all-the-pieces-videogames-have-taught-you-about-medieval-pigs-was-a-lie

Peter Alexander Kerkhof, an assistant professor of Medieval Research on the College of Leiden within the Netherlands, has loads to say about how pigs are portrayed in videogames with medieval settings. Our polygonal porkers of the previous are too pudgy, too stumpy, too pink, and too bare. At the very least that is what Kerkhof wrote in an article for the Leiden Medievalists Weblog again in August of 2021.

Let’s again up. As people cultivate residing issues, they modify over time to replicate the options we selectively breed them for. The enormous ears of corn we flip into soda right here in America have been bred from wild maize, which had far much less considerable yields. Candy, cute little pugs with their squashed faces and crippling respiration issues are descendants of the noble wolves who guarded our prehistoric campsites. Some thanks, huh.

Kerkhof, by way of finding out the interval, has entry to a big physique of proof displaying the character of pigs in medieval Europe and the way they differ from fashionable sows. Specifically, they have been leaner, hairier, and rangier, with tusks like wild boar. Medieval pigs have been additionally extra free-range than fashionable ones, with solely breeding sows and piglets stored on the farm, whereas the remaining wandered the forest and fields close by.

Lest you assume this interpretation resides solely on the output of medieval artists, who have been very dangerous at cats, Kerkhof has an intensive bibliography that cites animal stays and varied kingdoms’ legislation codes alongside up to date artwork and descriptions of the animal. 

left: round, modern pig in AssCreed Valhalla, right: illustration of 14th c. pig

The pig discrepancy can’t be denied (Murderer’s Creed pig vs. 14th century illustration) (Picture credit score: Leiden Medievalists Weblog)

Kerkhof paints a compelling image of the hogs of outdated. And but, the builders of at the moment are utterly failing us within the depiction of these oinkers. Murderer’s Creed,  A Plague Story, The Witcher⁠, all over the place you look it is pink, pot bellied piggies in pens. All our dedication to realism, and that is what it will get us.

Jokes apart, Kerkhof’s article is an illuminating learn. Greater than a castigation of game devs, it is a reminder of how completely alien the previous is. Language, morality, science, even our understanding of the passage of time was so completely different even simply 200 years in the past, why ought to pigs be spared the abyss of eons?

It is in all probability effective if medieval video games hold getting pigs “fallacious,” although I will be curious to see how Pentiment handles its oinkers. As my girlfriend identified to me, we should always at all times make room in our hearts for the pink-bellied grunters of at the moment. It is the least we owe them after the centuries-long genetic engineering mission to show them into the proper snack.