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Undetermined Elements with Unspecified Lore-based Significance:
- The "Old Gods" mentioned in some of Highlanders' Ornaments.
- The Frost Festival.
- The Feast of the Otherworld
- The "Gryphon" imagery in the Glacial Gryphon Effect.
- The "Grim Reaper" imagery in the Eternal Damnation Effect.
- The "Bog Witch" imagery in the Farewell Banquet Effect.
- The Viking helm imagery in the Buffalo Blue Effect.
- The "Oni" imagery in the Soul Eater Effect.
- The "Chinese Dragon" imagery in the Deep Freeze Dragon Effect.
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I would recommend simply deleting Responses that violate said terms.Originally Posted by UbiJurassic Go to original post
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Can you explain how the owner of this thread asking a Mod to delete off-topic comments (such as your own), as per forum rules, is arrogant?Originally Posted by Ulrichvonbek111 Go to original post
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Fantastic read, Archo! I was always fascinated by the deeper story in For Honor. I'm a lore nut to the very end, and while playing through the game's overblown tutoria-er, I mean, "Story Mode", I got the distinct impression that a lot of the story content was left on the cutting-room floor.
The existance of the "Observables" in particular always struck me as this. Some poor person on the writing team, having been told that the "Story" portion of the game would be very minimal, probably had to cram it in with literal exposition dumps at random points. Which is a damn shame, because the story behind the game is pretty bloody good.
There's a lot that needs to be interpreted from a fairly limited source, and the rest has to be pieced together from gameplay stuff. So, I applaud you on getting such a huge chunk of lore from it.
I'm a bit of an "armchair historian", and a lot of For Honor's design choices used to bother me. Like; why is the Lawbringer the only Knight class with a proper set of plate armour? Why do all the Samurai dress in wood when their armour designs are based on real, historical metal armour? How come the three factions are stuck in "medieval status"? Ect...
But as time went on, a lot of these questions got justifiable reasoning that was more substantial than "A developer thought it'd be cool."
Why is LB the only one with plate armour? Because 1) good steel is hard to come by, and you need a lot to make a full set, and 2) a full suit of armour is a complex thing to make. After the cataclysm, just as the technical ideas behind the Knight's seige equipment was lost, so too were the concepts used to make armour... Mostly. Some small facet of the Legion held on to the knowledge, and kept it a secret to help found the order of Lawbringers.
Why is all the Samurai armour made of wood? Because again, good steel is hard to find. And this becomes even more of an issue when you remember where the bulk of the Samurai reside: A swamp.
While the Knights and Vikings presumably have access to mines and quarries to get iron, and the Knights at least have steel founderies, the Samurai probably have little to no iron at their disposal save for what they can trade for or capture. What little they do have is used for the most important stuff: Tools, buildings, weapons and helmets.
But if there's one thing that the Samurai do have, it's wood. And properly treated wood can be just as effective as metal when it comes to protection (wooden armour, while from an era much earlier than the Samurai, did exist historically.) So it'd make sense that they'd outfit their soldiers in wood and save the steel only for helmets and weapons.
Why is the world of For Honor trapped in medieval stasis? Because of how chaotic it is. In For Honor, human history hit a wall, and potentially almost stopped entirely, during the Cataclysm. And since then, while the land has "recovered", it's still unstable as hell. There is a fourth force fighting in the overall conflict: The environment.
Ashfield is a volcanic land, probably located right in the middle of a bunch of fault lines. Fertile, but tumultuous. Very few areas can probably sustain a settlement for more than a couple of decades, and the few areas that are stable are fought over, constantly. Nobody has the time to really settle down and do some proper science because they're either fighting the land, eachother, or both.
Valkenheim isn't much better: Prone to harsh winters and littered with treacherous, mountainous and volcanic landscape, it suffers the exact same problem. Afaik, the Vikings don't even have a proper "capital city", just a scattered bunch of villages and hamlets with one or two being a bit bigger than the rest, but still not true "cities". And with such ongoing, widespread conflict, what technology they do have is simply passed on and copied instead of properly studied.
The Dawn Empire is a bit different, but still no better off: the Myre itself is probably the most hostile land around, changing so often that not even the Samurai - the only ones around who could tame it - can establish permanent settlements there. And while the Samurai do have some permanent, capital cities, they are extremely isolated from the world outside and from external resources. Move over, Great Wall of China! The Myre blocks everything!
Pair this isolation with a less-than-stable government made up of constantly warring houses, and non-stop pressure from the other two factions, and you have a society that can't risk innovating. The Samurai, much like their neighbors, are basically forced to keep living the same way, because diverging from that path is too much of a risk. If it works, don't fix it.
However, some things aren't adequately explained, like the gender locks on classes. A lot of people love to say that they are gender locked for "lore reasons", but they seriously aren't. Not even the Valkyrie's lore stands up! Outside the name, they're just religious warriors fighting for their faith. No real explanation as to why they can't be men.
Always been a pet peeve of mine. I hate the gender restrictions, and it ticks me off that people keep trying to say the game's lore explains them when it does pretty much everything but that.
Either way, great thread. Glad I took the time to read it!
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I suppose one way to explain Valkyrie's gender lock, is that even in real world history, Valkyries are always, exclusively depicted as women. Since For Honor exists in a parallel universe, but with a shared ancestry to ours, the lore surrounding them would likewise only include tales of Valkyries as women.Not even the Valkyrie's lore stands up! Outside the name, they're just religious warriors fighting for their faith. No real explanation as to why they can't be men.
It's possible the Vikings of For Honor simply haven't heard of, and therefore considered an alternative to this.
So when the his Order of Valkyries was formed, because they only knew of the ancient stories, they made the order "girls only".
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This is a fair point, but it still feels like a cop-out to me. Personally? I think it'd be really cool too see a male character who deliberately and purposely displays feminine characteristics to show their faith, especially on the team of the otherwise hyper-masculine Vikings.Originally Posted by Tundra 793 Go to original post
While most of the Viking guys sport muscles you can break rocks on and beards big enough to support small ecosystems, we could see a lithe, clean-shaven guy with braided hair and the ability to ram a spear through somebody's ribcage. It'd be a really cool contrast, in my opinion.
As for the other classes, though? Not a single one of the gender locks are justified by the lore. Lawbringers and Peacekeepers are two sides of the same coin, like FBI agents and riot cops. There's no lore that says all the women law enforcement have to be lightly-armoured and sneaky while all the guys have to be big tin-cans.
Centurions and Warlords are battlefield commanders, frontline leaders who, in all honesty, have pretty basic weapons and skills. I mean, the only thing more straightforward than "sword and shield" is "literally just the sword" so its not as though they undertake some special, secret training. As the game lore establishes on multiple occasions; women are just as accepted as military leaders as men are in this world.
Highlanders are just lightly armoured mercenaries with big old swords, fighting for the Vikings to uphold an oath they swore. And the Shamans are literally crazy forest-dwelling murder-hippies who fight because the voices in their head tell them to. Neither of those are gender exclusive roles!
The Shugoki are bred for battle, styled after demons and seem to practice a lot of similar training styles as Japanese sumo wrestlers. None of which is gender-exclusive. While the Nobushi are masked protectors who gaurd the smaller, more isolated villages from harm. I fail to see how being a vigilante is something only woman can do.
Hell, the Aramusha and Shinobi hail from the same, secret order! The Shinobi can be women, so why can't the Aramusha?
Even the Valkyrie: they may take their namesake from mythical women, but they themselves are not literal supernatural beings! They're just religiously dedicated spear-weilders!
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"Not a single gender-lock is justified"... you know... beyond the obvious.Originally Posted by Veerdin-Wraith Go to original post
If you read my entire post, you'll know that those selected for Shugoki training are only chosen from "the strongest and tallest" in adolescence.
You also couldn't have missed the information I theorized of in terms of the Aramusha, too.
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I did see your theories relating to the gender locks, and while I think the Aramusha theory is neat, it isn't confirmed anywhere in the game's lore. And, I'd argue that if the ability to bear children was held so highly, then women in the Dawn Empire - much like those who lived in the real, historical feudal japan - would be generally prohibited from being combatants. Not trying to poke holes in your ideas, of course. Just pointing out other aspects.Originally Posted by Archo-Vax Go to original post
As for Shugoki: being strong and tall is not exclusive to young men. Yes, it's generally more common for men to be larger and stronger in adolescence, but not exclusive. And let's not forget: The world of For Honor is a world where 7-foot tall muscle-bound warrior women are, apparently, quite common.
Beyond that? I don't see how any of the other gender locks are "obvious" except for Valkyrie. And honestly, if Valk' was the only gender-locked class? I'd probably just shrug my shoulders with it.
The reason for the gender locks, though, is because it'd take time and effort to create their in-game assets. That, as far as I can tell, is the only real reason why they're locked. It just ticks me off when people try to argue against unlocking them with "But the lore!!!". That's really what my rant was about, more than anything.
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I don't think it particularly is, though.Originally Posted by Veerdin-Wraith Go to original post
