It seems there is huge pressure that comes with being :
1) AAA 2)Exclusive 3)New IP
It seems there is a sort of crack down on what the developers tried to achieve with this game.
If this were an indie/budget title it wouldn't get nearly as much flame but could actually be praised to the heavens.
Journey,the walking dead,gone home were all such games that are championed for being different.
The Order's status entailed a lot of expectations.A strict definition of what constitutes a game is being artificially applied in full force here.
It needed to be long,beefy and with a support of multitudes of online modes.It needed to be a "hardcore game".
I don't think there is anything wrong with a game being focused on sheer audio/visual beauty.Part of the enjoyment of art is simply taking everything in and appreciating it for what is.There doesn't need to be a consumerist view when evaluating everything that pertains to art.
We really need to get this out of the way: journalists are not reviewing the Order poorly because it does things
differently. There are games that do things differently, even things the Order does, even games that came out for $60, even games that were short, cinematic experiences, that were not nearly as trashed.
The actual reviews outline their problems with the game. Let's just go through some of them.
For example, Ready at Dawn chose to use a very close over the shoulder view during gameplay. While it makes the game feel more intimate, this camera location can be problematic during combat scenarios, obscuring your visibility.
Despite the fantasy underpinnings, you only ever come across human adversaries during the shooter sections - and, thanks to a quirk in the story that's never satisfyingly resolved, they're all cockneys and Irishmen who wear bowler hats while exclaiming 'Cor, blimey' (I kid you not) as they're grazed by your bullets. Later, in the tradition of many third-person shooters, some of the more stubborn foot-soldiers find metal hats to wear.
And though these sequences are certainly interactive, The Order: 1886 does little to elevate them beyond their most basic elements. The encounters in which you actually fight the monsters that are billed as such a large part of the game are dwarfed by those in which youre simply whack-a-mole shooting goons. I lost count of the times I traded small-arms fire with waves of hapless guards and fodder until an ally says Thats all of them, and it was time to move on.
That said, it telegraphs its third act badly, and also gives each main character a magical health drink that revives them from almost any injury: pretty much the only thing that gets killed here is the tension.
And so forth.
This isn't "I am reviewing Football Manager and I can't even directly control the quarterback, 3/10." This is reviews saying that they did not find what was there engaging. We can agree that the third-person shooter parts are, you know, third-person shooter parts, right? Why, then, do they still do things that were oldhat by the middle of last generation? The precedence is there to follow, it's not a lack of innovation, it's a lack of ignoring established solutions.
This narrative that the media is out to get games that aren't a certain type, or as you put it
It needed to be long,beefy and with a support of multitudes of online modes.It needed to be a "hardcore game".
is
madness. Shadows of Mordor was short and with no online multiplayer, it won Game of the Year in a ton of places. Long, beefy games like Destiny did not and were mostly panned. The Walking Dead was hailed as a revolution in game design and sweeped awards left and right, it is none of what you described. It's more like The Order than you would probably like to admit, but it doesn't fall down on its execution.
Gaming community, I am begging you, move off the idea that because someone disagrees with you, it is either because they are incompetent or have an agenda that leads to the ruination of all video games. Some people are clearly crazy, some people walk into biases, there is not a systematic institution in place to trash the game you happen to be hyped for at that specific moment. The Order is not being reviewed poorly because the point was missed, the point was just dull.
