This morning El33tonline was lucky enough to attend a gamescom session for Ready at Dawn’s upcoming PS4 exclusive The Order: 1886. The session was hosted by the studio’s CEO and Creative Director, Ru Weerasuriya, who previously directed the smash hit God of War: Chains of Olympus for PSP.
Ru spent most of the session talking about how The Order: 1886 uses a revolutionary physics system which allows individual objects and its constituent materials to be realistically broken up or deformed ad infinitum. During his presentation the audience was treated to two live prototype gameplay demonstrations (running on a PC with PS4-approximate specs) showing these features in action, and also demonstrating how objects in the environment such as flags are affected by the physical forces associated with a particular environment (in this case wind). Each of the three flags we saw in the second demo fluttered independently of each other, seemingly affected by their position in relation to the wind.
Whereas most games don’t feature deforming materials, Ready at Dawn is determined to create a true next-gen experience by allowing players to interact with the game’s environments in unprecedented ways using the various weapons you’ll be able to equip over the course of your adventure. During the first demo we saw how throwing a grenade into a wooden box blows it into tiny splinters. If you throw another grenade into the newly formed mass of splinters then the resulting explosion will blow them into even smaller fragments. The effect really is astonishingly realistic!
In the second demo Ru demonstrated how objects in The Order: 1886 will deform according to what material they’re made out of. For example, a bronze bucket or metallic wall will visibly dent when shot, while a teddy bear (dumped onto the level for the purpose of this demo) will break up into separate pieces when the same treatment is handed out. Obviously, the type of gun and ammunition being used will also influence how materials in the game react based on the real-world laws of physics which govern them.
Based on what we saw in the two live gameplay demonstrations, The Order: 1886 will be a cover-based shooter with an over-the-shoulder camera perspective in the style of Resident Evil 4 or Gears of War.
The game will be released exclusively for PS4 sometime during 2014.
