‘For Honor’ Gets Intimate with Violence

FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Games

‘For Honor’ Gets Intimate with Violence

Many games expect us to be moved by explosive gunfights—but these one-on-one, sword-against-sword encounters feel so much more powerful.

At its weakest, Ubisoft's For Honor has you carve effortlessly through swarms of generic enemies. These "soldiers" all look the same, and all swiftly die from one slash of your blade. This is fictional violence at its most boring. Not only does it insinuate that life is pointless, that it isn't spectacular, but like the violent scenes in so many video games, these encounters are merely something for you to do with your controller while you await a more significant moment.

Advertisement

Elsewhere, however, For Honor displays, if not a comprehensive understanding of how to make simulated violence more substantive, at least the beginnings of progress.

One of video games' most persistent problems, whereby you kill repeatedly, dispassionately and from a distance—both physically and emotionally—is addressed partially by having you use, rather than a gun, a sword. It's a moderate quality, not unique to For Honor, but forcing us so close to our enemies that we can hear them grunt and scream, and watch them flail backwards each time we strike a blow, implies a willingness to rub our noses in the consequences of violence.

It's still grimly pleasant, but stabbing rather than shooting video game opponents feels inherently more personal. It wasn't a bullet from a gun that killed your enemy—it was something held in your hand.

For Honor screenshots courtesy of Ubisoft.

This dynamic is best impressed by For Honor's one-on-one sword fights—two against two and four versus four multiplayer setups are also available. Opponents may attack your head or your left or right sides, and in return you can either accordingly position your sword to block their slashes or try to identify which of the three areas of their body they have left unguarded and strike back.

Rarely is violence in games so intimate. Rather than broadly fire or swipe at a holistic target, we have to carefully observe and respond to our attacker's specific movements. To say this humanizes For Honor's enemies might be stretching, but certainly, above the villains we commonly and blithely dispatch in many of its contemporaries, these opponents seem to be thinking.

Advertisement

Simply by virtue of making us out-maneuver them repeatedly, rather than waiting for them to make the single mistake of leaving cover, the knights, Vikings and Samurai of For Honor demand we pay them closer attention. Ignoring the aforementioned (and unfortunate) generic soldiers, each of the game's battles is a significant moment unto itself—when we have to take time to block and slash around an enemy, it feels like none of our kills are being straightforwardly awarded.

The presence of any emotion during a violent scene in a game feels like a step forward, towards addressing and perhaps moving past murder as a mere input.

The game has an overall willingness to get close to violence. In the opening scene of the knight's story, the narrator describes the fictional land of Ashfield as "plagued by peace." She wishes for a return to "an age of wolves," and expresses her admiration for men who "know the difference between predator and prey." Such a blood lust reflects For Honor's willingness for and comfortableness with violence.

Patently, this made-up world is founded upon the letting of blood. If we are going to exist here, the game openly explains that we must confront violence. It is not just something that we do, thus reduced to a listless input. It is front and center, and something to which we must pay attention.

To imbue us with a hunger for killing might seem contrary to "good" or "thoughtful" violence. But the presence of any emotion during a violent scene in a game feels like a step forward, towards addressing and perhaps moving past murder as a mere input, performed as casually and disinterestedly as drawing a card in Solitaire. This motivation elevates For Honor above its peers, slightly but certainly significantly.

Advertisement

Deliciously, the strongest attack in the game is activated by filling a "Revenge Meter"—and even that word, "revenge," implies the presence within our character of anger and desire. It may be cold, and signified by a nonchalant video game gauge, but at least our protagonist in For Honor seems to possess a heart.

And on occasions, it comes close to earning a rare distinction in video games: finding both spectacle and drama not in the killing of dozens of people, but the intimate violence between you and just one other.

In those moments, when you are face-to-face not with a generic soldier but a single enemy knight, you feel as if the violence you are committing is against an at least partially defined individual. He may not have a face or name, but if only by having the camera focus exclusively on him, and forcing you to closely consider his movements, you are permitted a greater sense that what you are killing is a person.

Related, on Waypoint: How 'The Last of Us' Unearthed the Ugly Side of Playing Protector 

Within the overall action of the game, these battles are specified; and to capture them, the camera and mechanics of For Honor duly shift. It prevents the violence from seeming blithe. Punctuated by a distinct change in perspective and the sudden introduction of a more complex attack and defend system, these fights, certainly the bloodiest in For Honor, become remarkable.

They are also, each of them, undoubtedly more memorable than many of the gunfights video games often expect us to find engaging. If the one-on-one battles in For Honor didn't recur so often, if to kill an individual felt like a truly special occasion, that would even more greatly reflect what one feels ought to be the rules for fictional violence: that it never be performed lackadaisically, and only against at least partially defined and human-seeming characters. Alas, the game's sheer body count rather undercuts that potential.

To place us eye-to-eye with video game enemies—and make us carefully observe their body language before guiding a killing blow to its conclusion—encourages us to feel and take responsibility for violence. But to have us do so repetitively affirms there is progress still to be made.

Follow Ed on Twitter.