The Order: 1886

There is an unwritten but incredibly important rule in film making: The greatest crime a film can commit is being boring. It doesn’t matter if its good, bad, or otherwise, as long as your movie is engaging, the viewer will have gotten something out of it. Being unmemorable is just about the worst thing any artistic piece can be. With The Order: 1886, unmemorable is just about the perfect way to sum it up.

Set in London during the year 1886, The Order is a third-person shooter involving the Knights of the Round table, who for centuries have defended the world from “Half-Breeds” (they’re just werewolves) but more recently have been shooting rebellious Indians striking against United India Company (East India Trading Company). I don’t need to post spoilers or a spoiler warning, you can fill in the plot yourself. The Order plays out like most non-Marvel movies released in the past few years: somber and filled with misplaced purpose. The characters are dull, the writing is competent but forgettable, and the set pieces are completely interchangeable. The steampunk London, while not entirely original, manages to create a good mood and is captured gorgeously. Technically speaking, the game is a step above its competition, sharing the likes of Ryse and Crysis (Which I still view as a gold standard for photorealistic visuals).

You’ll probably notice I’ve spent most of my space so far writing about The Order in a motion picture mindset. Well, given the game I had been left with, that’s really all there is to talk about. As a point of comparison, I compared The Order to modern blockbusters only because its closest relation in the gaming world predates equally forgettable fair such as Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

The Order feels like the brainchild of Gears of War and David Cage, a game where the game elements feel tacked on and in the way. I’m usually the one to fall on the side of Devil’s Advocate for Cage and in this case is no exception. While Cage has a distinct style and lack of quality in his writing, he puts at least any effort into making the few choices available to the player have meaning. The Order lacks any player agency whatsoever, instead resting on its admittedly impressive tech to take on the brunt of the player’s interest.

The narrative plays out as one of the most Campbellian scripts I’ve ever seen, hitting every major note along the hero’s journey but without any of the mystique to pull it off effectively. The cliches pile on so hard that the line “You and I are not so different” is repeated by the villain in a bold-faced seriousness that Nolan’s Batman movies never even touched. The third act is heavy-handed and rushed, ending the game minutes after what felt like a much slower and contemplative beginning, not that that was good for it either. The ending in particular is so abrupt that no time is spent to wrap up dangling plot lines, opting to try and add emotional weight that is completely unearned. A mid-credits sequence sequel baits so hard you’ll wonder why they even bothered. What we get here is a prologue, a proof of concept. Developers talked to Sony and asked if they could spend millions of dollars showing that they had the idea for a cinematic third person shooter and for some reason Sony said yes. Uncharted or The Last of Us this is not, no matter how much Sony and RAD hope it may be.

The comparisons to Gears of War are even more fleeting. They are both cover-based third person shooters. The similarities end there. Gears of War — a game from 2006 — had a similar length campaign, entirely cooperative, and a multiplayer mode. It’s segments of forced slow-walking genuinely felt like they needed to load the game rather than forcing the character to listen to dialogue they’ll soon forget. The Order is solely a campaign mode that will take under ten hours to beat and little else. No replayability, unskippable cutscenes, and no entertaining bits that stand out in any way.

Shooting arena’s are all giant boxes and can be spotted a mile away. Nothing about the game’s world feels natural, conveniently placed boxes littering what should be deserted streets and train stations. Some of the weapons are fun and surprisingly kinetic, but even the production values can’t save the umpteenth time an armored shotgunner will rush past cover to kill you in two hits while you feebly wait for him to enter his stunned state after half you clip has been emptied. The gunplay never evolves, artificially or organically.

The only time the game changes its pacing are during the dull as bones stealth sections and the werewolf segments. The stealth aspect of this game is so underdeveloped it isn’t even worth mentioning, but it reinforces the idea that taking control away from the player for free auto-kills ruins a large portion of what makes stealth an interesting concept in the first place. But the werewolf segments are by far the worst parts of the game, which is a shame since they should be the most interesting.

There are two kinds of werewolf encounters, fighting multiple and one-on-one fights. Fighting multiple at once puts you in an arena where the werewolves will run at you, prompting an X to appear to dodge out of the way. Shooting them enough will make them fall into a stunned state where you can run up and perform an execution. Every single one of these can be solved by standing in the corner and pressing X when prompted to. The one-on-one fights are even more egregious, taking camera control away from the player to plaster a list of three available actions to you — heavy, and light attacks, dodge — in the upper corner of the screen. In between each attack of the werewolf you dodge, you can get in two light attacks or one heavy attack, no more, no less. The fight will have several stages that all function exactly the same way and a minute or two later it will be over with. This only happens twice in the entire game and for good reason: it’s really boring.

Boring is actually the perfect word to describe The Order. All the potential for a cool setting wasted on one of the most by-the-numbers games released in a long time. Maybe the developers will take to heart the numerous and well-founded complaints made at the game and use to make a better one in the future, but for the time being the only order this game deserves is a cease and desist.