*Sigh*
"Let us, first and foremost, define what “innovation” is, and what isn’t. The Merriam-Webster dictionary comes to our help:"
Whenever you use the dictionary definition for something, you've already erred. Words often have different meanings in different contexts. What we mean by gimmick in terms of the Wii stuff is rarely the actual definition of the word. You can't go to the dictionary definition if we're talking about industry specific usage.
"Finding a game that does absolutely nothing new is actually rather difficult, due to the simple fact that game development is a very creative process. Innovation doesn’t just lay on single elements, but also in the combination of them, and there are nearly infinite ways to combine gameplay elements."
So then everything is innovative? Yay! Give every developer a gold star.
This is sort of the argument Vanilla Ice uses to defend himself against allegations that he ripped off queen. But, if everything is innovative, then obviously when we refer to a game as innovative, we mean that it is exceptionally so.
"First of all, the setting an story itself is an innovation. How many AAA games can you find out there set in an alternate Victorian age, with an order of fanatical knights fighting a two front-war against their own people and a semi-alien race using steampunk-ish technology and weapons?"
I've seen all of these elements in different capacities. The war against aliens (or some outside force) and their own people is fairly common. (Mass Effect is the one that comes most immediately to mind. Dead Rising works if we replace aliens with zombies. I believe Infamous 1 or 2 had similar themes with a human police force and some mutated force. You could even include Marvel Ultimate Alliance in there with a battle between heroes and nanobots). We have a lot of steampunk games, and even Steampunk alien conflicts in project S.T.E.A.M.
The story COULD be innovative. I have to see how its conflicts play out, its characterizations, its plot points, etc. But just having fairly well worn tropes mixed together doesn't bring it to a level of innovation that makes the game stand out.
"The game is also rather innovative in the way it tells the story. Cutscenes and gameplay are nearly seamless, with the player not only retaining a limited degree of control during narrative sections, but there’s no difference in 3D models and assets between cutscenes and gameplay. This is something definitely new at this level of visual fidelity, where normal gameplay normally utilizes downscaled models because there’s more hardware headroom."
Wait what? Since when is this innovative? We've had interactive cutscenes that use similar or the same models since Shenmue. Resident Evil 4 comes to mind. Heavy Rain is just one giant interactive cutscene. This isn't innovative by any stretch of the imagination.
"Finally, the game innovates in the field of music as well. This kind of genre and setting normally relies heavily on brass instruments to give that “heroic” and “epic” feel to the score. Composer Jason Graves removed the brass from the picture, on the other hand adding a choir of twenty-four men exclusively belonging to the low end of the scale, even to the exclusion of tenors, that normally are considered nearly indispensable."
This kind of genre and setting? I thought you said that this game has such an innovative never before seen this kind of setting? At any rate, the bar for "innovation" in your argument is getting lower and lower. No brass! Innovative!!!
"You may or may not like it, but even the cinematic 2.40:1 aspect ratio used in The Order: 1886 is also an innovation."
A lot of games have aspect ratios that leave bars on the screen. Usually 4:3, but I guess 2.4:1 makes it marvelously innovative. And not giving players the option to change it if they prefer makes it even move innovative.
Imagine if I sold you a car and said "this car goes really fast"! You try it out, and it goes a max of 80 miles per hour. You say to me "Hey what's the deal! This isn't fast at all."
I say "What do you mean? 80 miles per hour is really fast! That's faster than any animal that ever existed could move!"
You say "yeah but all cars could go that fast. If you made a point of calling your car fast, I figured you meant it's fast compared to other cars!"
And I'd say "gee your right. I guess that was a silly thing to say."
To translate, when we call a game innovative, we obviously mean more innovative than other games. So far, the Order doesn't meet that criteria.
