Sony allegedly turned down a sequel to PlayStation 4 game The Order: 1886 due to its poor critical reception, the co-founder of developer Ready at Dawn has said.
Andrea Pessino told MinnMax that Ready at Dawn pitched an “incredible” sequel and would’ve “signed [its] life away” to make it purely for the sake of players. The Order: 1886 arrived in 2015 as an action game about werewolves in Victorian London but, despite being among the best looking games of the generation, it received middling reviews from critics.
“It would have been an incredible sequel, I can tell you that for a fact,” Pessino said, though admitted he couldn’t say much because he doesn’t own the franchise rights. “We pitched the sequel to Sony regardless of [the critical reception] and, in a way, it’s better that they passed because if we thought we were going to be screwed before, man, with the sequel, we would have signed our life away.”
Pessino said Ready at Dawn had a difficult relationship with Sony while making the original game and ultimately had to cut myriad elements in order to hit deadlines and eventually released The Order: 1886 before it was ready.
The graphical fidelity of the game’s initial pitches and reveal led Sony to expect the same quality of builds to be submitted at certain milestones in its development, Pessino said, but payments were withheld when Ready at Dawn had to prioritize other things and temporarily couldn’t hit the same graphical standards.
While Pessino said this is industry standard for third party publishers, it led to a frustrating relationship between Ready at Dawn and Sony. The team was ready to sign up for a worse situation to make a The Order: 1886 sequel regardless.
“We were going to do it just because we wanted to deliver it to the players but we would have been… Terrible budget, budget would be small, we would have been completely at the mercy of any decisions and things because we had no leverage whatsoever,” Pessino said.
“We were not in a position to negotiate a reasonable contract; they could have done whatever. But we would’ve taken it because we wanted a chance to redeem the franchise. All of the groundwork was really, really good, I can tell you that for a fact. There was so much there that just needed to be built on.”
The Order: 1866 was also left on a blatant cliffhanger so fans were desperate for a sequel to come. Ten years on and those hopes are dashed, of course, with Ready at Dawn being shut down by owner Meta in 2024.
In our 6/10 review, IGN said: “Though a stylish adventure, The Order: 1886 emphasizes its cinematic polish at the crippling cost of gameplay freedom.”
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
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