One of the crown jewels in Sony’s line-up of new games announced on the first day of the E3 expo was The Order: 1886 – a brand new intellectual property, and the first from development company Ready At Dawn Studios which will bring Victorian age steampunk and supernatural horror to the PlayStation 4 as an exclusive title.
The visually stunning trailer for The Order: 1886 reveals an alternate and dark vision of London in the late 19th century where industrial-powered Zeppelins float across the skyline of Westminster and a band of militarian-dressed travellers make their way into the notorious Whitechapel area of the capital in horse and wagon.
The travellers are knights of The Order (of the games title) and as they reach Whitechapel they come under attack and vacate their transportation, producing heavily mechanised armaments. There’s movement in the fog but we never quite see what is out there when the weapons start discharging in all directions and the explosions are unleashed. Whatever it is, it’s fast and feral looking. With details of the game still sparse, we can only speculate these are werewolves.
Sony’s PlayStation blog reveals more about The Order: 1886, stating that this is a game that’s been in production since 2010 – awaiting the potential to fully develop on the PS4 platform. The industrial revolution will be a central plot point as will mankind’s centuries-old war against an ‘ancient foe’ – leading us to believe the Lycan vibe, although Sony does not confirm this in the press release.
The game is said to play out like a film and as you can see from the trailer, the game’s production, with superb use of lighting, texture and depth, has a cinematic quality and if you weren’t playing this as a PS4 game it could quite easily translate onto the big screen. The best part is that Sony promises there are no tricks here, none of the usual cut scene footage – this is the game as we will see when we play.
This steam-powered epic has us excited to see more and we’ll be joining The Order on its quest to gain a release date, which like its supernatural villains is currently shrouded in mystery!