Those who've been following The Order has known that the core of the game is undeniably a cinematic, linear cover-based TPS. And that's exactly what was shown today, and as well as what was hinted by the write-up of GameInformer. The GI article itself said that it was pretty much a following the conventional design wisdom of a cover-TPS, with a QTE implementation for melee.
However, games are made of more than just their core-mechanics. We've also known that The Order at least have a few elements that they're adding to expand themselves to be more than just a pretty TPS with a nice lore:
- filmic, cinematic quality that completely meshes cutscene/gameplay - delivered in spades.
- branching QTE time-slowdown melee. - shown. whether or not it's good in practice, who knows.
- soft-body physics and combat impact - ???
- unique enemies and how they impact combat - ???
- traversal - ???
- unique weapons and combat impact - ???
- investigation moments - ???
The most uniquely hinted things about The Order have yet to be shown. They're still hiding the half-breeds design, even though they've been talking about them ever since E3.