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  1. #1

    Warden visual overhaul

    So For Honor's grown a lot since the days of launch, we've had new classes, plenty of new weapons, new emotes, executions, reworks, maps and so on. But one thing has remained largely the same throughout the entirety of the game's life - and has only grown more and more out-of-place as more and better content has been added:

    Warden's visuals.

    As the "poster boy" for the game, it makes sense that Warden has stayed largely the same over visually, new armour and weapons notwithstanding. But unfortunately, as new content gets added - notably the newer classes - Warden's visual design choices become more and more apparent for one big reason:

    They're bad.

    To clarify, I don't mean in terms of overall style. Style-wise, Warden has a cool aesthetic, with a mish-mash of piecemeal armour and weapons from lots of different eras of European history. Given the game's setting in a medieval world ravaged by an apocalyptic "cataclysm" which has since rebuilt itself over hundreds of years of turmoil, I think the design of a kind of piecemeal anachronism-stew visual actually works pretty well for the Warden.

    The problem with their design is in the small details - namely the fact that 90% of the Warden's gear would be completely and utterly unusable, ineffective, or just straight up harmful to them for various reasons. Now I know that this is a video game and video games "aren't realistic", and I'm not asking for "realism". All I'm asking for is for groundedness - something that most of the other classes actually have (again, this is why Warden stands out to me.)

    Their weapons are the biggest point of contention. For Honor gets a lot of flak for having weapons that are "too big" to be realistic, but other than their overall size (which is for readability's sake) the majority of the classes weapons are actually very well designed. In particular the newer weapons from the Wulin faction. But even the weapons of launch-era classes like Peacekeeper, Warlord and pretty much all of the Samurai faction weapons all look pretty grounded and well-designed.

    Warden's longsword, on the other hand, is an utter disgrace.

    To put it simply, almost every single blade that the Warden has is too damn thicc. I know it's been brought up countless times, now, as I remember these discussions happening back at launch. But every time we get a new class with newer, better looking weapon sets, Warden's big ugly metal clubs get more and more out-of-place.

    Warden is using a longsword, a sword, you know? Something that's meant to be sharp? But pretty much all of the Warden's gear right now looks like it'd struggle to cut through a wet sheet of paper! The only swords these things look similar to are those big foam-padded LARP swords (you know? The ones designed explicitly to be as harmless as possible?) And assuming they're made of steel, they'd be completely impractical.

    Fixing the swords is actually very, very easy. If I had access to the raw .mdl files for these weapons I could probably fix all of them in the course of an afternoon, and I haven't done 3D modelling in literal years. (I'd happily do that for free, too.) But since I don't have access to these files, I'll just use Photoshop to explain how most – if not all – of the Warden's swords could be improved:



    See? See how easy that is? It took me like, what, 10 seconds in Photoshop? In 3Ds Max or Blender or whatever it is the FH devs use it'd probably take about 5 minutes a sword, at most. You wouldn't need to change any animations or even any of the textures! You could literally get an intern with basic 3D modelling knowledge to do this over the course of a day or so, and the difference would be immediately noticeable in-game!

    Just bring these damn swords in-line with the other swords in the game. Every other sword-wielding class have swords that actually look sharp and functional, how come Warden is still stuck using these big ugly clubs!? Fix it, for cryin out loud!

    Moving on to armour, and... well, this is where things get a bit more complicated. A lot of the armour in For Honor isn't very functional to begin with, but Warden in particular stands out as having some of the worst looking armour (purely in terms of “functionality”) in the whole game. I've gone through the default set in Photoshop with some proposed changes, but overall, just give this poor knight some proper protection! Warden shares a faction with the Lawbringer, Centurion and Black Prior, all of whom have better looking and more functional armour than they do!



    These changes would obviously be a bit more intensive than simply squishing the sword blades down a bit. But overall I think it'd be worthwhile just to bring the Warden's visual quality up to par.

    Thirdly, we have animations... and this one is the most tricky, because changing animations often involves changing entire move sets, but I believe that there are some minor adjustments that could be made to the Warden's animation set that wouldn't require another rework or overhaul (although personally I believe that Warden could use a rework in general, they're not fun to fight against currently, and not really fun to play as, either, imo)

    The biggest and ugliest problem with the Warden's moveset is the top heavy, most notably the very start of it: Look at this positioning (from this video):



    See the problem here? If not, I'll point it out to you:



    Warden puts their sword behind themselves and leaps practically head-first towards their opponent. I don't care if you're trying to replicate realistic fighting or not; this is just pure stupidity. The sword is the Warden's primary form of defense and having it all the way back here doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

    Even from a gameplay standpoint, where this is meant to telegraph the attack, it's unnecessary! Having the sword raised just above the head - similar to the Kensei top heavy for instance – would serve as a perfectly suitable telegraph and wouldn't look as though the supposed “sword-master” Warden is trying to wail on somebody with a damn baseball bat.

    Lastly, and this one would be the most major change and I don't think we'd ever see it, but I'll say it anyway: Let the Warden stab!

    The Warden uses a longsword (or at least, they're supposed to use one, right now they use big metal LARP clubs) and yet none – none – of their attacks involve any kind of thrusting attack.

    Kensei and Zhanhu – both classes who use single-edged, slashing focused weapons – both have more stabbing attacks than the Warden does! Despite the Warden's weapon being literally designed to be good at stabbing! Longswords, especially later-period ones, became more and more stab focused over time, being pointed, narrowed at the tip and double-edged made them very effective for stabbing, and yet Warden – the class wielding the most stab-focused sword in the whole damn game – has no stab attacks!

    Also, half-swording? You know that cool thing For Honor likes to have its characters do where they grab the sword blade and attack? That was primarily used for thrusting attacks! If you're going to go out of your way to show how “historically accurate” your game is by including obscure swordsmanship moves like half-swording and hilt strikes, the very least you could do is implement them properly!



    A lot of the Warden's attacks, mixups and perhaps even the Crushing Counterstrike could (and imo should) be replaced by thrusting attacks. Keep the timing, the damage and the telegraphing, by all means! But give this “sword master” some actual mastery of their sword!

    If it were up to me, I'd change all the Heavy attacks to being thrusts, turn Crushing Counterstrike into a half-sworded thrust, and keep the light attacks as being slashes (the light slashes actually work pretty well). Again, this would be a lot of work and I doubt we'll ever see it. But I would still love it if Warden's moveset was updated to actually look like they know how to fight.

    And there you have it; just wanted to get all this stuff off my chest because Warden has been a major pet-peeve of mine ever since launch. I want to love them, I really do. I love medieval knights, I joined the knights faction for crying out loud! I even mained Warden back during the early days because I desperately, desperately wanted to love them! But I just can't.

    Their visual design and the nonsensical details are a disgrace, their moveset is ugly and makes them look like an idiot whose never even seen a sword before, and there's just so much wasted potential on display with the Warden that could have been changed so long ago. And every time we get a new class that gets cool armour and weapons and movesets that look actually functional and grounded, Warden's “big dumb brute with metal club” shtick gets worse and worse.

    I doubt anything will come from this thread, but I feel better for having written it.

    Peace.
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  2. #2
    "peace" i guess i'll not type anything as it would a waste, since you've stated "peace" which i assume is literally the end of this thread
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  3. #3
    Originally Posted by Okt0g00N Go to original post
    "peace" i guess i'll not type anything as it would a waste, since you've stated "peace" which i assume is literally the end of this thread
    Weird interpretation to the end of my post. If you have thoughts feel free to share 'em. I just doubt that the For Honor devs will take anything I said into account, since the track record for that isn't great.
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