Alright you faggots, I don’t know why you’re still playing this dead game but I feel like if you’re going to, you might as well have something to look forward to.

A little bit about myself. I work on For Honor as a network programmer, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. I don’t want to talk about it. At the moment, the team is split between a minority working on getting join in progress to work correctly, while most people are ironing out the netcode for Tournament Mode. I won’t say which team I’m on because I want to keep my job.

What I want to talk about is the new characters, because of course I do, it’s the only thing people care about outside of balance. Glory and Wild introduces a new Viking hero and a new Knight hero. If you read that reddit leak, you have a pretty solid overview of the Highlander: he looks like a mix between Warlord and the Viking minion captain, he has two stances, the works.

Now, what you wouldn’t have a solid overview of is the Knight hero, because that leak was actually outdated. While the Highlander was pretty far along at that point and has therefore remained largely unchanged, the original pitch for a Retiarius has since been retooled into a rapier character. A lot of the original character ideas found their way into Centurion, namely his executions, while a lot of the kit design was reworked into Sabreur.

Aesthetically, we're pulling a lot from more ornamental, ceremonial armor. Specifically, a lot of the silhouette and shape design is influenced by Henry II of France's Parade Armor, which is this beautiful set of tight fitting segmented plate. Imagine a less ornate version of that, and you've got the standard set. We've also thrown a shoulder cape on it for the Knight's standard, partially covering the left arm. Also, I'm sorry to tell Warden mains they'll never see a plume ornament: that went to Sabreur.

As far as gameplay, Sabreur has an interesting kit built off of two basic ideas. Firstly, Sabreur’s heavies and lights have identical startup animations. The attack only becomes distinguishable about half way in, where the animation transitions into either a quick swipe or a slightly slower poke, each with different parry timings. The second basic idea of her kit is that every light guarantees a heavy, and every heavy confirms a light. Basically, her heavies and her lights do the same amount of damage, which makes the primary reason for doing one or the other to fuck with parry timings or to launch into a chain. The trade off for this is generally low damage, as we can’t have a character that deals heavy damage from a 500ms light.

Now, there is one other important part of Sabreur’s kit, which is where she gets most of her damage: the second heavy in any chain is a 600ms unblockable that can be soft feinted with a GB or canceled entirely. It’s a lot like Warden’s bash, but with the added option of being able to parry it. This unblockable heavy does increased damage, and like all her heavies confirms a light to finish out the chain. The point of this is to either force a reaction from your enemy after a blocked heavy, or to keep up pressure after landing a light\heavy guarantee.

The last thing worth mentioning about her is that she has basically a shitty crushing counter on every stance. The idea here is that since her heavies do essentially light damage, she can instead parry with a light attack to confirm a little more damage than she would off a GB and still follow it up with her unblockable pressure.