Ready at Dawn Says The Order: 1886 Was Made With Sequels in Mind

The Order: 1886 made its debut in 2015, two years after the PlayStation 4’s 2013 launch in North America and Europe, and was originally one of the system’s more controversial game. The alternate history title was criticized by some for its length, as people thought it was too short an experience for $60, and suffered from somewhat lackluster sales. Still, Ready at Dawn still had big plans for The Order: 1886, as evidenced from its CEO Ru Weerasuriya’s thoughts in a recent interview.

The Order: 1886 was developed with other installments in mind. Ready at Dawn even ended the game on a cliffhanger and teased future entries in the would-be franchise. However, we may not ever end up with a proper sequel to The Order, as Ready at Dawn has already worked on other unrelated projects. But Weerasuriya, who worked as a creative director for The Order: 1886, seemed to have a ‘never say never’ outlook.

When asked about the future of the series, Weerasuriya said,

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.

Ready at Dawn is currently working on a “third-person action” title that will involve an entirely new IP. Weerasuriya noted that this genre of game, which is similar to The Order: 1886′s nature, is in the studio’s “DNA.”

Weerasuriya also touched on what he felt did and didn’t work with The Order: 1886. To be more specific, he felt it went beyond what PlayStation 3 games were capable of and found a balance between having an extensive story with comprehensive world-building and gameplay. As far as negatives, he said, “I think the shortcomings come from so much concentration on building an IP at the very beginning.” He also said that he didn’t think that a fight between production values and gameplay mechanics were competing against one another.

Specifically, length came up when talking about production values. Weerasuriya said,

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.

Weerasuriya said that the game did see “steady” sales, likely due to discounts, and acknowledged that many are asking for a sequel. (Our review of the game was rather positive.) While the future of The Order: 1886 is uncertain, Ready at Dawn seems ready to revisit the game’s world.

[Source: Polygon]