Ok, after playing around with a bit, I think what I want to see is saved games
1. With "Honor Mode" prepended to the saved game name.
2. No blue gear (broken blue gear?) presence of which means it uses mode.
I managed to get a proper Honor Mode game started, names begin with Honor Mode, no blue gear.
Thanks, everyone! This has been a worse struggle than sheepishly asking Shadowheart for a kiss!