Ready at Dawn talks game length as The Order: 1886 faces criticism

This week’s exclusive PS4 release The Order: 1886 is facing criticism after a video has suggested it can be completed in under six hours.

A YouTuber called PlayMeThrough posted a complete run through of the game over the weekend, which clocked in at five and a half hours. The Order doesn’t have a multiplayer component, either, meaning the single player campaign is all there is.

Previous to the release of the video, developer Ready at Dawn’s CEO and creative director Ru Weerasuriya refused to comment on rumours concerning the game’s length when pressed by Eurogamer, but did discuss the subject in broader terms.

"Game length is important. Every game has to take its own time to tell its story,” he said. Some games can be short. Some games can be long. I still remember the first time I picked up Modern Warfare, I finished the campaign in about three-and-a-half or four hours. And it was fun because they made that campaign work for that because they had something else.”

When asked if he understood some of the concern being voiced about a 50 game offering a relatively sparse play length, he added: "I absolutely understand. I know people want to be entertained and have things they can play longer. But the industry has always had diversity. You go back 10 years, there were a lot of games that were just single-player, one time play. There were some games that were single-player and you could jump back in and get more. That’s what we did in our game. You can jump back and get other things out of it.

"Do we all need to do the same thing? I hope people who do like these kind of games, do play them. But I also want to be in an industry where me as a gamer, I’m given the choice to do that. I’ve played games that lasted two hours that were better than games that I played for 16 hours. That’s the reality of it.

"I’ve had many more experiences of very short games that have floored me, that have left me dreaming of the things I could do after, more than the games that have lasted 15, 16, 20 or 30 hours, where I’ve just been like, okay, I played it through and I got what I wanted, but I didn’t get more than what I was expecting. Sometimes I want to be floored, even if it’s for a short amount of time.

"Gameplay length for me is so relative to quality. It’s just like a movie. Just because a movie is three hours long, it doesn’t make it better."

The Order: 1886 is released on PS4 this Friday (Feb 20th).