Sony’s latest exclusive, The Order: 1886, is reportedly around five and a half hours long, with a full YouTube playthrough of the game clocking in at this time. Obviously, since the game has no multiplayer and is very story-focused, this has many people concerned.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtAREmWBf6w
Bear in mind that, if you watch a section of the video such as the first half of the shooting-heavy video above at the bridge section, you’ll notice that the difficulty is most certainly on quite a low setting, and that the player appears to be running and gunning. On the flipside, though, there’s cutscene sections which can’t be skipped and the player also spends a good couple of minutes looking for an objective just after the five minute mark.
Obviously, it’s hard to comment on how reflective this will be of any one playthrough, and we haven’t watched the entire playlist of videos to confirm the length, but Ready At Dawn’s CEO, Ru Weerasuriya, does have some things to say about these allegations, speaking to Eurogamer:
“I know there are numbers out there,” he said. “I know why the question comes up. I know numbers have been put out there that are actually not right. It’s impossible to finish the game in that time, so we know the numbers are wrong.”
It’s likely he’s referring to the “under five hours” length that was rumoured last week, rather than this five hour playthrough which has only just surfaced.
“Game length is important,” continued Weerasuriya. “Every game has to take its own time to tell its story. Some games can be short. Some games can be long. I still remember the first time I picked up Modern Warfare, I finished the campaign in about three-and-a-half or four hours. And it was fun because they made that campaign work for that because they had something else.
“You go back 10 years, there were a lot of games that were just single-player, one time play. There were some games that were single-player and you could jump back in and get more. That’s what we did in our game. You can jump back and get other things out of it.”
Weerasuriya continued to defend shorter length games, which suggests that The Order: 1886 might fit alongside those too:Â “I’ve played games that lasted two hours that were better than games that I played for 16 hours. That’s the reality of it,”
“I’ve had many more experiences of very short games that have floored me, that have left me dreaming of the things I could do after, more than the games that have lasted 15, 16, 20 or 30 hours, where I’ve just been like, okay, I played it through and I got what I wanted, but I didn’t get more than what I was expecting. Sometimes I want to be floored, even if it’s for a short amount of time.”
I must say that I agree with his next statement: “Gameplay length for me is so relative to quality. It’s just like a movie. Just because a movie is three hours long, it doesn’t make it better.” This is very true, and I’ve completed games such as Portal 2 and Journey in a matter of hours, yet they still remain some of my favourite gaming experiences of the generation. For The Order, we’ll just have to wait and see how it is, and if quality is better than quantity.
Keep an eye out for our own interview with Ru Weerasuriya later this afternoon, and we’ll have a review of the game before release.
Source: Eurogamer, via Videogamer
Sad Panda
After being bitten by the 3.5 hour Force Unleashed 2, I vowed not to pay full price for a short game again. As with Infamous (not short but no MP) this will be under£20 within 3 months. Will probably pick it up then. I still have loads of ps4/xbone games to finish so no need to splash a wad of cash on this.
beeje13
I think a lot of the criticism this game’s come under is unfair, but there’s USUALLY no smoke without fire. But just because it can be finished in under 6 hours, doesn’t mean the average player will.
It’s ok for me because I tend to buy games physically and play through them 1 at a time then sell on as soon as i’ve done with it. However, it would be mad to pre order this digitally at £50 with the rumours of length.
gazzagb
If you’re comparing your game to Modern Warfare’s single player, you’ve got to be pretty confident with your own game. I think my perfect length is 10-12 hours, provided it’s an enjoyable 10-12 hours.
Considering this doesn’t have MP, and if it is as short as it’s rumoured, I can’t see how many people can justify £40-50 on it.
leeroye
I relegated this game to rental as soon as i found out about their stupid “cinematic” borders. This is just another reason to confirm it as a rental only. A 6 hour SP campaign which i doubt has any replayablilty beyond the usual colletable guff is not worth a £50 investment day 1.
Andrewww
I think from the developers’ (if not the industry’s) perspective, it makes an awful lot of sense to cut back on content in games. Development costs are high, and the risk with every new IP is too, but a lot of the provided content is hardly ever seen by anyone.
I quickly checked some games’ main storyline completion trophies (selection completely random), and it seems that the single player story is usually finished by about a third of players only. Not to mention all additional content, such as side quests, collectibles, higher difficulties, etc., which fares even worse. Please correct me, if I got anything wrong there:
Alien Isolation: 15.8%
Assassins Creed 4: 34%
Bioshock Infinite: 37.3%
Far Cry 3: 36.8%
GTA 4: 9.6%
Killzone Shadowfall: 21.8%
Mass Effect 3: 37.9%
Skyrim: 30.3%
Uncharted 3: 35.1%
Therefore, as much as I personally liked e.g. Alien Isolation to be as long as it is, as I loved every minute of it, given only 15.8% of players ever finish the story at all, a shorter game might have meant better profitability, which would ultimately also have served me (a sequel being more likely, etc.).
double-o-dave
Thats a valid point. I never really thought about it that way.
There’s a few people I know with a PS4 who pick up a game now and then & never complete them as they don’t get the chance to play that often. Every time I ask them how they got on with a game, they’ve moved onto another new release.
I lent TLOU to a friend months ago, I asked him how far through he is as I wouldn’t mind it back for the multi-player and he said he was quite far through and must be near the end as he’d just met Ellie!
allan_treebeard
This is great news.
I was on the fence about this game but after hearing this I’ll definitely be picking it up. Quality over quantity. Time does not equal value. Too many games recently load up there games with “content” just to bulk out the game and say “there’s 80+ hours of game time!”. That was the main reason I didn’t pick up Dragon Age Inquisition. It really puts me off. My best gaming experiences of the past few years have been games that didn’t outstay their welcome. Just like a good TV series you have to know when to stop and finish on a high.
I have a limited number of hours for gaming in the week and don’t want to be playing the same game 6 months later. Great decision Ready At Dawn.
Matroska_
The problem here is that if they’ve gone for a cinematic experience that lasts about 5.5 hours or so, then why would anyone pay £50 or more for this when they could get a couple of films that run for 5.5 hours for about £10 or £15 (or in fact, as many films as you can watch in a month for abouty £5.99 on Netflix)?
So of course: gameplay. But the gameplay basically seems like fairly standard cover-based shooting. Almost the entire focus is on how cinematic it is (even down to the forced letterbox mode) and the story and characters rather than the gameplay. So again, you’re basically paying £50 for a long film. That’s what it feels like.
Normally games blow movies and TV out of the water in terms of £ per hour of entertainment. Dragon Age Origins gave me about 400 hours of entertainment for £7 on Steam (admittedly in a sale). Even new, that many hours for £30 would’ve been amazing. A game that may last for 5 hours (as I said elsewhere, I’m actually more inclined towards 10 hours being realistic for most people, but still) for £50 is really bad value. If 5 hours is correct, that’s £10 for an hour: that would be like if a ticket to see all LotR films would be £120. Dragon Age Origins would be £4000. The Order doesn’t have deep character customisation, it doesn’t have different routes through the game, it doesn’t have many different endings, it doesn’t have multiplayer. It feels like we’re paying for a very expensive tech demo to show off to our PS4less friends.