For Honor’s dazzling multiplayer swordplay translated surprisingly well to the nuances of a three-pronged campaign during the E3 demo earlier this month — here’s our full preview. To find out how it happened, we sat down with Creative Director Jason VandenBerghe (the bloke with the impressive beard during Ubisoft’s conference; see below).

We weren’t able to ascertain if his cane conceals a hidden blade, so I’ll just make it up. Yes, it does.

Ben Salter, Stevivor: I played multiplayer at E3 last year – with Ken Lobb actually, classic E3 moment – and now you’ve revealed the campaign this year. How did you originally envision For Honor, as a primarily multiplayer or single-player experience?

For Honor Creative Director Jason VandenBerghe: Originally I wanted to do both. But we knew that it would be far, far easier, or I should say possible, to go from the multiplayer mechanic set to the single-player mechanic set, instead of the other way around. If we had started with single-player, we would have failed on the multiplayer side. Especially knowing what I know now about how difficult it was to get that multiplayer working [for E3 last year], we had to invent whole new technologies to make that thing work, and now it works and it’s brilliant, right. It would never have worked.

So it was always the plan for this, I’m going to call it a ‘shooter with swords’, to create the full package [of single-player and multiplayer]. We revealed it in that order because I think it’s the perfect way to experience the game. At the heart of it is this multiplayer desire to be part of this community of warriors. But the campaign has always been something I’ve wanted to do. I think it just came faster than I was expecting. At the very beginning I was like ‘someday’. As the project got better and better it became clear that we could do it in the first go, and I was like ‘let’s do it, man’.

Stevivor: What were you looking for when you had this technology working for multiplayer? You say you did it in the first go, but what did that involve to turn it into a campaign experience?

VandenBerghe: The heart of this game is the fighting, through the dueling and the battlefield. The thing that we’re working on to make that transition work is mostly A.I. The enemies you’re fighting with need to be interesting opponents. There’s this weird psychological shift that happens though. When you’re playing against another person, you interpret everything that they’re doing as that person either making a mistake or being clever.

When you’re playing against A.I., you interpret it as the designer either being good or bad. The experience of fighting an A.I. is totally different. So we needed to design A.I. characters that were fun to fight with this core mechanic set, which also works really well in multiplayer. That’s really been the core challenged, making that all work. Then creating this world by pouring a ton of context into this battle to explain why the Knights, Vikings and Samurai doing this.

I don’t know if you know this, but the Japanese did not invade Norway in the Middle Ages. That didn’t happen; it’s not a thing that occurred. There’s no world for that, so we had to come up with our own explanation. That’s been really fun.

Stevivor: It must be liberating to be able to make-up the backstory, rather than following the semi historically accurate model of Assassin’s Creed.

VandenBerghe: Sure. I mean we could have chosen to go that way if we wanted to. We could have stuck with historical stuff and come up with reasons for it all, but it’s just been a blast. It’s so much fun with the basic premise of the world being ‘because they’re fighting!’

We have our 1,000 years of war. This whole concept is these factions have been growing together all this time and fighting these wars for so long, they’ve almost forgotten why. The notion is a world of endless war. Then we take our villain and put it on top of that.

https://youtu.be/YuuJZ2m2x0k

Stevivor: To go back to the beginning: where did this duelling mechanic come from? You mentioned inventing new technologies, but inventing an entire new control scheme is almost unheard of now.

VandenBerghe: *Laughs* Well, it actually started about 13 years ago. It started when I took a course in German longsword. It’s a rediscovered form of sword fighting, like a marital art. There’s this organisation called HEMA (Historical European Marital Arts) that cracked the code on medieval fighting styles in the last 20 years. I’m that kind of a geek; I’m that guy. So I took a course and I was learning the style. It’s so clear and simple, and the principles are so cool. In the [E3] demo there’s a moment where the Warden says something like ‘when you fight with a longsword your sword is your shield’. That’s one of the principles of this fighting style. I was so struck by that, I was working on controller games at the time, and I thought ‘let’s try it.’ What would happen if we took those ideas and try to translate them onto the right stick? Could we move these cuts to the right stick somehow? It all kind of clicked. I was walking down the sidewalk pantomiming the controller. It was great.

Then I spent the next 10 years pitching the game to people and having them tell me no. They were all like ‘nah, it’ll never work. It’ll be dumb. It’s gonna suck.’ For 10 years.

Eventually I pitched to Ubisoft Montreal, the general manager there, and he said no. He said ‘no…but we’ve got a team I’d like you to meet’. He introduced me to the people I’m working with now and they adopted me, the lost creative director puppy. And the rest is history. It sounds almost impossible. Whenever I tell this story I’m thinking in my head ‘are you buying this story?’ Because it did actually happen that way. I know it sounds like I’m making it up, but I’m telling you, man, I took a sword fighting course and was like ‘what if we made that into a video game?’

Stevivor: I believe you.

VandenBerghe: Okay, good. Phew!

Stevivor: Ubisoft is really into VR at the moment. Is there any thought at looking into that with For Honor?

VandenBerghe: VR is super f**king exciting, and I feel like we’re in this amazing transition where the world is going to turn on its axis. In the next 10 years we’re going to find out what the future looks like. I’m super excited about that. Except for sword fighting games.

I think we’re going to see a lot of really interesting physics demos and interaction stuff on VR. But if you can’t stop the weapon in the air, if you can’t block, combat is going to be really hard. I’m sure there are people out there smarter than me who will solve that problem. I’m super excited to play that game when it gets designed, and if that turns out to be For Honor that will be great, but we’re not focused on VR right now.

Stevivor: Can you tell me a little about the Warden? I was playing as him earlier and it seems like the classic tale of an underdog warrior.

VandenBerghe: The Warden is a member of an ancient order. They’re like the idea of the Arthurian Knights, but broken down and old. So the Warden is a follower of this ancient order. He’s got the longsword and all these techniques; he’s a badass fighter, but he’s come in from the west. He’s wandered into the east region and stumbled into the service of this guy you’re working for in the opening mission. Then you end up involved in that conflict, the political conflict, and you get knighted and drawn into the Blackstone Legion.

Even though in the beginning you’re just a wandering outcast, the Warden has all of this knowledge and skill from this ancient order he’s carrying along with him. That character is the heart of the Knight campaign, but you’re going to play all three types. You’ll play the Knights, then the Vikings and then the Samurai. There’s another character, called the Raider, that you’ll play in the Viking campaign. Different backstory; he comes form the mountains, but same sort of idea as a badass who is joining the Vikings.

Stevivor: How did you go about crafting the boss battles? At the end of one of the E3 demos we came up against a boss. In the mission beforehand the duels were progressively becoming harder. How do you ramp up that difficulty to show this guy at the end is serious business?

VandenBerghe: It’s really challenging. It takes a lot of experimentation. We find the experience of difficulty is really what you expect that guy to do. The earlier guys are going to have less moves and give you better tells so you can learn them faster. As you prove your way through you’re going to get more and more options. The enemies get more abilities so they can do stuff you don’t anticipate and they can hit harder, which is a big thing. It’s always a combination of those things; opening up their move set, how predictable they are and how your power set matches with the guys you’re fighting.

Stevivor: The last thing I want to ask about is brutality. Ramming people into spikes and hitting someone in the neck with an axe. Where do you decide to draw the line? Or at any point do you think something needs to be more brutal?

VandenBerghe: I don’t actually need to spend very much time convincing the team to make it more brutal. They’ll do that naturally. As game developers it’s fun to make that stuff happen. But the game is not about brutality. It’s a necessary consequence of this activity; it’s not the point.

So I’ve drawn a very clear line. We’re not here to celebrate the suffering of the guy you’re hurting. We’re here to celebrate your victory. So we’ve got decapitations and that fun payoff, but the brutality isn’t the point. The point is you beat him, and because you beat him with a piece of metal, you expect there to be certain consequences. Violence is a necessary part of the fantasy but not the point.

Stevivor: Thanks for your time!

VandenBerghe: It’s my pleasure.