for honor

It doesn’t always dance gracefully with the craft of battle, but For Honor is a game that harnesses some of the most impactful melee combat we’ve seen.

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At E3 2015 Ubisoft debuted For Honor, a brand new action game focusing on the brutal art of swordfighting. The knights, vikings, and samurai of this war-torn world dazzled me during that show, giving me high hopes that this year’s E3 would give me even more epic sword battles to feast upon. Ubisoft happily obliged, introducing a brand new chapter in the game’s campaign mode and letting me once again take up my sword against the enemy hordes, and I left E3 2016 just as high on For Honor as I had the year before.

2016 is fixing up to be an amazing year for player vs player team-intensive titles. Major publishers abound are taking to this model that's almost MOBA-ish (like Defense of the Ancients or League of Legends) and infusing it with a much more action-intensive feel, such as being set in the skeleton of a first-person shooter. Some seem to be going the direct route of a 3rd person MOBA, not unlike Smite while others have a feel that reminds of the chaotic fun of Team Fortress 2, but each of them is bringing their own flavor and flair to the table in attempts to set themselves apart from the things that have been done before.

The current vibe in the world of video games is all about the shooter genre. First-person or third-person doesn't matter much so long as there's high action and a lot of bullets and explosions. A small team at Ubisoft Montreal realized that gun combat isn't the only type of combat out there, creating the medieval sword-based world of For Honor and unleashing it on the unsuspecting masses at E3 2015. I got my hands on a demo of the game while at Ubisoft's booth, and I'm ready to put down my gun and take arms with a sword.