Reversing course
For Honor will require a consistent internet connection to play. This isn’t all that unique; plenty of games have this restriction. What is unique about it is the way Ubisoft has backpedaled on previous statements.
A few months ago, For Honor‘s creative director Stephane Cardin promised a full single-player campaign. Speaking with GameSpot, another creative director said “We built the campaign so that if you bought the game just for that, that you would be satisfied even if you never went online and played multiplayer.” Product pages on retailer sites specifically mentioned that For Honor had “an engaging, single-player offline campaign.” That is no longer true.
Ubisoft has said today that For Honor will require an online connection to play any of the game’s modes. The story is born out of a Ubisoft forum user reaching out to the community team to ask about it. The representative responded “We can confirm that For Honor is an always online experience. Some elements of progression, which is hosted online, are shared across story and multiplayer modes. Players will need to be connected to the internet at all times to play For Honor.” Ubisoft has since confirmed it more broadly, dispelling the notion that maybe this is just a misinformed community manager.
A persistent connection seems to be a recurring initiative for Ubisoft, as it allows the publisher the means to fight piracy. Steep is the most recent title that enforced it, as Ubisoft claimed that a shared social world was one of the game’s pillars. I didn’t find this to be true. In fact, players in your world turned out to be an active hindrance at times. For instance, players who equipped the gas canister to their wingsuit could cause the framerate to crash in surrounding players’ games.
Of course, this requirement doesn’t indicate a bad game. The two are completely unrelated. In our time with the recent closed alpha, we felt like For Honor had “the makings of a winner.” That hasn’t changed; it’s just that now, both Ubisoft and your internet service provider have to come through.
