Ready at Dawn co-founder discusses rocky relationship with PlayStation during The Order: 1886 development, cancelled sequel plans

"We were constantly fighting them about the dumbest, stupidest s**t."

Ready at Dawn co-founder Andrea Pessino has detailed some of the issues his company faced during the development of PlayStation 4 exclusive The Order: 1886.

Launched in 2015, Victorian steampunk shooter The Order: 1886 was lauded as a technical marvel and one of the best-looking games on Sony's then-new hardware. But its linear approach and reliance on cinematic sequences rather than gameplay left critics cold.

Speaking to Minnmax, Pessino said changes within Sony during the game's production had added strain to its development - most notably, the internal PlayStation team reshuffle that saw Shuhei Yoshida - who had been working closely with Ready at Dawn's team - become less hands-on.

"When Shu went to Japan - he was promoted - he became in charge of the whole thing [PlayStation], a lot of people followed him," Pessino said. "There was a whole shuffle upwards.

"Leadership is a delicate balance, one person changes, things change. So everything changed for us after that event. The people we'd agreed on things with had gone... they were still up the chain of command, but you can't bypass it. It's like the military - you can't just go 'hey, Shu!'. So the amount of friction... everything started to change at that point."

Pessino declined to go into much more detail on the causes of this friction, other than mentioning that the studio had to spend time discussing "contracts".

"It wasn't the only issue but it certainly did not help development in any shape or form," Pessino added, "the fact we were constantly fighting them about the dumbest, stupidest shit possible."

Founded in 2003, Ready at Dawn had worked closely with Sony for more than a decade on projects such as PSP installments of Daxter and God of War, as well as the God of War: Origins Collection for PS3.

The Order: 1886 was seen as the company's attempt to make its own mark, with a new franchise it could originate and hold the reigns for. Alas, after a mixed response, it was not to be.

"One of the problems is so much was cut, a lot of the more subtle narrative parts were lost because so much was chopped away," Pessino said. "Things that were supposed to be interactive became a movie... We were desperate, we needed to ship... We needed at least one more year. And we didn't get it, so it was 'cut, cut, cut'."

Ready at Dawn had pitched a sequel to Sony, and held discussions over its setting. It would have contained multiplayer gameplay, Pessino said, and could have launched three years later in 2018.

Instead, Sony chose not to move forward with any sequel plans after the first game failed to find a warm reception.

"I actually don't think it was the sales, I think it was the critical reception," Pessino said. "Sony is a very proud group, rightfully so. And the critical reception [to the first game] - if it had even been in the 70s, we would have had the sequel, I'm convinced. Just a few points more, it would have been okay. But because it got into the 60s... it was death.

"In a way, it's better that they passed," Pessino continued. "Because if we thought we'd have been screwed before... we'd have signed our life away. We were going to do it just because we wanted to deliver to the players, but we would have been... The budget would have been smaller, we would have been completely at the mercy of whatever decisions because we had no leverage whatsoever. We were not in a decision to negotiate a reasonable contract, they could have done whatever.

"But we would have taken it, because we wanted the chance to redeem the franchise, which we thought certainly had a shot. All of the groundwork was really, really good."

Ready at Dawn subsequently moved to developing VR games, and in 2020 was bought by Meta - until August 2024, when Meta shut the studio down.

Digital Foundry revisited The Order: 1886 relatively recently, and examined how the game still looked impressive when running at 60fps on PS5.