We haven’t talked very much about it, but we’re starting to talk a bit because people are playing the For Honor alpha. We have a network innovation that allows all players in the match to experience the same game at the same time regardless of who is hosting, and it’s incredibly resilient to lag. JV: Yes, that was one of the great difficulties in making it work, but see in our tests that it’s largely solved. Is that one of the problems that you’ve encountered with For Honor? It’s obviously not Dark Souls-esque, but one of the enduring problems with that game is the netcode – the lag can ruin it, especially in Australia. When I first saw For Honor it appealed to me because I thought it might be a Dark Souls-esque, PvP-centric combat game. PCG: The mention of Dark Souls is interesting. Fortunately I stumbled onto a team that had a lot of experience with the tech. We could have maybe done some duelling, but to do the game you played couldn’t have happened. For Honor was not possible prior to this generation, and that’s not an exaggeration. The amount of technological invention we’ve had to do to make this work is stunning. The other piece of it – now that I understand the game and we’ve been making it – is that we really couldn’t have made it before. This topic of sword, medieval style conflict and fighting is no longer something to be ashamed of – it’s entered into the common discussion. JV: Well it wasn’t cool at the time! There was Lord of the Rings, then Game of Thrones, and the success of Dark Souls and Skyrim changed a lot of things. PCG: You couldn’t have made it lightsabers or something? Remember, I had this idea before the Lord of the Rings films existed – the world was different then.
PCG: What do you think changed along the way for publishers to be more receptive to an idea like this? We applied ourselves to the problem, the team took it and made it into the game that you’re playing now. They understood fighting really well, and some people with Red Steel experience. I brought the idea of the controller configuration and the experience of the game to a team that had done a bunch of Naruto stuff, and Prince of Persia. But then the world turned and it changed, and I pitched to the right place, Ubisoft Montreal, and here we are making it. So I started pitching this thing to anyone who would listen, and the answer was just “no” for a fucking decade. I had this idea about the layout, and thought it made the player feel like how I feel when I do it in real life. The rest of the controller’s configuration just fell into place. So I wondered what would happen if we took that and applied it to the right stick of a controller. I just fell in love with it! I’ve always been studying martial arts in some form or another, especially medieval fighting.
JV: It sounds like a made up story but I can assure you this is what happened: about 14 years ago I took a course in German longsword, which is this re-discovered form of combat. PCG: Did you come up with the idea? Was it collaborative? Jason VandenBerghe: I don’t know a single game that plays out like this. It’s safe to say there aren’t many big budget games that play out like this. When it was first unveiled I didn’t understand what it was.
#FOR HONOR CRACK WATCH PC#
PC Gamer: This was the first time I played For Honor. He's worked on Red Steel 2, Far Cry 3 and Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. VandenBerghe is the creative director of For Honor. Since joining Ubisoft in 2008, he’s worked on Red Steel 2, Far Cry 3 and Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. I spoke to VandenBerghe during his recent Australian visit.
Turns out, creative director Jason VandenBerghe feels the same way. In other words, like Rainbow Six: Siege before it, seeing the game played isn’t enough to be sold on it – it’s important to have it in your hands, and it’s important to watch as a community blossoms around it. I played a little bit of the single player campaign last week, in addition to a match of the 3v3 Dominion mode, and my strongest impression was that it’s the type of game that will only show its true colours once the playerbase has an opportunity to “market” it. This is neither a musou or a Dark Souls game, but it could very well appeal to fans of both ends of the spectrum.Īudience response to the recent multiplayer alpha has been positive, and our own Tom Marks seemed to like it, though he had his reservations. Is this a set piece laden hack-and-slasher in the vein of Ryse? Is it a Dark Souls PvP clone? Is it something entirely else? It turns out For Honor feels very much like its own thing, thanks mostly to its meticulous approach to swordplay. When Ubisoft revealed For Honor early last year, it had some people scratching their heads.