Killerduda11 probably thought they were safe after fleeing down into the ravine. Little did he know he was fighting a medieval Batman carrying a giant broad sword.
In For Honor, Ubisoft Montreal’s multiplayer arena fighting game, knights, vikings, and samurais duke it out on various maps in crunchy, methodical combat. Usually, calculated tactics are confined to blocking an enemy’s attacks until a ‘revenge’ meter fills up and allows you to counter with quicker, more devastating swings of your own weapon. But Reddit user Justakitchenkoala decided to take a more unorthodox approach, letting his counterpart think they had run away to safety before lunging off a nearby bridge to cut them down from above.
And it worked because that’s the kind of game For Honor is. Playing it during the last open beta before its release later this week, Justakitchenkoala noted that he wasn’t even sure if it work work, writing in the comments, “I was dumbfounded when this happened, especially because I was thinking, ‘there’s no way I’m pulling this off.’”
Another user, Ballisticshark, pulled off something similar. The maneuver requires good timing and some luck but is otherwise feasible enough during the course of a match that it’s something players will no doubt get used to factoring in when thinking about how to move around the map and what points have extra strategic value.
On paper, the proposition behind For Honor seems meager and silly. A bunch of warrior archetypes fighting each other “for reasons” on maps that look cribbed from the sets of long forgotten films over and over again? But it’s moments like the ones above that make the game confoundingly hard to put down at times. Like a kid at the water park traversing the same paths again and again until their fingers are wrinkled and their skin is irritated and sunburnt, the thrill of every tiny triumph and setback transcends the repetitious cycles that breed them.
That’s in part because of how much work goes into achieving them. Even if you’re the person so unlucky enough to have passed under the bridge at precisely the wrong moment, it’s hard not to more impressed than dismayed with the manner in which your opponent was able to engineer your defeat.