The Order: 1886, originally released back in 2015 exclusively for the PS4, was a single-player title. According to creative director Ru Weerasuriya, a proposed sequel to the third-person shooter would have been even grander, featuring larger battles, and even multiplayer elements. Speaking to Julien Chieze, Weerasuriya said that multiplayer was originally in the works for The Order: 1886, before the studio decided to scrap it in favour of bringing it back in a sequel, as caught by VGC.
According to Weerasuriya, a 10-page pitch was written for follow-ups to The Order: 1886. Among the new features for the sequels would have been large-scaled battles and multiplayer. Two sequels were part of the pitch: The Order 1891, and The Order 1899. The story for what would have become a trilogy was already mapped out by Weerasuriya. There were even plans to take the franchise further into the future, with a script also being ready for a story in the series taking place some time in the 20th century.
However, as we know, sequels to The Order: 1886 would never be made. Back in February, Ready at Dawn studio co-founder Andrea Pessino had spoken about how proposals for sequels were ultimately rejected by Sony owing to the middling critical reception for the game. Despite the rejection, however, Pessino noted that the studio ended up avoiding a bullet, since working on a sequel would have meant “signing our life away” for Ready at Dawn.
“It would have been an incredible sequel, I can tell you that for a fact,” said Pessino. “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.”
According to Pessino, Ready at Dawn already went through quite a bit of trouble during the development of The Order: 1886, including missing out on payments due to missed milestones, which was owed to having to work on different aspects of the game than was originally planned. This largely came about because the shooter was being developed as one of the landmark releases for the PS4 in terms of visual fidelity. Pessino also notes that a sequel would have likely had a smaller budget.
“We were going to do it just because we wanted to deliver it to the players but we would have been…,” said Pessino. “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.”
“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: 1886 is available on PS4, and can be played on the PS5 through the use of backwards compatibility. For more details, check out our review from back then.
