Revisiting The Order: 1886 with developer Ready At Dawn

The Order: 1886, for a little while, was a big deal. It was the first original IP from independent studio Ready At Dawn — a team on the rise that had established itself with games such as God of War: Chains of Olympus and Daxter. Billed as Sony’s next big franchise, the company positioned The Order as a landmark title for its then-new PlayStation 4. It was a game, Ready At Dawn said, that set the foundation for sequels and deeper lore.

And then the game came out, and it underperformed both critically and commercially.

When the game released in 2015, many critics called out the game’s length relative to its cost, and its emphasis on aesthetics over gameplay mechanics. Since the release, Ready at Dawn has moved on to work on other projects and IPs.

I recently chatted with the game’s creative director, and Ready At Dawn’s CEO, Ru Weerasuriya about the lessons he and his team learned, the fairness of criticizing art, and what it’s like to build an ambitious IP.

Polygon: The Order: 1886 came out over three years ago and you all have released two or three games since. With all that time between you and the project, what are your thoughts on the game?

Ru Weerasuriya: Our thoughts haven’t evolved as much as people might think over time. We know what we did. We’re proud of what we did. That game was a huge thing as far as the studio was concerned, the amount of work it to get it there. Looking back at it, of course, we look at it as a great first step into a new IP. We look at it, also, as us spreading our wings in many ways, and learning a lot that ultimately we carried over after this game. A lot of things that we learned over the course of the development of The Order — and past that — we’ve carried to everything we do today.

Polygon: What do you think were the strengths of that project?

RW: From my point of view, and of course I’m biased being the director on the project, I would tell you one of the biggest trends and one of the biggest motivations that we had when we picked up The Order was to kind of break a boundary from where we were in the [PS3 and Xbox 360 era] to what next-gen could mean.

Polygon: I was just replaying the game, and in a lot of ways it feels like it was an experiment for you all. It did a lot of things with world building and storytelling that hadn’t been explored much at that point. Was that something you were going for with The Order?

RW: I think that we felt there was a medium to be found between the games that are pure gameplay-driven and the games that are pure cinematic. It’s an exploration. Every single time, if you don’t move the craft and you don’t move game development forward — we felt it wasn’t worthwhile for us to not take risks and try to figure out how to actually push storytelling forward and gameplay forward. To tell you the truth, we all read everything that was written on that. With what we do, we put ourselves out there to be judged for the work we do — that’s part of the job. We definitely took a lot from it.

Polygon: So let me ask you about the flip side of all this — what do you think were the shortcomings of The Order?

RW: I think the shortcomings come from so much concentration on building an IP at the very beginning. We were so dead-set on making sure this IP had a foundation — a big foundation — that stories could be told so many different ways. At one point, the IP and the story was driving a lot of the work that we were trying to do. It’s kind of natural when you start a very new game. You’ve seen that with new IPs in the past — we’re not the first ones. There have been many IPs in the past that were firsts, and if you look [at] the level of the gameplay and complexity, often times it’s much smaller than [it might be in] a sequel. You need to set up the IP, you don’t have time to do everything, so you rely on fewer mechanics. And then the sequel really brings you to the point where you’re like, ‘Alright, we’ll expand everything.’

Polygon: A lot of the criticism I read said that the game felt like it focused too much on production value over mechanics. Do you agree with that take at all?

RW: Not necessarily. We did concentrate quite a bit on production value; that’s absolutely true. It was a big goal of ours ... we wanted to showcase the PS4 in that first year as being, like, ‘Hey, this is a game changer. You have never seen games that look like this.’ So there’s definitely truth in saying that we put a lot of work in production value, but not at the expense of gameplay mechanics. I will tell you that if you look at the [number] of gameplay mechanics that are in there, if you were to do a bullet point list of everything that we did in the gameplay mechanic side, there’s quite a lot. …

I will tell you what I did read a lot of, was the length of the game. I don’t necessarily think that it was one against the other, that production value took away from gameplay mechanics; it was whether or not there [were] more combat sections. “Did we have the 20-30 minutes of all out combat?” Which we didn’t. We purposely made those things shorter.

Polygon: Do you think those are fair criticisms against a piece of art? Or do you think they should be taken as a creative or artistic choice?

RW: Is it a fair criticism? Absolutely, because criticism is part of what we do. There is no unfair criticism. There can be vitriolic stuff. There can be stuff to extremes where you kind of lose the point and all you see sometimes is the anger or whatever comes through that comment. But on the other side, every criticism that’s been made on our game is valid; it’s an opinion. And I think that those opinions have to be listened to and valued for what they are. Now, whether we agree with them is a different thing. Some of them we do. Some of them we don’t. There are artistic choices, absolutely, as you said, that we made where we wanted to be judged as a piece of art. But a piece of art creates great emotions in some people and some people walk by just saying ‘I don’t get it.’ That’s the point of art in many ways.

So, I don’t fault people for having criticisms for The Order at all — I actually expect it. And I expect that people are always going to be like that. I think the question is whether or not you can appreciate everything that is in there. Not just taking the bad that you see in something, but also elevate the good that you see as well. I saw certain people and certain reviews of the game talking about the achievements of the game, but almost in their conclusions amounting to nothing because the game wasn’t long enough. And I was just like, ‘OK, I get it. But can you truly talk about all these things that they themselves were groundbreaking and all that and just in one moment say the game’s not long enough so the game’s bad.’ We read those, and of course we don’t have to agree with them, but it’s people’s opinions.

Polygon: That’s something that’s talked about a lot — opinions on length versus price. You know, how people are like, ‘Well, if it’s a $10 game and it’s two hours long that’s perfectly acceptable.’ But if it’s a $60 game and it’s six to seven hours long, that gets kind of weird for people.

RW: Yeah. I get it. And again like I said, valid absolutely. People spend their own money to buy these games and to have entertainment. There’s an expectation now — and there was even more then than now, I would say — but there was the expectation that if ‘I spend the money, I should get a lot of what the game should be.’ And that’s valid again. You’re the player, you’re the one spending the money, and you want to get something out of it. But you need to have expectations with the games you buy. So if you want that kind of game, then you have to buy a different type of game.

Polygon: I feel like I see the game on sale a lot. Does that drive a lot of sales?

RW: I would say it’s [been] pretty steady since the game has been released. Of course, counting out the first few months for any game is pretty huge, it’s been pretty steady. There’s been kind of a constant group of people playing. And every time people play ... they’re kind of like, ‘Hey, just played your game, loved it. When’s the next one coming out?’ We keep on getting those. So yeah, I think it’s got a long life as far as the game’s concerned.

Polygon: Before it came out, Sony was really pushing it and promoting it. And you have never been shy in the past about saying the team made the first with sequels in mind — the game ends on a cliff hanger. But we haven’t really seen anything from it since. Is there a future for the series?

RW: It’s hard for me to answer that one [laughs]. I will tell you the same answer I would’ve given in the past before The Order came out, that [the] IP was built with a lot of work behind it. Even before the release of the game, we put a lot of work on the foundations of why each of these characters are who they are, where they came from, what is behind the story. Not 1886, but what’s behind the story. We asked, ‘Where did it start? Where is it going?’ There is a lot of [story] that was already written, because we felt, again, writing a game and just kind of isolating it to just the story that it would’ve been was not enough for us.

Polygon: Your games since then have been pretty different. Do you see Ready At Dawn wanting to go back to something like a high-budget, third-person shooter?

RW: Yeah, absolutely. We have it in our DNA. We’ve kind of gone [to] many different places in game design, in game genre, in the ways stories are told. From a platformer, to an action game, to an RPG, to a combat game, to a VR experience, to a third-person shooter, for 15 years we’ve done a lot of different things. But also, again, it’s a [tribute] to the team and the talent of the team. They had a drive to basically explore, become better. Like, ‘Personally, as a developer, how can you improve your craft?’ All of these people took those challenges on. So, for us to go back to bigger budget and make something on console, yeah, it’s in our DNA. We will always kind of have that balance. I think the studio is never stuck on one thing.

Polygon: Game genres are becoming more ubiquitous. The obvious example is every game has RPG mechanics, you know? It feels like having done the God of War games, Daxter, The Order, your other IPs, you’re really bringing a lot of different ideas together that you could sort of morph into one game. Do you think that might happen?

RW: There’s really value in having that expertise and leveraging in the right space. I don’t think it’s right to basically just kitchen sink the whole thing and just be like, ‘Let’s put everything in one and figure out what it becomes.’ But there’s value, definitely, in identifying the mechanics that you’ve learned from the past and going, ‘You know what? This would work perfectly in this game because the game is built for it.’

Polygon: It feels like you start to break down the barriers of ‘I just play RPGs’ or ‘I just play or first person shooters.’

RW: Yeah, absolutely. I think we need to always remember that although we have a pretty big audience already, we are not anywhere close to the audience that other entertainment industries have — movies, or music, or anything like that. If you look at how many people actually go and watch movies or listen to music, or whatever, it’s a massive audience. You have the whole world pretty much as an audience because the delivery method is much easier. You don’t need a console; you don’t need a PC to play it. Now, of course, with phones it’s getting much easier for us to reach a bigger audience. But at the same time, we have to attract those people to experience something like this. I think VR is doing that for some people. Some people actually who have never been [into] games or played games put a VR headset on and for them it clicks. [They’re like], ‘I’ve never played games, but this is it for me. This is what I want to do.’

Polygon: Is being an independent still helpful with doing something like that?

RW: Yeah. You get to make a lot of your own decisions. Partners are essential. I will tell you, being independent is a great thing for your decisions. It’s very scary as well [laughs]. Anybody who is an independent developer and a CEO out there, if you talk to them, they will tell you the same stories. … It’s a constant struggle that you’re having in one way or the other to be independent, because you have to look at things in a way where you are only as good as your next game in many ways, and you don’t have the room to fail.

Polygon: I’m always interested in the idea of the musician’s band or the comedian’s comedian — things that really appeal to creators. Do you kind of feel The Order is similar, in that it’s a game that really appeals to other game developers?

RW: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s one of the things that we did find out. We were striving to find that in the player as well, and I think many players did attach to it. But I know that even before the game came out ... it was like a developer’s game in many ways. There were a lot of things that a lot of other people contacted us about and said, like, ‘Hey, we’d love to talk to you guys about how you did this or that.’ We’ve always been open with a lot of studios to just at least share mindsets — like things that we’ve done, things that worked, that failed — because we do all always learn from each other.

But, you’re right, The Order did actually really appeal to a lot of devs out there that have said so many nice things to us about the game. There’s a lot of subtleties that are being appreciated by people. Like, an animator [might] come up to me and is like, ‘Oh my God, I looked at all your syncs, your sync moves inside the game, and they don’t have a hitch.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, it’s really cool.’ Does it really matter in many ways to the player? No. I will tell you, with or without it, the game would still be the same. But, for us, the craft was part of what we wanted to do. And it was self-imposed. For better or for worse, it was self-imposed.