Fryske Academy researcher Peter-Alexander Kerkhof, whose title it’s possible you’ll acknowledge from his playful and informative critique of medieval videogame pigs (opens in new tab), has largely been having fun with Pentiment, Obsidian’s medieval journey game-RPG hybrid.
Nonetheless, his educated eye did discover one subject amidst the sport’s rigorous dedication to its early trendy setting: the use of lorem ipsum placeholder text (opens in new tab) as an alternative of actual Latin in Pentiment’s intro cutscene.
Pentiment is an actual triumph (opens in new tab), a thought-provoking journey sport from some previous palms at making nice CRPGs. A part of its attraction is its dedication to its sixteenth century setting: It illustrates the actual quirks of making an illuminated manuscript (as mirrored by the title, a reference to the phenomenon of pentimento (opens in new tab)), as an example, and portrays an archaic, agrarian method of telling time.
That educational rigor made the placeholder textual content within the intro stand out all of the extra to Kerkhof. The sport opens with the pages of an illuminated manuscript flipping open, ultimately revealing a panel with the sport’s opening scene. The textual content surrounding this panel is lorem ipsum (opens in new tab), Latin-sounding nonsense placeholder textual content that is utilized in printing and graphic design to display how a finalized format may look.
Kerkhof tweeted out his remark of the error, which was observed by Pentiment director Josh Sawyer. Sawyer replied to Kerkhof, saying, “If there’s any lorem ipsum wherever, it is a bug. We used actual Latin (sourced or translated in-house) for each web page of seen textual content.” Sawyer and Pentiment’s artwork director, Hannah Kennedy, acknowledged that the error can be rectified within the sport’s subsequent patch.
Now that that is out of the way in which, let’s get to crucial subject: how are the pigs? Kerkhof’s earlier writing (opens in new tab) on videogames confirmed that the business has a behavior of presenting trendy, pink, pot-bellied piggies in medieval settings, versus the furry, rangy, boarlike oinkers of yesteryear.
Right here is a few Lorem Ipsum-text ? I’m completely satisfied my eyes did not deceive me…Are you able to touch upon the pigs being chubby as an alternative of lean?? For familiarity of the viewers? pic.twitter.com/53i58QxQZcNovember 15, 2022
Kennedy instructed Kerkhof that “most of our animals are based mostly off of different woodcuts straight from the time interval, not essentially from written (and generally extra correct) information,” an method that dovetails properly with Pentiment’s presentation as an illuminated manuscript in movement.
Kerkhof, for his half, is happy, with the lone caveat that Pentiment’s porkers are a bit on the portly aspect. He instructed Kennedy, “simply to be clear, the medieval pigs in Pentiment are by far probably the most traditionally correct I’ve ever seen in a videogame.” If you would like to learn extra about Pentiment’s distinctive presentation, we beforehand spoke to Josh Sawyer in regards to the sport’s use of fonts to point characters’ class and worldview (opens in new tab).