In Ubisoft’s upcoming fighting game, For Honor, players can choose between three factions: samurai, Vikings and knights. However, while players will have to choose a faction, they are offered plenty of freedom over their actual playable character, with Ubisoft giving them to option to customise their features.

In a new interview, the game’s director Jason Vandenberghe discusses For Honor’s various character customisation features (such as the ability to play as a female character). Vandenberghe also explains why these features were so important to the development team at Ubisoft Montreal.



For Honor Character Dev Diary via Ubisoft US

For Honor Features Female and Black Characters

Speaking to GameSpot, Vandenberghe says that “this game isn’t about us creating characters and imposing them on you” and that “this game is about you.” As such, For Honor characters can be female. There are 12 characters in all, as each faction has four heroes each and while two of them can be either male or female, there are two other characters who can only be male or female. Ultimately though, the gender split is “50/50 all the way across.”

While female characters haven’t exactly been at the forefront of the game’s marketing push, some art by texture artist Tomasz Zaborek offers a look at the female samurai model (pictured below). It would be nice to see her in action on the battlefield but for now, it’s at least positive that she appears to avoid the dreaded ‘boob plate armor’ feature that so many other female fighters have.

Moreover, Vandenberghe says that “you can change the skin colour of your Vikings too,” adding that if you want to be a Black Viking then that’s a-okay as “it’s who you are. I want you to be able to be in that game.”

Although it’s unclear whether the skin tone of any other faction can be change during character creation, the inclusion of black characters is a big deal if only because people often criticise games like For Honor for included people of colour and ‘going against history.’ But, For Honor isn’t a “historical game,” says Vandenberghe.

The game director also adds that:

“I hope that people pick up on how much diversity there is in this game, both in terms of your ability to customize and how much choice you have in all the styles and it’s really a game for everybody; it really is. It’s so easy for people to say, ‘Oh, it couldn’t be true, they couldn’t have full gender representation and different ethnicities in a game like this.’ So we put a lot of time and effort into that.”

For Honor will be released on PC, PS4 and Xbox One on February 14, 2017. A closed alpha takes place next month.