How Ready at Dawn is Changing Third Person Shooters With The Order: 1886

Ready at Dawn's creative director Ru Weerasuriya has spoken to Edge about the studio's first new IP and PS4 debut, The Order: 1886 and discussed the technology behind the game and how they aim to shake up the third person shooter genre.

Weerasuriya pays particular attention to the game's lightning: 

“What is our world really like? If you look outside, it’s not just clear; there’s dust in the air, fog, all these things that make this world immersive. We created this light – it’s the way they use light on film sets. They have a light source, but because there’s so much dust, you feel like the light is glowing through these layers. It’s an aura almost, this halo effect. The light has no source so much as this glowing area. It makes it feel really gritty and dirty, and we thrive in the dirtiness of our world. Nothing’s clean.”

While there seems to be elements of Gears of War about The Order, in the way the characters interact as they fight Celtic legends in Victorian London, Weerasuriya insists that Ready at Dawn intends to spice up the dynamic players expect from the genre. 

“Rather than just making a thirdperson game, we took it upon ourselves to figure out why we like them. Not everybody likes thirdperson shooters for the same exact reason, so we tried to figure out what the core elements were [that] we wanted to keep, and also add that element of what we’ve done in the past – for example, melee.

“Shooters have a tendency to be very light or canned on melee. We wanted to find new ways of introducing it that would keep you feeling you were in a shooter that’s evolved into something else, rather than been segmented. It started with us trying to figure out how we balance the two, shooter and melee, but then it evolved into us making this shooter with different melee systems.

“Beyond that, we also tried to make the moment-to-moment gameplay different. We didn’t want it to be a grind for 40-45 minutes because you’re in shooting mode. Everything in the game happens in little bursts, and that really makes you not dwell too much on one thing that might otherwise bore you.”

The studio is also putting a lot of detail into cinematics in what Weerasuriya has previously described as a "filmic" experience. 

“[For] practically every single thing you see in the game, there’s no difference between cinematic and in-game. All the cinematics are realtime; you’ll get back into the game and everything you saw in the cinematic will be there.”

Asked how freely players will be able to explore the game world he said that while they want to give gamers some autonomy The Order will be a largely controlled experience. 

“That’s always the struggle. I love to explore the environment so long as it gives you something back. Yes, we’re trying to do some of that, but the reality is that it’s a singleplayer game that takes you on a ride, and we don’t want to compromise that ride.”

According to Sony developers, it seems the game will be released in Autumn, 2014 and is being developed by just 80 people. Weerasuriya recently detailed how the weapon's system will work in The Order and why the developers want players to stick with the weapons they choose.