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The Order: 1886 |OT| Gears of Yore

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
I think the takeaway from the ending, is that they're all traumatized as fuck, given their unusual circumstances. I would compare them, in that regard, to the cast of Lost Odyssey. Lived a long time, and seen a lot more fucked up shit than a normal person can deal with in one lifetime.
It was basically him losing the only thing he had, at that point
Death also isn't an inevitability for the knights like it is for the average person. They live for hundreds of years and even in battle have the blackwater to rely on. The death of a knight probably comes as a bigger shock to them. I don't think they see themselves as being human much anymore due to their life spans. The death of a regular person is coming sooner or later, especially given life expectency during the time, so those probably mean little to the knights. The death of one of their own is a rare occurence.

Not only does
Sir Lucan
give a speech on the matter at the very end, but as does
Marquis de Lafayette
, only just before that.
The lord commander mentioned it several times as well.
 
i need to know what the blackwater is, vampire blood? (the lord chancellor "men were never meant to live this life" near the ending, is he a vampire too?)
....this is killing me lol
 
I didn't realise you had to press a button to activate blacksight, I thought it kicks in automatically when the bar is full. Missed so many opportunities to use it and now I'm right near the end of the game..
 
Did anyone else half expect
a flashback scene when Galahad picks up the crossbow and says something like "this takes me back" would have been cool if they had a scene with him in another time period right there.
 

viveks86

Member
Death also isn't an inevitability for the knights like it is for the average person. They live for hundreds of years and even in battle have the blackwater to rely on. The death of a knight probably comes as a bigger shock to them. I don't think they see themselves as being human much anymore due to their life spans. The death of a regular person is coming sooner or later, especially given life expectency during the time, so those probably mean little to the knights. The death of one of their own is a rare occurence.

Good point. I guess Galahad's reaction to his death is indeed well explained. I failed to see that till all this debating happened
 
i need to know what the blackwater is
....this is killing me lol

A liquid generated by the holy grail

When people become knights of the Order, they drink pure blackwater from the grail. After that, they refill their vials with their blood (which is now infused with blackwater).
 

hydruxo

Member
I think the takeaway from the ending, is that
they're all traumatized as fuck, given their unusual circumstances
. I would compare them, in that regard, to the cast of Lost Odyssey. Lived a long time, and seen a lot more fucked up shit than a normal person can deal with in one lifetime.
It was basically Galahad losing the only thing he had, at that point. The only thing in a looooooooooooooooong time

I agree. I'm just speculating but Galahad probably
had friends who weren't knights (and as a result had normal life spans) who he's outlived over and over again so he's probably hardened to that, but losing his close friend & mentor who has been with him for centuries hit him hard. Knights are expected to live for a long time so when one of them dies it's not like Galahad is just going to shake it off and move on.
 
A liquid generated by the holy grail

When people become knights of the Order, they drink pure blackwater from the grail. After that, they refill their vials with their blood (which is now infused with blackwater).

holy grail, blood of christ...do you see where im going with this? lol
 
Love how the light reacts to different types of material.
ib3s7aR.gif
Yep, the materials look incredibly real/beautiful... When i first walked into the hospital and saw the wall tile reflecting the glow of light coming through the windows, my jaw dropped.
 

Anung

Un Rama
This games lore has so much potential. They could take it in any direction and it would be interesting.

Also Lakshmibai <3
 

Apt101

Member
I am almost done (I take forever to complete games.... took me two weeks for inFAMOUS: SS). Sometimes it feels strange controlling a character through a scene that looks so good - visuals usually reserved for cutscenes in other games - and even then the quality isn't this high.

I've been through several stealth parts and so far they've felt good. I haven't died, killed all of the guards I could, etc. I think it's handled far better here than in other games I've played. I understand some people just detest stealth sequences in general. I know I'm not a big fan of them. But the criticism of them in this game seems harsh. Maybe I've just gotten lucky.

My favorite part so far:
the entire airship chapter. It was glorious and really fun. The acting by the VA for Galahad is top notch. And kudos to the animators responsible for bringing him to life. This is next level shit.
 

Relique

Member
8.0. Damn good game, considering I wasn't even going to pick it up at all, until the lucky Gamestop pricing error. Enjoying the basic gameplay mechanics enough, I went for the Platinum Trophy, so I definitely got my money's worth and then some out of it.

I feel like your scores are very fair. Personally I would give The Order the same score of 7.5, but would definitely give Dying Light a 8.5 for the sheer amount of "good" content. The side quests are very well designed. I feel like Techland can tweak the formula a little and potentially give us something as good as fallout in the future.

Anyway, back on topic. I really want a sequel to the Order. It has so much potential and the devs clearly want another crack at it. Let's hope that the sales figures are good enough for Sony to greenlight a sequel. However, many feel like the issue with The Order is the amount of content... and since so much work (3 years) went into the visuals, I wonder how can they improve the next game without a big hit on visual fidelity.
 

viveks86

Member
Did Viveks score just jump from a :'( to a :( ?

Lol. It was always :(

I had a lot of unanswered questions with the story, but my criticism was hardly about it until I decided to debate it today. There haven't been many games that have even gone this far in terms of story telling
 

DirtyLarry

Member
Finished it yesterday, my wife was awesome this weekend and let me play whenever I wanted, and what a crock of funding bullshit that this game is getting such negative reviews. Just bullshit.
It is like people are purposely giving it low scores simply because it has the best graphics ever on a console, and this is pretty much indisputibal, screenshots do not do it justice, but it does not have the gameplay to match the graphics.
Yes. The gameplay is simplistic and very traditional in its approach. But it is solid as fuck. The guns are fun as hell to use. Really solid shooting. Yeah yeah, it's short, okay that is a fact, but that makes it a horrible game? I generally don't like cut scenes either, and had zero issues with them in this game. And the QTE's are brief and tightly woven.
Just cannot believe the backlash. It's crazy.
And let's just state it again. It's the best looking game on consoles thus far, and truth be told this engine is capable of visuals that challenges all other engines, despite platform and yep, that also means PC. clearly PC games are capable of more technically, but from on overall visual perspective, this game holds its own despite platform. It is beautiful.
 

Slixshot

Banned
Finished it yesterday, my wife was awesome this weekend and let me play whenever I wanted, and what a crock of funding bullshit that this game is getting such negative reviews. Just bullshit.
It is like people are purposely giving it low scores simply because it has the best graphics ever on a console, and this is pretty much indisputibal, screenshots do not do it justice, but it does not have the gameplay to match the graphics.
Yes. The gameplay is simplistic and very traditional in its approach. But it is solid as fuck. The guns are fun as hell to use. Really solid shooting. Yeah yeah, it's short, okay that is a fact, but that makes it a horrible game? I generally don't like cut scenes either, and had zero issues with them in this game. And the QTE's are brief and tightly woven.
Just cannot believe the backlash. It's crazy.
And let's just state it again. It's the best looking game on consoles thus far, and truth be told this engine is capable of visuals that challenges all other engines, despite platform and yep, that also means PC. clearly PC games are capable of more technically, but from on overall visual perspective, this game holds its own despite platform. It is beautiful.

Actually, it's like people are purposefully giving it low scores because it's $60 and 5-10 hours with no replay value. I personally think that's bullshit too.
 

James Sawyer Ford

Gold Member
Just beat the game.

Absolutely loved it, despite the obvious flaws. My favorite single player campaign so far this gen, easily. Gave me tons of Uncharted 1 vibes throughout and I really can't wait for the sequel because the theme for this game is extremely appealing to me.

Most surprising thing to me was how PHENOMENAL the gunplay was. It's seriously BEST IN CLASS stuff for the third person genre (much better than TLOU/Gears IMHO). I was a little worried that the game would be a little too slow and clunky for my liking based on what I saw, but actually playing it is sublime -- it's extremely quick, responsive, and aggressive. The weapons pack a punch, and the attention to detail regarding the sound & animation really gives you a great sense of feedback.

Can't say enough about the visuals either -- this is the first game since KZ2 that seems to have designed the entire engine around a specific look and artstyle -- huge focus on mitigating jaggies (this game hardly had any) and presenting a rather clean aesthetic combined with superb lighting and meticulous attention to detail. The post processing of the game further gives it a 'CG' look to the point where it's very difficult to find flaws with the game's visuals. Naughty Dog has their work cut out for them.

The ending was fantastic too -- it closed up certain loose ends while also leaving you intrigued for what's to come. I got Batman Begins ending vibes from this. Really well done.

SEQUEL IMPROVEMENTS I'D LIKE TO SEE:

Overall Design / Pacing

- Lessen the focus on QTE's, particularly for important boss battles. They don't need to be removed completely, but they shouldn't be nearly as prominent.

- Take a queue from Uncharted -- do most mundane actions through gameplay. I thought the quick cutscenes every few minutes wasn't really necessary and just seemed to make the game more disjointed than it really needed to be. Cutscenes are important, but they need to be a "reward" for the player, not something that happens quite as regularly as they do in this game.

- Open up the game world a bit. Maybe introduce a hub area in London, perhaps a marketplace that branches to various parts of the city where the individual missions take place, where you can use certain equipment to navigate. I think the series could really stand to look at something like Batman as a good case for "open linear". It doesn't need to be quite as open as that title, but as an example it would have been quite awesome to have the artwork that is regularly shown be the central hub town, where you can path down to various parts of the city that open up through the narrative structure. From there you have a bit more freedom to explore within those sections (Whitechapel, United East India Company, Docks, etc). I think Arkham Asylum is a good core foundation I think they should try and emulate.

- Introduce far more "gameplay systems" -- upgradeable weapons/armor, an inventory system where you can bring out various tools/equipment to progress (I didn't like that this seemed to be so automated for lockpicks/electricity shortages), perhaps an expansion of the abilities (blackwater / blacksight weren't really all that useful, but they could have been with some tweaks), allow additional abilities to have an upgrade path.

Gunplay Mechanics

Already extremely solid. Refine the cover system and replace the QTE nature of roll/dodge/melee with authentic versions. Other than this, I don't have too many areas for improvement, it's already really good. Perhaps add a bloom reticule so you can tell a bit easier if you're about to get a headshot. Sometimes it was difficult to judge if I was going to land a hit with a particular weapon's range.

Combat Encounters

- Need to be opened up dramatically to include combat arenas. The areas in this title were too confined.

- Need to figure out how to make Lycan encounters engaging. This was a big disappointment.

- Add additional enemy types and play up the sci-fi aspect a bit more in order to add combat variety.

- Add MP/Co-op modes. The fantastic mechanics in this game beg for this to be made.

Visuals:

- Add more gibblets to the visuals. They're present, but often very easy to miss. They need to be more prominent.

- Biggest disappointment with the graphics has to be the facial modeling / animation. Still looks to have some remnants of last-gen...and to be fair, these issue haven't been resolved by any next-gen devs thus far. Eyes / teeth can still look awkward at times, and the faces don't realistically match up to what the characters are communicating. This is somewhat nit-picky, as overall The Order does this better than the vast majority of games, but it stands out just because the rest of the package looks so good.

Overall, very pleased with the game and hope a sequel is greenlit. I suggest Sony outright buy RAD and integrate them with the rest of their studios. The scores are not indicative of this team's quality or what they will clearly be capable of now that they've taken the tremendous leap from PSP developers to creating best-in-class next-gen visuals.
 
D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
Finished the game. It might be because of the sentiments I read here, but I didn't feel like the game wrapped up that poorly. The overall package came across as a well told prologue that will set the stage for (hopeful) sequels in this universe.

I already posted my sentiments earlier, but I really can't say I enjoyed the interactive bits of the game very much. Loved the world, characters, visuals, sound design, plot (despite some possibly illogical bits), dialogue, and voice acting, etc. but the 'gameplay' part was middling to frustrating for me.

The shooting against human enemies was fine for the most part. Bog-standard shooting gallery for everything but the final two encounters or so where they just flood the room with enemies and force you to actually move around. The amount of enemies made that more chaotic and frustrating than exciting, though.

The Lycan encounters were garbage and ridiculously exploitable if you use the time slow-down thing. Am I wrong or did they seriously design just
a single room layout and recycle it for the three Lycan encounters
? This kind of recycling really made it feel like they didn't put much thought into the actual combat part of the game.

The QTE stuff was OK when it wasn't insta-fail, so only the combat encounters. Everything else was just annoying and only worked to kill the tension in a scene because you failed to press the triangle button that suddenly appeared on screen within the 2 second window. OK... let's do it again. Not fun.

The stealth stuff was just awful. Made absolutely no sense why just because the game decides it's "stealth mode" time that guards suddenly gain the ability to kill you in one-shot. It's also hilarious how your melee kill is less powerful in stealth mode (have to time it correctly with the camera centered on the enemy) compared to general combat where you just need to be in close proximity. None of the stealth or stealth sequences added anything to the game, since you always just ended up going guns blazing in the next scene. That kind of stuff worked in Uncharted 2 because it was optional and allowed for you to get through an area without fighting hordes of enemies.

They didn't make it fun to explore the environments either and often punished you for doing so because of the slow walking speed that was forced on you for so much of the game.

After all this, I still walk away with a generally positive impression of the game because of the amazing presentation and really interesting setting, story and characters. If they get the chance to do a sequel, I really hope they either figure out how to inject some fun into the gameplay, or just get rid of it all together and go full Heavy Rain or some other type of adventure game that doesn't rely on shooting arenas to justify being a video game.
 

hwalker84

Member
Beat it a few hours ago.

6/10

Graphics are amazing and chapter 4 was by far the highpoint of this game.

I want a slow paced resident evil in this engine.
 
Finished the game. It might be because of the sentiments I read here, but I didn't feel like the game wrapped up that poorly. The overall package came across as a well told prologue that will set the stage for (hopeful) sequels in this universe.
Yea I agree, I actually quite liked how the game wrapped up. The ending especially was abrupt but, I don't know, it was powerful to me and left an impact and really made me clamor for a sequel so I didn't have a problem with it personally.
 
What the fuck.

WHAT THE FUCK.

I started this game being bombarded with unbelievable levels of dejection due in no small part to the 3834728934 threads that are filled with sentiment of disillusion and disappointment only to find...what the fuck?

You get control of your character within minutes and whilst you are tunneled, to some extent, on where you are able to go...the ratio of cut-scenes is heavy but as the transitions are unfathomably slick they matter little.

I'm having just as much fun with this at this point as I was with the original Uncharted and whilst I understand grievances others might have, the game is a blast. I hope to god they get an UC2 chance next time around.

Oh and, dick.
 
Yep, the materials look incredibly real/beautiful... When i first walked into the hospital and saw the wall tile reflecting the glow of light coming through the windows, my jaw dropped.

The Art team on this game has something they should be incredibly proud of.
 

antitrop

Member
Yea I agree, I actually quite liked how the game wrapped up. The ending especially was abrupt but, I don't know, it was powerful to me and left an impact and really made me clamor for a sequel so I didn't have a problem with it personally.

My problem is that sequel is 3 years away, minimum. The story of The Order feels almost episodic in nature... but it isn't. That's just all there is, for a very long time. And it's certainly not like a sequel is any guarantee at all.

If there is never a sequel, this game's story has to stand up on its own.

And it doesn't.
 
My only real gripe with the game is that the the collectibles and audio things are terrible. Oh here is a piece of paper with some shit written on it that you can't read, and a random number scribbled on the back. Yay?

Oh here is an audio tube that is literally the evacuation instructions for the airship....why do I give a shit?

Oh right, I don't.

Other than that I really liked the rest of the game.

Yeah. I stopped picking stuff up after realizing how worthless it was. It's like they really were trying to pad the game and this was the best they could come up with.
 
My problem is that sequel is 3 years away, minimum.
I...wouldn't say that's the case.

The story of The Order feels almost episodic in nature... but it isn't. That's just all there is, for a very long time. And it's certainly not like a sequel is any guarantee at all.

If there is never a sequel, this game's story has to stand up on its own.

And it doesn't.
I can agree that I'll feel like I'm left hanging if there's no sequel, but I mean that as of this moment having completed it recently, I came away satisfied simply due to (again just how I see it personally) how well a sequel is set up.
 

antitrop

Member
Yeah. I stopped picking stuff up after realizing how worthless it was. It's like they really were trying to pad the game and this was the best they could come up with.

Ya, if you compare it to the readable collectables in The Last of Us or Wolfenstein: The New Order, just... yikes. TLoU gives you a reason to press Square to read the fine text. The Order doesn't, even if you could.

There were a few interesting ones here and there, but the vast majority are almost entirely pointless, for sure.

As someone in the thread mentioned previously, those collectables were a massive missed opportunity to expound upon the lore of their vision of Victorian London and The Order itself.
 

hydruxo

Member
My problem is that sequel is 3 years away, minimum. The story of The Order feels almost episodic in nature... but it isn't. That's just all there is, for a very long time. And it's certainly not like a sequel is any guarantee at all.

If there is never a sequel, this game's story has to stand up on its own.

And it doesn't.

I don't think it's that far away. They've got the engine finished, and I'm sure that took the majority of their time since they had to build it from scratch. If they get the green light to make a sequel I can see it coming out in 2017.
 

antitrop

Member
I...wouldn't say that's the case.

I can agree that I'll feel like I'm left hanging if there's no sequel, but I mean that as of this moment having completed it recently, I came away satisfied simply due to (again just how I see it personally) how well a sequel is set up.
My biggest concern for a sequel would be that it might want to tell its own story, leaving many of the dangling threads from 1886 unaddressed. Not that it would be something completely different, just that the main focus of the sequel's narrative could potentially ignore setups made in the first game.

If it picks up like the day after 1886 leaves off, then cool.
 
Does anyone have any favorite chapters? I thought 3, 5, and 9 are probably the most interesting from an encounter design perspective. 3's atmosphere is also sublime, imo. I'd say it's probably my favorite overall, and certainly the meatiest.

3 and 9. Chapter 3 is essentially the first test for the player as far as dealing with multiple enemies goes and since the areas are constrained the situation is actually pretty tense. The story starts to turn in 9 and there's lots of fun gunplay but I actually liked Rani quite a bit. If a sequel is greenlit hopefully she's there (and perhaps as a co-op partner).
 

nib95

Banned
I...wouldn't say that's the case.

You better be right about this Shinobi! :p No but seriously, I really want the sequel to this game. I get the feeling that because the story has presumably been pre-written to spread over numerous titles (guessing a trilogy), it will feel more cohesive as a whole, and have a bit more to it than is ordinary for these types of games. If the sequel is it's own story and doesn't carry on from The Order 1886, I'll be deeply disappointed.
 
You better be right about this Shinobi! No but seriously, I really want the sequel to this game. I get the feeling that because the story has been pre-written to spread over numerous titles (presumably a trilogy), it will feel more cohesive as a whole, and have a bit more to it than is ordinary for these types of games.
Heh, I wasn't saying that a sequel's already greenlit, but I can tell you it certainly won't take 3 years.
 
The Order 2's narrative has the burden of needing to retroactively make the first game's better. Not sure if that's good or bad. RAD has a lot to deliver on to make up for 1886.
 
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