E3 2014: RUNNING FOR YOUR LIFE IN THE ORDER: 1886

BY COLIN MORIARTYWhen survival horror game Outlast came to PlayStation 4 earlier this year, I loved it. What I was most impressed with was how defenseless your character was. Armed with little more than a battery-dry handheld camera, you weren’t hunting. You were exploring, and more often than not, you were hiding, fearful for your life.

Games don’t typically tread in this space, rarely choosing to remove most – or even all – power from the player. And while the upcoming PlayStation 4 exclusive The Order: 1886 is a guns-blazing third-person shooter, I was happy to know that it’s not solely about being on the offensive. It tempers its two distinct styles – Gears of War-like cover-shooting mechanics and silent exploration – to create something unique. This fact alone has piqued my interest significantly as we head towards its launch in early 2015.

Earlier this year, I saw a portion of The Order: 1886 that stressed its blatant Gears of War influence, but this time around, I was shown a piece of the campaign that felt markedly different. It was an extended version of what we saw at Sony’s 2014 E3 press conference, and seeing it up close allowed me to appreciate what developer Ready at Dawn is really trying to do. I loved how palpable Galahad’s fear is in this slice of the game. He’s the protagonist. He has an incredible steampunk arsenal at his disposal. But here, he’s afraid. He doesn’t want to fight. He just wants to escape.

At first, Galahad is shown exploring an old, seemingly abandoned hospital (theLondon Hospital, to be exact). Lit only by Galahad’s lantern – and the occasional emergency light source – the hospital is rife with a ton of little touches. There are desks indiscriminately strewn with tons of papers. Medical samples in liquid-filled jars adorn shelf after shelf. Arcane medical charts line the walls, and there are mock skeletons that you can run into for a quick fright. Better yet, all of it can be interacted with it or ignored. Light up the bottles in a fit of glass-destroying fury, or leave them be; it's up to you. I don’t know why, but I made note of a dingy white medical coat hung over a rolling chair. It’s clear that Ready at Dawn is absolutely obsessed with the minutest details (something we made note of when the game as first revealed).

As Galahad explores the hospital – which, with its tile-lined floors and walls looks the part of the late 19th century – he finds himself deeper and deeper in the unknown. His lantern casts a brilliant light that shows off The Order’s stunning visual effects, and I loved how the glass of his lantern was slightly muddy, tinged with a layer of dirt. Again, an acute attention to detail readily expressed in the smallest – but perhaps most meaningful – ways.

The silence ends when Galahad turns a corner and finds a mysterious creature feasting on the flesh of a human. This is a Half-Breed, the very type of creature Galahad’s centuries-old Order is designed to do battle with. But even with his array of powerful, alternate history weapons, Galahad quickly realizes that he can’t fight this creature on his own. And that’s when The Order shows off its unique, “the hero can’t kill everyone” trait that’s all-too-rare in an industry that take pride in giving you seemingly unlimited amounts of (digital) power.

The monster – a type of Lycanthrope (or werewolf) – sees Galahad, and at that point, it’s too late for Galahad to get a jump on his foe. After a brief, integrated cutscene, the player is given control. Galahad backs away from the creature, dumping as many bullets from his pistol as he can into it, but it doesn’t matter. Galahad is overwhelmed, and he becomes more interested in escaping with his life than trifling with a monster far stronger than he is.

Half-Breeds aren’t the only enemies in The Order: 1886 – hostile humans from the so-called Rebellion are all over the campaign, too – but Half-Breeds shouldn’t be confused with mindless, stupid, zombie-like creatures. Underneath their horrific façade is a human brain, and along with it an ability to reason, the want to be aggressive, and the need to self-preserve. This is why Galahad is so scared, even after taking a quick drink of the curative Black Water elixir hanging from a small bottle strung around his neck. As the Lycanthrope stalks him, Galahad scurries and hides, making his location known to pound the creature with a few more bullets (while showing off his firearm’s explosive alt-fire).

Getting our first glimpse of the Half-Breeds was cool not only because we now know so much more about them – including the fact that ancient genetic changes in Half-Breed bloodlines mean that they don’t all look the same – but because they strike real fear in the hearts of the members of The Order. It’s clear why Ready at Dawn wrote a story about a good-and-evil battle that spanned hundreds of years. They aren’t simply prolonging the conflict for arbitrary reasons. The Half-Breeds can easily hold their own.

The Order: 1886 launches exclusively on PlayStation 4 on February 20, 2015.