The Order: 1886

Ever since the YouTube video showing what was supposedly a five and a half hour play through of The Order: 1886 was posted, a lot of ink has been spilled debating the relationship between length and value in video games. Whatever side of that issue you fall on, two things are almost certainly true about The Order. The first is that it is, without a doubt, the most visually stunning game ever released on a console. The second is that a half-baked plot, unsatisfying gunplay, and an overall dearth of content significantly mar that beauty. Perhaps the best analogy is that The Order is like a stereotypical supermodel; gorgeous in close-up, but dangerously thin when you pull back.

The Order takes place in an alternate history steampunk version of late Victorian London. Players take on the role of Grayson, a.k.a. Sir Galahad, a member of the titular Order, which is sort of an updated Knights of the Round Table. Although The Order's supposed job is to hunt "half-breeds" like werewolves and vampires, it currently finds itself more concerned with supporting the English nobility in fighting off a rebellion of the poor and downtrodden. Seeing as how this is dangerous work, members of the Order are provided a mysterious substance called "Blackwater" that allows them to recover from near mortal wounds and unnaturally extend their lifespans. This explains how you can be interacting with historical figures like Sir Thomas Malory or the Marquis de Lafayette, both of whom should be long dead in 1886.

It's actually a fascinating premise, and it feels like there are a ton of interesting stories to tell about the universe and the characters who inhabit it. For example, how did the whole werewolf plague originally begin and how does King Arthur's Court fit into it? How did the Marquis de Lafayette, who's French and fought in two revolutions, end up working for a British organization dedicated to ruthlessly upholding the status quo? Unfortunately, none of these stories are explored, as the game is much less interested in world building than it is in telling a cliched story of social unrest - with the heroic Order (or is it?) pursuing the evil (or are they?) underclass rebels. Any plot details that threaten to be even moderately more interesting are instead relegated to small asides in cutscenes and the occasional QTE event.

To make matters worse, The Order ends without any real resolution to the many story threads it tries to set up. You can't even really call these unresolved plot points cliffhangers, as a proper cliffhanger requires an unresolved climax that the game just never reaches. Instead, the game ends with a button prompt followed abruptly by a black screen and the credits. It's all terribly anti-climactic, and it feels like there's a third of the story that's just missing. Maybe I'm jaded, but it's hard to avoid the feeling that there's inevitable DLC content on the way to tie up some of these loose ends. At least at that point everyone can stop complaining about the length and instead complain about core content being cut out and sold separately.

The actual gameplay is only moderately better than the plot, and mostly functions as a list of Things That Shouldn't Be In Games Anymore. There's an inordinate amount of QTEs, including the game's two major "boss" battles (or maybe it's just one battle, since it's literally the same exact thing both times), button mashing to perform simple actions like opening a chests and doors, instant-fail stealth sections, and meaningless collectibles scattered about the environment. That last one feels particularly out of place, as inspecting many objects involves nothing more with than twisting them about in your hand, L.A. Noire-style, with nothing beyond maybe a short comment from your character about what you're holding.

Cover-based combat makes up maybe 1/3 of The Order, and to describe it as bog-standard would be an insult to both bogs and the people who set standards for them. Enemies come at you. You pop out of cover and shoot them. Rinse and repeat as necessary. It's painfully by-the-book, made worse by the disappointing selection of weapons. Although early previews of The Order showed off fantastic hardware like the Arc Gun or the Thermite Rifle, you will mostly be using the shooter standard fare of pistols, rifles, and shotguns. This isn't to say that the sci-fi weapons have been cut entirely, but you use them rarely, and typically only in very tightly scripted sequences requiring their use. Mostly, you'll be relegated to using steampunk-y versions of modern weapons, none of which feel particularly good to shoot. Almost all of them lack a good sense of impact, and your bullets frequently don't seem to land in the aiming reticule. This last might have something to do with the game's auto-aim, which feels particularly aggressive at tracking distant moving targets, even when you want to aim at one specific point closer to you.

The cover system can be a slight problem too, although not a huge one. Mainly, it just feels significantly behind the times, and it's missing a lot of conveniences that have been standard in the 3rd person shooting genre for awhile now. You can't move around corners in cover, for example, nor can you run forward from cover to cover. Instead, you need to pull back from whatever you're currently hiding behind and then maneuver to the next available cover point. It's clunky and awkward definitely led me to a few unnecessary deaths as I struggled with excess button prompts while under fire.

The other 2/3 of the game is divided into chunks of slow-walking and cutscenes punctuated by some QTE events. The big brag made by the developers was that the game would transition between cutscene and action seamlessly, and this is a promise that they have largely followed through on. In fact, the transition between cinematic and gameplay is so seamless in a few spots that it can be difficult to know when the player has been given back control. The letter boxing has been discussed as an issue, but I found it easy enough to ignore and it blended into the background pretty quickly. On the plus side, the slow-walk pace (which the game locks you into) makes it easy to notice that the game looks outstanding, and the character models and environments are wonderfully detailed. On the negative side, the slow-walk pace does get obnoxious very quickly. I get that the developers wanted to show off all the pretty environments, but there are better ways to do that than forcibly slowing the player down. This highlights one of the major problems present in The Order; the player is given no reason to explore any of it. Environments are mostly narrow streets and corridors, and there isn't really any side-content beyond easy to find collectibles that would incentive the player to look around a bit. I constantly found myself wanting to see more of London and poke about alleyways and shops, only to find my way blocked by a gate, or a wall, or a dead-end. It's unfortunate the developers couldn't find a way to open things up even a little bit more as it could have been truly enjoyable to explore a bit more of the city.

The game is also filthy with QTE events, to the point where the game sometimes feels closer to Heavy Rain than it does to Gears of War. Most of these QTEs take place during action sequences and therefore boil down to "press the button or die". Imagine if Jerry Bruckheimer produced a David Cage game and you'll have a general idea of how it looks in practice. Unfortunately, the QTEs occur far too frequently, and end up detracting from the overall experience. The impact of "cinematic gameplay" is greatly diminished the third time you need to repeat the same sequence. I wish the developers had found the confidence to just let the otherwise beautiful graphics speak for themselves, rather than trying to shoehorn in button prompts just so they could say people are "playing" the game. Hey, developers, here's a hint: If I'm busy looking for a button prompt, I'm not admiring all the pretty graphics.

Finally, we come to the elephant in the room - the length. The game took me 7.5 hours to complete, which, apart from one intensely frustrating sequence near the end, I played on Hard. That time also included a fair amount of looking for side paths and collectibles. Whether that amount of content is worth it for the $60 asking price is entirely up to you. It should be noted however, that whatever length your own play through ends up being, that's pretty much it. There's no multiplayer, additional modes or (as yet) DLC to provide additional replay value. Once you've see it, you've seen it.

Ultimately, The Order: 1886 isn't a bad game, it's just a boring one. The creators managed to craft an interesting universe, but steadfastly refuse to allow you to do anything interesting in it. They crafted a beautiful game, and then scarred that beauty with obnoxious QTE button prompts. They hint at an expansive world, but hem you in narrow corridors. It's a promising product done in by it's own lack of ambition and confidence. It should have been so much more.

Score: 5/10

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Played On: PS4

Time Spent: ~7.5 hours

Trophies Earned: 51%

Significant Bugs/Performance Issues: None