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      The Order: 1886

      E3 Selection - The Order: 1886

      An extended presentation and a brief hands-on with Ready at Dawn's Victorian war on half-breeds makes us believers.

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      Steampunk and the Victorian era certainly saw a huge revival at this year's E3. Not that the games were similar, but Bloodborne, Hunt: Horrors of the Gilded Age, The Devil's Men, BattleCry and The Order: 1886 all carry a 19th century alternate history premise. Add in the Penny Dreadful TV series and we're dealing with a full on Victorian revival.

      The Order: 1886 is Read at Dawn's big coming out party after a bunch of highly entertaining PSP titles where the studio worked on someone else's intellectual property (Daxter, God of War).

      There's a depth and an attention to detail that permeates the world and the universe, something that becomes apparent as Ru Weerasuriya and Andrea Pessino from the studio give us an in-depth look at demo shown at Sony's press conference.

      The Order: 1886 relies on a mix of brief cinematics, short interactive cutscenes, real-time cover based shooting and exploration where the environments, objects, newspaper clippings all could potentially help tell the story of the universe for those interested in diving deeper into the fiction. Ru Weerasuriya has spent 7 years reading up on the period and fleshing out the universe, and The Order: 1886 only represents a first look into a much greater fictional world.

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      It's not just that you can pick up stuff and read, such as newspaper clippings, but all these objects are simulated with physics. All this work that has gone into what may appear to be unnecessary distractions are there to help immerse the player. During the demo we were shown alternative outcomes to those set pieces we saw during the press conference - the idea being to show us it's not really quick time events, but actually something a bit more dynamic and quite frankly, very appetising.

      The Order: 1886

      The sequence shown at the press conference that we later saw as an expanded and more fleshed out playthrough of behind closed doors, was our first introduction to the Lychen. These half-breeds can be said to be evolved humans, not just mythical monsters, but something very real - not beast, but highly intelligent foes. They've been around for hundreds of years and the war between man and half-breed has been raging ever since. This introduction is naturally cinematic and meant to give the player a closer look at the beast men you're fighting.

      During our presentation Weerasuriya explained that the morphing from man to creature is something that happens in real-time and that later on in the game you'll see this play out without any cinematic cutscenes. The power of the new generation is at play.

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      The Order: 1886

      In addition to the heavily story-driven sequence at the presser we were also given a chance to play a brief combat sequence with Galahad (the protagonist) and a squad of fellow knights. Rather than comparing it to Gears of War with its arenas, The Order: 1886 comes across as more of a Call of Duty-like experience, but with a firm focus on cover mechanics and the various steampunk weapons.

      We got hands on with the Thermite gun - a weapon that sends out a flammable cloud as its primary fire that you can then ignite with the secondary fire. Very satisfying, and naturally we played around with dispersing several salvos of thermite, then igniting them all at once to produce a large cloud of fire. We were also introduced to the healing powers of Black Water and got to a bit of an introduction to some of the other characters that will accompany Galahad at times during his adventure.

      Overall, The Order: 1886 has all the makings of a stellar exclusive on PlayStation 4. While the time period may be a popular settings for games these days, Ready at Dawn Studios have managed to carve out a unique alternate history setting that's refreshingly free of clichés.

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      The Order: 1886Score

      The Order: 1886

      REVIEW. Written by Gillen McAllister

      "Victorian villainy rubs shoulders with religious relics. It's Indiana Jones meets Penny Dreadful - and what's not to love about a pitch like that?"



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