New For Honor Expansion Adds A New Faction And Castle Sieges

In its biggest expansion since release, For Honor is getting an entirely new faction, graphical overhaul, and new competitive siege mode called Breach in its Marching Fire update coming October 16, 2018.

Ubisoft’s medieval brawler has gotten a consistent trickle of new content since it released over a year ago, including a handful of new classes, maps, and seasonal events (and most importantly dedicated servers). Marching Fire, however, looks like it could substantially freshen things up, starting with it’s brand new Wu Lin faction of warriors, including the the guandao-wielding Jiang Jun, Nuxia, a former bodyguard sporting hooked swords, Shaolin, a monk who uses a staff, and Tiandi, an apparently tragic figure who now atones for past sins by bashing people with a giant broadsword. It basically looks like if some Dynasty Warriors characters got reskinned and dropped into an Ubisoft game, which is great considering how much better Dynasty Warriors would be if it had For Honor’s finely-tuned strategic sword play.

Then there’s Breach, a mode which, based on the cinematic trailer, looks like all your Kingdom of Heaven dreams come true (am I the only one who has those?). In this 4v4 mode, one team will attack a castle while the other seeks to defend it. The castle will have a lord in it the defenders must keep safe while the attackers try to break in and assassinate them.

The game is also getting a new “unlimited” single-player or two-person coop mode where players can face computer opponents together, although Ubisoft hasn’t yet shared more details about that. “Significant graphical enhancements” have also been promised for the Marching Fire update, but we don’t have more specifics on that either, although personally the game has always looked good enough and the real draw remains the tight, fighting-game style combat system. Still, visual face-life close to two years after release can’t hurt.

There’s no price tag yet for all of this, but at least for the next week anyone who hasn’t already bought the game can get the “starter edition,” which is the full game with slightly less content unlocked at the start (you can grind in-game currency to do so), free on PC until June 18. You’ll have to get it through Uplay though.