The Order: 1886

I don't have fond memories of The Last of Us downtime sections.
Also to be frank the downtime sections all felt artificial to me; after the calm there was always a storm, every single time.
After a bit the "scheme" become obvious and the boredom arrived.

 

I agree, The Order could really use a page or two from TLOU's story telling and gameplay during down time, hell if it could use a lot of things from TLOU for that matter. I have high hopes from RAD for their next game or sequel now that the engine is there, men hours could be thoroughly used on fully fleshing out the story, characters, gameplay segments and please do more epic set pieces for memorable moments.

 

Oh look - polar opposite opinions of The Last Of Us.

 

I actually think the two games are pretty similar. Both are narrative focused. Neither is particularly revelatory in terms of gameplay. Both are far too chummy with movies and hence a little too happy about reducing my role of an active participant to that of a thumb-twiddling spectator. TLoU is just better at what it does.

 

Did TLoU also have arbitrary slow moments? Because you cite it as guilty of random speed changes, but now saying it's handling slow moment correctly, and I don't quite get what you're saying about game tempo. I can certainly agree that a game can have pointlessly slow moments - I dare say these are padding.

 

By game tempo I was simply referring to the fact that The Order loves to change the speed at which my character can move for no apparent reason on a scene-by-scene basis. There are the action bits where Galahad can run and sprint. Then there's the rest of the game where he's just slowly shuffling along. I'm actually not quite as sure as I was a couple of moments ago about whether TLoU even did something similar (I do believe there were forced walking sections in that game too) to be honest. What I do know for sure is that during the slow, non-combat parts in TLoU, interesting things did still happen. The Order uses its downtime solely for showing off, TLoU uses it for character development (and also for showing off)

 

AFAIK in Uncharted, the slow transitions were to hide background loading. Could that be a possibility in TO?

 

Maybe, but I don't really think it does. There are plenty of big sections where you can go at full speed until the game decides you cannot anymore after all. I think the game is just madly in love with its visuals and finds the notion of you missing or even ignoring something utterly terrifying. That's not even a big deal the first time through (it really is pretty), but it really stinks in subsequent playthroughs. Imagine going through MGS4 time and time again without the option to skip the 10+ hours worth of cutscenes.

 

It did remind me on the same thing - I play it thinking it's essentially an up-rezzed Uncharted, it has the same 'squeeze through here' 'lift to get through there' - non returnable sections.

 

The big difference between this and Uncharted is how tiny the gameplay pockets in the Order are. They are also oddly assembled to say the least. You get like 5 really small gunfights with loads of nothing in between, then all of a sudden you find yourself fending off near endless waves of rebels, thinking "Christ, enough already!" to yourself. There's just no rhyme or reason to any of it.

 

It had moments where enemies weren't an ever present danger but these were opportunities to evade, explore, scavenge and craft.

There were few (if any) moments were you where the sole purpose of the player's input was to move from A to B. Progress through environments was secondary to just scrounging to survive the next encounter. And for those who wanted to immerse themselves in the events of the outbreak, read journals or piece together the aftermath of plans gone wrong.

For me there a clear difference between breaking up the combat so as to engage in other game mechanics and elements and games that just insert gaps in combat for no other reason that you can't have a game that is 100% non-stop shooting. I'm not saying The Order is the latter because I've not played it but this is what I took from several reviews.

 

It is absolutely the latter. There are a bunch of collectibles you can find, but most of them are completely pointless. You can ogle an impressively modelled Sackboy doll or a broken music box, but besides the fact that apparently someone left a music box or a Sackboy doll for you to find, there's absolutely no extra information to be gleaned from any of the collectibles. There's no flavor text, and barely any comments from Galahad himself. You can just pick stuff up, look at it, and put it back. The sole purpose is trophy hunting, and even in that regard the collectibles suck. Why? Because there's no way to keep track of the stuff you've already collected.

 

in TLOU the pacing is crazy awesome and they nailed the level design most of the time. While in the order, most of the time the level design looks abruply-hatchetly made for "cover based shooter" and the pacing are forced. For example in TLOU when you cant run, you have reason to not run while in The Order you simply cant run. (the 1st mission after daughter intro show this well in TLOU)

Btw the order impression i have is from watching (limited) youtube videos. Still on fence to buy or not lol. dont want to spoil too much of this short game.

 

Okay, I'm tired of the repeated attempt to portray items in the game as nothing more elaborate than the sackboy easter egg. It's like some people have not played the game and only watched a rushed game on youtube.

(tiny spoilers here if you care about discovering them)

Spoiler

What about the newspapers, wax cylinders, letters, etc... explaining the situation with the East India Company, their trade monopoly, their own army, the rebels situation, the population's and nobles' reaction to major events, the queen being nowhere to be seen, the letters from Darwin, the ship manifests, the situation in India, the late 1800s arnarchist movement, Tesla vs Edison, have anyone took the time to listen to the citizens talking about Jack the Ripper?

They provide a lot of context and point out the central pieces defining this alternate history. The Darwin letter about half-breeds remains found in New Guinea was my favorite.

Did you actually look for them? I thought many of them were filled with information.

 

Yeah it's certainly not a new style of game. The more they close in the walls of your ability to feel influence over the character's development and game control, and the more obvious it is that the world is just a fakey static scripted set piece, the more claustrophobic and annoying it becomes. Some people dig highly directed, straightforward games though.

 

In TLOU to my eyes most areas where very, very obviously conceived/designed for/around a certain type of gameplay.
For instance in

Spoiler

the dam level you first pass through an area

in which all the obstacles/covers were/are obviously organised/placed to allow/support a firefight, an encounter with armed enemies...minutes later in fact you go back to that area and you fight enemies.
"Exploration only" areas are/were easily recognizable instead because they lack the necessary amount of covers.

I could always tell when I was in a "safe" area just by looking at the level design.

 

I suspect cut scenes are used to mask loading in the Order. As such I doubt they can patch them to be skipable easily. I think the "walking" sections are primarily intended to insist upon the measured pacing RAD designed.

I just wish more people would stop asking "why can't I run" and start thinking about why they want you to walk.

 

I think the cutscenes were realtime so cant really hide the loading. I think I read something like that in the Digital Foundry article.

 

If you guys are interested, a few of my buddies on the environment art team decided to a put an art dump on the polycount forums:

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=149706

 

Great art and tech, congrats to your team. I think it is the first 3D AAA game, I can play in a few years probably after a PS5/Xbox Two release and I will not think it is ugly. After my second run of a game I am less impressed than the first time but not this time.