Ready at Dawn co-founder has revealed the now-shuttered studio pitched a sequel to PS4 exclusive The Order: 1886 to Sony, but was denied the chance to make it. Speaking to MinnMax in an interview on YouTube, Andrea Pessino shared he believes Sony didn't green-light another game based on the poor critical reception the original title got at its launch.

He said: "I don't think it was the sales, I think it was the critical reception, that's the thing. Sony is a very proud group and rightfully so, and the critical reception, if it had even been just in the 70s, we would have had the sequel, I'm convinced. Just a few points more and it would have been okay."

The Order: 1886 received a Metacritic rating of 63 upon its 2015 launch, and a 6.8 user score from over 4,000 verdicts closely lines up with that score. In our own The Order: 1886 PS4 review, we lined up with the overall reception with a 6/10 score and concluded: "The presentation is sublime from the release's rousing start right the way through to its anticlimactic finish, but several shoddy design decisions detract from its otherwise exemplary gloss. The developer's crafted an incredible universe, but outside of the title's core cast, it's failed to do much of note with it."

Funnily enough, we said the original game was "begging for a sequel to realise its undeniable potential", which Pessino claimed would have been ready around 2018 if Sony had given Ready at Dawn the go-ahead. It would have also come with a multiplayer mode alongside another cinematic single player adventure.

Pessino suggested the mock reviews it was conducting internally were "way higher" than what critics gave the game upon its release, and a non-negotiable release date of 20th February 2015 meant Ready at Dawn didn't have enough time to get the title in proper shape. "We needed another year, that’s the reality. We needed at least one more year, we didn’t get it, so we were like, cut, cut, cut."

He said that "a lot of the more subtle narrative parts were lost because so much was chopped away and things that were supposed to be interactive became a movie". One of the main flaws with The Order: 1886 was its overly cinematic approach, to the point where gameplay felt like more of an afterthought. It appears that wasn't how the game was first envisioned.

After making The Order: 1886, the California developer shifted its sights to the VR space, and was eventually acquired by Oculus Studios. Last year, however, it was shut down. Would you have played a sequel to The Order: 1886? Mourn the game that never was in the comments below.

[source youtube.com, via videogameschronicle.com]