The Order vs TLOU: Style vs. Substance
Would not our time be better spent hunting half-breeds, monsieur?
- Lafayette
It may never be clear which factors prompted The Order 1886 to release with such stark differences in quality between the artistry of its presentation and its story driven design, and while it's arguable that the design choices were set in stone from the start, it's curious that the elements that brought success to Ready At Dawns inspirations are only barely present in their final product.
To use their most notable influence, let's compare Naughty Dog's The Last of Us' approach to cinematic game storytelling and its simple formula for success. TLOU never did bring a single original game design element to the table; not the crafting, not the combat, not the story. But it was in the way that Naughty Dog executed all these elements together that produced an engaging and satisfying experience. They utilized their familiar premise to build pertinent gameplay scenarios that accurately accounted for player agency to script in the illusion of spontaneous discovery, and they designed these scenarios in a way that every piece of fiction and lore imbedded in its presentation naturally wove itself into their narrative during gameplay.
Take the prologue of each game for example. Stories that open with tragedy are common, but it's nevertheless important to establish clear characteristics about the protagonists and the world the player is about to inhabit through them. In The Order, it is simply an ambiguous excerpt from the middle of the game with a suspenseful exchange of words, which renders the proceedings of the first half of the game before the opener devoid of any actual intrigue or tension. It ends up feeling like a cumbersome and redundant attempt at creating tension. Instead, having opened the game with a character origins prologue showing how Galahad became acquainted with The Order (perhaps introducing a trojan horse plot device inside Galahad to add some parallel complexity to the lycan adversaries) would have added emotional weight and attachment to whatever changes the characters undergo during the plot, as well as offering a wealth of interesting gameplay opportunities featuring lycans. As it stands, the plot is a hollow retread of the tale of deceit which does not fit the wise and hardened character of the Knights. Throwing in a subtle attempt at personal conflicts at the very end does little to redeem the already spent narrative and the rather mundane and inconsequential human on human shoot outs that RAD shoehorned in. The issue of original writing versus engaging execution is one that quite possibly befell the team at RAD, and its a balancing act that needed be considered.
To better illustrate how this would translate into more engaging gameplay design, consider the first enemy skirmish in The Order with Isabeau, versus the first steps into the dangerous world of TLOU with Tess. The Orders first combat scenario opens from a side alley after a quick tutorial and briskly streams the action along to the next checkpoint, leaving beautifully rendered locales out of focus as the player attention is directed away from their impeccably conceived aesthetics. Failing to introduce meaningful character traits or antagonists, it simply serves as an ordinary stage for meaningless banter between the barely elucidated characters of Galahad and Izzy. Not to mention a prison break is an oddly commonplace task for the Orders Knights to show their specialized skills, considering this is only the beginning of a plot thread that ends up revealing these rebels as allies, The Order as villain and the lycans, well, simply wondering why they got cast in this movie. Imagine instead, if the same stage had opened from the gate to the right, with super human escapees climbing on the train overpass and on the beautiful architecture, the awe inspiring and terrifying power of the adversaries, and a much more interesting and versatile gameplay segment would have emerged. Following Naughty Dogs latest gameplay mantra, envision a slow, evolving pursuit of the lycans through the city, as the Knights race the sunset to meet the rising moon over the London rooftops, forcing them to gather and fight together under Percevals guidance and with Lafayettes eagerness, to overpower the transforming lycans. This would have materialized into a much more effective follow up to the expository prologue, introduced new character nuances, and still showcased RADs technical prowess, all without taking away player control. It could have all gone amiss, certainly; those impressive real time body transformations could have been overlooked by the player controlled camera, but the result would have been undoubtedly less offensive.
In TLOU, Joel and Tess are introduced gradually to the realities of their situation. It paints a clear picture of the environment where the story is going to unfold and it introduces their characters by juxtaposing them to a number of enemies of varying levels of difficulty and brutality with unflinching confidence, that allows player to utilize a balanced and thought out breadth of maneuvers and weaponry. When it comes to the story, the TLOU is abundantly familiar, but it's the way it involves players that makes it special. It's the uncompromising and meaningful player driven encounters that sell it. Ready At Dawn focuses so hard on telling an original story that they forgo adding any gameplay scenarios that substantiate their premise and take advantage of their fiction, leaving a lore full of potential disappointingly unexploited.
It's evident that Ready At Dawn, in their AAA infancy, did not lack ambition. But, ambition alone can't make up the clear lack of confidence in the execution of The Order 1886. It seems that in their attempt to do something wholly original they opted for something halfway there, and the result is a truncated story that moves at a breakneck pace, leaving its most interesting plot elements underutilized, and the players with timid and pedestrian gameplay encounters. Whether this was their intention or they had to compromise, is all up for debate.