The living dead have risen once again, and taken up arms in For Honor's Return of the Otherworld Halloween event. Running now through November 8, the event features the return of Endless March, a modified version of Dominion where non-player-controlled soldiers are replaced by cowboy hat-wearing skeletons. Joining the festivities are new Weekly Arcade Quests, themed community orders, and plenty of Halloween-themed loot.
We spoke with Damien Kieken, game director on For Honor, to learn more about what goes into making an event like Return of the Otherworld, how community feedback factors in, how the team approaches events, and what shapes the latest skeleton fashion trends.
Tell us about this year's event. What can players expect?
Damien Kieken: We're bringing back the Halloween event. Last year's event was the first we ever did, and it was a huge success. The players loved it, and the team loved doing it. Now it's like we're closing the loop. We've done so many events in the past, and now we're doing another Halloween event, where we bring back some of the stuff from last year and also introduce new content.
How did the community respond to last year's event?
DK: It was a surprise for them, I think. They didn't expect us to come with an event and do something so big, whether it was a brand new game mode, the changing of soldiers to skeletons, the exclusive rewards you can loot, and other items that you could unlock with Steel. Now it has become a bit of a trademark for For Honor. Last year, players spent 20% more time in the game during the event, earning loot and playing Endless March.
How did your experience from last year's event affect the conception and execution of this year's? Did you learn anything specifically from community feedback?
DK: We learned a lot from last year, and had a lot of success, so that's why we're doing so many events. The team loves doing them because they can have fun with them. With the Halloween event itself, we're bringing back Endless March, but we made some tweaks based on community feedback.
One of the pieces of feedback was that the skeletons did a lot of damage, so players were getting in Revenge Mode very fast while they were fighting. So when you were in a fight against another player, they were getting in Revenge Mode like two or three times during the fight, and it could be very hard to kill them. So that was one of the things we tweaked: You now get into Revenge more slowly, so that it's more balanced.
All the improvements we've made to fights with soldiers, thanks to Breach, also benefit the Endless March game mode this year. Now, you can chain your different moves against minions, and you have better targeting against minions compared to what we had before. We also added a lot of "comfort features," or little improvements here and there, so that fighting against soldiers feel better.
The minions in Breach are also skeletons?
DK: Yes! The idea is that all soldiers – pikemen and the soldiers of Breach and of Dominion Modes as well – everyone becomes a skeleton. Actually, they are cowboy skeletons this time around. They have a different shield in Breach, they have a big shield and pikes. In Dominion, they have a small shield and a blade. And they have different types of hats depending on which faction you are.
Is there a story behind why the skeletons are wearing cowboy hats?
DK: So last year, they were kind of pirate skeletons, and this year the team said, "What type of skeletons do we make?" And we had a hunch that Westerns would be popular at this time of year [laughs]. So we said, "Hey! Let's do cowboy hats!" as a wink to another big game.
What are your favorite new customization and exclusive items from the event?
DK: I love the new emote. We have a pumpkin head emote that is really fun and really cool. The new Mask Outfits are great as well. I think the first Mask Outfit was done last year for the Halloween event, and introduced a new type of item. The ones this year are also really great, and quite different from what we had last year. I love the Hydra. The Knight one is amazing, too.
Another one of the cool new things we have this year is that we not only customized the gameplay with Halloween-themed objects and animations, but we also customized the new main menu and the new landing page, which has a red moon with bats. We also changed the face-off screen and the lobby, so you have a little bit of Halloween almost everywhere.
What opportunities for experimentation does a seasonal event create?
DK: It's mostly a place for us to have fun, to explore the lore of the game, and expand the world of For Honor. This was true in the past two events we did, but Halloween is always different, because it's really a moment where we want to have fun, where we want to bring things into the game that are not really linked or connected to the lore of the game. But we've started to introduce more and more events that are connected to the lore of the game, so it really depends on the role of the event. We want everyone to have fun with the game, both the players and us.
Did the Marching Fire expansion provide any new opportunities for this event?
DK: One opportunity is the impact on the menu. The fact that we are now displaying the Hero on the landing page means we can display things behind the hero, so we're playing with that. We're displaying the red moon for the Halloween event. It's the same thing with the lobby.
The team is getting better at doing events, so we're doing more modifications on maps, for example. We modified one map pretty heavily for the Halloween event. It has a spooky atmosphere with green smoke, pumpkin heads, bats flying around, and things like that.
With the popularity of these events, do you see an opportunity for new events down the line?
DK: We're having so much fun doing events, so I don't think we will stop doing them. We might change part of the formula sometimes, but it's definitely something that the team likes doing. We try to come up with new things that people don't expect, and that's one of the challenges as a team – you don't want your events to become a routine. You want them to stay surprising, and that's a hard balance to find between knowing what to do, how to do it well, and also changing the formula so that everyone can experience it differently.
What would be your dream event?
DK: Maybe I would do an event where I would introduce something from another world to the world of For Honor, or from another famous game universe. I think that could be a really cool opportunity, and something fun for the players to play with. It could be really cool.
