collectible doo-dads scattered throughout the game’s world to try to add value though. There’s random photos and hand-written letters that force your eyes to be about 6 inches from the screen to actually make out the writing, audio logs with voice actors reading out their lines in such a laggard manner (they also MUST be played in the pause menu), and pointless trinkets like models or Sackboy. If I were being nice I’d estimate probably a quarter of everything I managed to pick up actually felt useful in making this world feel more realized; the other three-quarters fell between pointless backstory filler or RAD just fetishizing their engine’s capabilities. Are they that impressed by the textures on Galahad’s hands?

From a pompous critic viewpoint, even the very act of playing and thinking about the game felt like a blur just because of how it rarely even passes the basic framework of analysis: level design, gameplay nuances, mechanics in boss battles, and so on; from a consumerist viewpoint, I’m shocked at just how little’s on offer here for a game initially sold at sixty dollars (or more considering the Collector’s Editions). And the only extra value outside the game proper to ameliorate these complaints in the ‘Extras’ section are the game’s credits and Photo Mode—even that extra had to release later in an update.

I don’t want to suggest there’s a severe dearth of talent at RAD from top to bottom; in fact, I do truly believe a lot of people poured their hearts into this project to try to make something enjoyable. Single-player only games in the AAA industry are still tough to get. In that respect, The Order was trying to stand out from the crowd. But rather than go for a quality story they had in mind, it just revealed to me that consumers will have to pony up twice as much dough to get any semblance of a complete narrative. Maybe if so much sweat wasn’t dedicated solely to the game’s graphics we’d have a decent experience on our hands.

The Order: 1886 is the first big blockbuster I played last year where I finished it and let out a big sigh. One of both relief in finishing and utter disappointment. I acknowledge there are times I’m more nitpicky than most when dealing with stupid design and pointless filler, but The Order so often feels like a panoply of those two qualities exclusively. A simulacrum of the worst of the big-budgeted game (and movie) industry’s qualities bottled up into one example. And that just makes me really, really sad. Beneath all the pretentious twaddle made by key RAD figureheads before its release, I still saw the sterling promise of something great to come from this game. If given another chance, I genuinely hope the team goes back to the drawing board to realize The Order’s full potential.

Until then, I’m compelled to grade this to the same scale of the medium they so desperately wanted to imitate; essentially, I’d consider it the equivalent of a one-and-a-half star film.

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