Capturing the thrill of swordfighting
When For Honor was announced at E3, I wasn’t sure what to make of it, but I knew the man on stage presenting it, creative director Jason VandenBerghe, had a lot of passion for a game that casts you in the middle of epic swordfights. After playing through a competitive multiplayer match at PSX, I caught up with VandenBerghe to discover more about For Honor and was pleased to find his enthusiasm hasn’t faded in the slightest.
For VandenBerghe, the concept behind For Honor has been a long dream in the making. “The ideas behind this game have their origin in my life-long fascination with this art form...with the combat as an art in general,” VandenBerghe says. “I mean I’m that kind of geek; I’m a weapon fighter. I’ve [studied this] my whole life.” But the idea didn’t start brewing until he took a class in Western martial arts, which is a rediscovered form of longsword fighting that the Warden hero uses in For Honor. “I started thinking about controls and how it would feel to make a video game that made me feel the way I feel when I have a sword in my hand,” VandenBerghe says.
It sounds simple, but it was a hard idea for people to wrap their heads around. Think about it – a competitive game that has the depth and modes of a shooter, where the swordfighting is more than mashing buttons. If you don’t understand swordfighting, you don’t get why that’s exciting. I didn’t grasp how that was intriguing until I got my hands on the game for a match.
In For Honor, you always need to keep your stance in mind. You want to succeed at parrying attacks. To do this, you want to take a left, right, or high stance depending on the incoming strike’s direction, but you also want to throw off your opponent with heavy and light attacks in a direction different from your stance. Mind you, while you’re doing this, chaos is erupting on the battlefield and you have to make sure you’re succeeding at the larger objectives, depending on the mode you’re playing. Ubisoft saw the promise of this dynamic, and VandenBerghe has been refining his idea for the past three and a half years with people on its staff who have worked on the fighting mechanics in games from the Naruto and Prince of Persia series.
For Honor comes with a singleplayer mode, which just like most shooters means a story campaign. Although Ubisoft isn’t discussing that narrative yet, it is working to create an interesting and fun explanation for the For Honor fiction, because obviously knights, samurai, and vikings didn’t actually fight in our history. “This is not a historical game, but it’s pieces of history put together in a different order,” VandenBerghe says. “The goal is to create a campaign that’s a satisfying enough and a full experience, even if you don’t want to indulge in the multiplayer.”
Beyond the campaign, For Honor has competitive multiplayer, co-op, and splitscreen. Multiplayer has various modes, but Ubisoft has only announced Dominion mode, which has you fighting to control capture zones. VandenBerghe says there are two main areas for progression in multiplayer. The first is the feats, which are four abilities that unlock over time as you succeed in a match (like by getting killstreaks), such as a catapult strike and the ability to reinforce your soldiers around you.
The other big part of the multiplayer experience is that your gear comes with stat variability; so while you can customize it, you can also do some fine-tuning to improve it. But VandenBerghe makes it clear that it’s not about making your character stronger by playing more. “It’s about letting you tune and change how you want to play your character,” he says.
In addition, you can customize your character as you wish with different armor and weapons. The game has three factions for to choose from: the knights, the vikings, and the samurai. Within each group, multiple “heroes” have different weapons, armor, and play styles, even though at present only one has been announced for each faction. “We’ve got a lot more coming,” VandenBerghe says. “Each one will play differently enough that you’ll have your favorites that you want to master because it suits how you want to play, but they’re close enough that it’s kind of one set of skills. You’re learning how to fight in For Honor and then there are variations inside of that. Each hero will have a slightly different mechanic.”
I played as the Warden, a knight hero, who has three different stances and lock and guard break mechanics. VandenBerghe says the Oni, a samurai hero, has a different blocking style where they don’t hold their stances. “Their block stance lasts about half a second, so you have to anticipate a little bit more and it’s more challenging to block, but they do more damage,” VandenBerghe says. “They’re an aggressive, faster character that relies on dodging, quick strikes, and combos whereas the Warden has higher defense and more reach.”
The biggest goal for For Honor is to make sure every weapon feels differently when you wield it, adding variety and authenticity to the experience. “My goal from the beginning is that I really want to make this game for anyone with a swordfighting fantasy,” VandenBerghe says. “I feel like this game has been missing.”
VandenBerghe’s right to an extent; something about being on that battlefield made me feel the intense competition that I do when I play a shooter that I’ve never felt with a sword in my hands before in a video game. I just hope the game can continue that thrill I felt from my one match and doesn’t become stale. VandenBerghe is aware of that challenge, which is why the team has already started consulting people by having closed alphas. “Variety is the most important thing,” VandenBerghe says, which is why the game is offering numerous heroes, modes, and even options on the battlefield for how you want to play. For now, all we can do is wait for Ubisoft to unveil more heroes and modes to get a better idea of the game. Kimberley Wallace