The Order: 1886 sounds like an Assassin’s Creed spinoff. It’s not, but Sony’s new IP for the PS4 will share some similarities with Ubisoft’s series.
During Sony’s press conference, The Order: 1886 was the only original IP to be shown for the PS4. It may be an original IP for Sony, but the team seems to have been heavily influenced by steampunk culture and lore. Here’s the official description from the development team at Ready At Dawn:
With The Order: 1886, we introduce players to a unique vision of Victorian-era London, an alternate history where technological advances take center stage in a battle against a powerful and ancient foe. The game takes place nearly forty years after the Industrial Revolution. But unlike in real history, our Industrial Revolution stems from mankind’s desire to prevail in a centuries-old war. The advances in technology, invented by some of the foremost minds of the time, give man an opportunity to take the upper hand for the first time in their struggle.
In the game, you are a knight, a member of an ancient order, and you will take center stage in this fight for mankind’s survival. As the game takes place in an alternate history, you will be able to interact with real-world historical characters who will aid you in your quest. You will see and navigate real places. You will not only be a witness, but have a hand in real events that have unfolded.
As this is Ready At Dawn’s first major console release, the team is going all out to capture what they feel will be important on the next generation of consoles. In other words, they want to make it feel like a movie that you play:
Beyond story and setting, there are a select few key concepts to which we wanted to adhere when we created this title. One of these is the filmic aspect of the game. As we developed our visual target, we used aesthetics that have been present in cinematography for decades to achieve our goal; from lenses and lighting techniques to grading, we wanted to recreate a visual feel that would bring you closer to what you have only been able to experience in movies.
We also strived to create a seamless experience when it came to the game. The idea was to make sure that you never saw any visual discrepancies or breaks in continuity between gameplay and cinematic. Our game models and our cinematic models are one and the same, and everything is rendered real time in the engine as you play the game. The trailer we presented is a great example of that. What you saw is running in-engine, in-game with no gimmicks. These visuals are what you can expect of the final game when you play it.
Ready At Dawn was previously responsible for Daxter and the two portable God of War titles on the PSP. Those were all quality games, but this is a major undertaking for the studio as they don’t have much experience with home console titles. In fact, Ready At Dawn has only worked on a single home console title and that was the Wii port of Capcom’s PS2 classic Okami.
Still, Ready At Dawn proved they can fit a console quality experience onto a portable machine, and they may yet prove that they can fit a larger than life experience into a home console. We only have the below trailer to go off of for now, but The Order: 1886 is definitely one to watch.
