Ready at Dawn’s last major PlayStation-exclusive game, The Order: 1886, seems to have had a potential sequel at work. According to studio co-founder and developer Andrea Pessino, however, Sony turned down the sequel because of the game’s middling critical reception.
In an interview with MinnMax, Pessino spoke about how the studio had pitched a sequel to The Order: 1886, describing it as “an incredible sequel”. However, Sony passed on it, referring to the move as Ready at Dawn potentially having “signed our life away” with the sequel.
“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.”
Pessino also revealed details about Ready at Dawn’s relationship with Sony; since The Order: 1886 was set to be a big landmark title in terms of visual fidelity for the PS4, Sony had insisted on milestones to be met. These milestones were missed, however, when the studio had to work on other aspects of the title, leading to missing out on payments. As such, working on a sequel would have led the studio into a worse position than they already were.
“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 was originally released in 2015. While its short length and limited interactivity played an important part in its middling critical reception, the game still had an interesting story that ended on a cliffhanger. Creative director Ru Weerasuriya had also mentioned the potential for a sequel to the game all the way back in 2016.
Curiously, the turn of this last decade saw rumours popping up about a potential PS5-exclusive sequel to The Order: 1886. However, with five years having passed since then, little more has come up about the game.
After its work on The Order: 1886, Ready at Dawn worked with Meta to release a slate of VR titles. After the success of VR game Lone Echo, the studio was acquired by Meta, and released Lone Echo 2. Ultimately, however, the studio was shut down last year.
For more details about The Order: 1886, check out our review from back when it first came out. We gave it a score of 7 out of 10, praising its impressive visuals but also criticising its over-reliance of quick-time events and the abrupt end to its story.
