The Order: 1886 Review: Means to an unsatisfying end

Your time has value. The time you spend working and the time you spend playing is time you will never get back. Much of the pre-release discussion of The Order: 1886 has focused on leaked YouTube footage suggesting the $60 game can be beaten completely in about five or six hours. It took me more like seven hours to get through the whole thing, but it doesn’t matter. Any way you slice it, those hours just aren’t worth it.

A rather large portion of The Order’s much-maligned running time are spent on telling a story through unskippable cut scenes. The most unique thing about these scenes, and the game as a whole, is its Victorian-era London setting. This isn’t a nonfiction historical drama, though; the main fictional conceit involves The Order—the actual knights of the actual round table, who, in a twist on the actual myth, completed their quest for the Holy Grail.

The result was virtual immortality, though by the time 1886 rolls around most of the original knights have actually died. The remaining few are a mish-mash of centuries-old veterans and fresh-faced rookies, all sharing the goal of executing supernatural "half-breeds" (read: werewolves). None of that explains the steampunk aesthetic and 19th century automatic weaponry, which seems to be a gift from The Order's resident engineer, Nikola Tesla.

There's also a rebellion festering in Whitechapel, a certain famous serial killer on the loose, politicking with the "United India Company," and no small number of conspiracies surrounding Sir Galahad, the game's mustachioed protagonist. It's a lot to take in, and The Order: 1886 doesn't exactly leap to provide exposition. Though there are a great many cut scenes with a great deal of dialogue, little of that time is spent explaining how this world got to be its electrically operated, airship populated self.

"Show, don't tell" are words storytellers live by, but The Order is proof that it's possible to take them too far. After a twisted prologue, I was tossed into the embroiling conflict between knights, rebels, corporations, and werewolves so unceremoniously that I wasn't sure who or what I was supposed to care about during the extended cut scenes and walk-and-talk exposition dumps.

What gameplay?

You might notice I haven't mentioned much about actually playing the game yet. That's because a large chunk of the “gameplay” is made up of completely unremarkable "walk from point A to point B" objectives that feature some character explaining the next objective. I'd say at least half of The Order is spent just walking, at speeds significantly slower than those shown by the characters during combat. And that doesn’t even include the rather long video sequences pockmarked with quick-time events, asking players to hit a button every so often to confirm they aren’t asleep.

In the first half of the game, most of this walk-and-talk time is spent getting to know the characters. In addition to protagonist Galahad, there’s Percival, the grizzled squad leader; Lafayette, the lady’s man; and Izzy, the... girl. This is as deep as the characterization goes, for the most part. Our protagonist's defining trait seems to be the ability and urge to inflict violence. On more than one occasion, Galahad is told not to engage in deadly force, then proceeds to snap every neck and fire every manner of weapon known to the steampunk aesthetic. This penchant for disobeying orders is never specifically addressed by the game.

Don't let the visuals fool you—this isn't some twee, high-flying adventure. Both the technology and hero of The Order are ferocious. The former includes standouts like the Induction Lance, essentially a lightning bolt gun, and the Thermite Rifle, which sprays a mist of flammable powder before igniting it with a secondary flare. When standing behind these more outlandish arms, the shooting in The Order—what little there is of it, at least—is pretty fun. The Lance, in particular, has a ruthlessly efficient feel in the way it utterly deletes enemies from the realm of “threatening” and adds them to the realm of “dead.”

Your more conventional arsenal isn't so morbidly fascinating, but it gets the job done. Shooting regular old machine guns while crouching behind crates gets the damning praise of being "serviceable." Just like the game's eternal cast, however, it feels out of time. The cover system isn't as robust as you'd expect from a game in 2015—moving from one object of safety to another isn't a very smoothly contextualized experience, for instance. More than that, though, what you're doing is practically a parody of modern shooters. Follow your comrade, breach a door, fire in slow motion, and, I kid you not, shoot red barrels.

Red. Exploding. Barrels. In Victorian London.

I can't imagine there's been a graphic designer assigned to model a red, exploding barrel in the last decade who thought "this is a unique and quality use of my time."

Though the cover-to-cover combat may only impress when wielding some post-industrial death ray, it's not even close to the worst part of The Order. If I had to choose, that honor would go to the fights between Galahad and his more supernatural prey.

Werewolf fights come in two shapes and styles. The first involves standing in a corner and shooting them as they charge, occasionally dipping into quick-time event button presses The second involves Galahad getting into a knife fight with a werewolf. Both styles of sequence occur about twice through the game’s entire running time. Whatever grousing I've done about the rest of the combat, at least the knife fights look pretty damn cool.

Hey good looking, where’s your ending?

In fact, The Order: 1886 is a gorgeous game in general. You probably know that, as those looks have been the crux of Sony's marketing strategy. Even so, it's hard to describe how good this game looks at times. There is the sparse blemish of a flat texture here and there, but in the right lighting characters can look downright photorealistic. Even when they don't, the seamless cuts between gameplay and cutscene are about what you'd expect from, say, an Uncharted game on Sony's newest hardware.

That's a great boon to The Order. Seeing as so much time is spent watching and listening to the game, you'd want it to at least be technically pleasing to watch and hear. More than anything else, that technical prowess helped The Order: 1886's world to grow on me.

Somewhere in The Order's back half, I started appreciating some incidental touches that make the game more than the "acceptable" grab bag of AAA shooter components it seems to be on the surface. The prevalence of Indian characters (which makes perfect sense given the setting) stands out in a world where such characters rarely exist in games like this. The same walking I maligned earlier can be appreciated if you adjust your expectations—in a way, it’s nice that the game doesn't feel the need to fill every moment with explosions. I was even gratified by the surprising amount of male nudity displayed.

Then, somewhere between the game's second act and its finale, everything started to click into place. Lafayette and Izzy unexpectedly develop personalities. Villains are revealed and raise some genuinely good questions. It became apparent after all that time that The Order: 1886 was just a slow burn.

And then it ends. The story structure features an introduction, rising action, a climax, and, in place of a resolution, the credits roll. Those eleventh hour reveals and character developments have no time to go anywhere. Mysteries raised at the very end of the game go unanswered. The main plot that the game spends most of its passive storytelling efforts setting up remains unresolved.

It's not that The Order leaves room for a sequel—it's that The Order leaves space for an ending. More than the combat, more than the quick-time events, more than the time spent watching the game rather than playing it, this calls into question whether the few hours spent playing The Order are worth it.

The game's twilight hours re-contextualized the time I'd spent with it and made me want to answer "yes." The conclusion—or lack thereof—forces me to say no. It was the feather that tipped some rather wobbly scales.

In simpler terms, no matter how long it takes you to complete The Order: 1886 it's just not worth it.

The good

• The more outlandish weapons are fun while they last.
• The game's writing and presentation take some very refreshing risks, especially toward the end.

The bad

• What little combat there is feels outdated compared to modern shooters.
• Non-combat gameplay means a lot of linear walks down hallways and through alleys.
• A total lack of resolution for most of the game's story beats.
• While it does pick up, there are pacing issues in the game's first half.

The ugly

• You start the game by gunning down escaped mental patients. Despite being told not to kill them, you don't have a choice. It's more than a bit unsettling, and the game never addresses it.

Verdict:  Avoid it until and unless they patch in a satisfying conclusion.