After seeing The Order: 1886 behind-closed-doors at Gamescom, I was left fairly conflicted. On one hand, it was heartening to learn a great deal about developer Ready at Dawn’s approach to creating its new PS4-exclusive IP. On the other hand, it was truly disappointing that the developer refuses to show anything from the actual game, instead relying on at times impressive – but fairly barren – tech demonstrations.
Ready at Dawn’s founder Ru Weerasuriya noted that The Order: 1886 is still a year or so away from being released, and as such, the studio has nothing prepared to show a PlayStation audience eager to see more triple-A exclusives for Sony’s new console. This is both understandable and confusing; many developers are wary of showing anything from a game that isn’t quite ready for primetime, but then again, it’s not at all unheard of to see some footage from games a year away from release.
Weerasuriya instead opted to tease us a little bit with some tech demos that show-off Ready at Dawn’s new, next-gen engine, RAD 4.0. In two separate live-play demos running off of a PC mimicking final PlayStation 4 specifications, Weerasuriya stressed all of the little things that RAD 4.0 allows the studio to do to create an environment that’s more immersive. Both demos featured Galahad, The Order’s main character, shown in third-person action for the very first time.
The game’s camera remains centered behind Galahad as he runs around, his outfit realistically reacting to his every move. When Weerasuriya aimed one of Galahad’s weapons, however, the camera moves over, giving players an over-the-shoulder view of the protagonist. We saw Galahad shooting quite a bit in these demonstrations (with both a machinegun and an air burst rifle) as Weerasuriya established a key tenet of The Order: 1886: realistic environmental interactivity.
Weerasuriya went wild with Galahad’s weaponry, showing the destruction of fences, tables, and other items lying around a sterile, textureless environment. The idea was to show that little items act realistically. A wooden pail blown off of a table will roll around with its handle interrupting its movement; most games would treat this object like any other, or ignore your ability to interact with it completely. If he shot metal, it would dent instead of showing bullet holes. Glass, on the other hand, shatters. At one point, he threw one of Galahad’s grenades – which look a great deal like World War II potato mashers – into a box suspended in the air. It detonated into dynamic shrapnel that look like a far cry from a current-gen explosion.
The second demonstration showed an outdoor courtyard that looked a little rudimentary and simple, but may very well end up being in the final game in an updated form. Here, Weerasuriya showed similar features. The most interesting thing he talked about here was in relation to flags hanging around the courtyard. Each waved independently of one another; each looked different and unique not in design, but in movement. This is due to them reacting not to code that tells them to wave, but rather to in-engine wind physics. Little things like this sound minor – and many of them are – but it’s intriguing how all of these little things, when combined and taken together, could create an environment that’s more real and more believable than the environments many games of the current generation take place in.
These tech demonstrations are a half-step towards actually seeing The Order: 1886, and it’s disappointing that we haven’t seen or heard more about the game. With that said, hearing Weerasuriya’s stories about developing the game, and how much research went into creating it, was fascinating.
Back in September of 2011, when pre-production of The Order: 1886 was in full swing, 20 of Ready at Dawn’s artists and designers traveled to London, England for a week’s worth of on-scene research. The Order takes place in an alternate history version of London, and the team behind the game felt that it was important to see the capital city for themselves.
The result of their trip was “a hell of a lot of pictures,” over 38,000 of them, in fact. But these weren’t all pictures of landmarks and buildings. A vast majority of them were of completely minor things few travelers would ever think of snapping shots of. They took pictures of bricks, and door hinges, and ornate wooden borders. In an attempt to make The Order: 1886 as authentic to Victorian England as possible, they wanted to focus on the little things, an interesting parallel to RAD 4.0’s identical focus of making those little things believable.
As we reported yesterday, The Order: 1886 will launch in 2014. And while Ready at Dawn’s mission to make its game believable is certainly commendable, the PlayStation community is still far more eager to see the actual game. Hopefully, we’ll be able to see what it’s all about and how it truly plays sooner rather than later.
..ha quanto Ho capito però avrà i binari questo gioco..c è qualche conferma in proposito?
