A medievalist spotted fake Latin in Pentiment, and Obsidian is already working on a fix

News
By published

Peter-Alexander Kerkhof noticed something fishy in the game's opening cutscene.

A little jester man peaking over a railing and sticking his tongue out in Pentiment.
(Image credit: Obsidian)

Fryske Academy researcher Peter-Alexander Kerkhof, whose name you may recognize from his playful and informative critique of medieval videogame pigs, has largely been enjoying Pentiment, Obsidian's medieval adventure game-RPG hybrid. 

However, his trained eye did notice one issue amidst the game's rigorous commitment to its early modern setting: the use of lorem ipsum placeholder text instead of real Latin in Pentiment's intro cutscene.

That academic rigor made the placeholder text in the intro stand out all the more to Kerkhof⁠. The game opens with the pages of an illuminated manuscript flipping open, eventually revealing a panel with the game's opening scene. The text surrounding this panel is lorem ipsum, Latin-sounding nonsense placeholder text that's used in printing and graphic design to demonstrate how a finalized layout might look.

Kerkhof tweeted out his observation of the error, which was noticed by Pentiment director Josh Sawyer. Sawyer replied to Kerkhof, saying, "If there is any lorem ipsum anywhere, it's a bug. We used real Latin (sourced or translated in-house) for every page of visible text." Sawyer and Pentiment's art director, Hannah Kennedy, stated that the error would be rectified in the game's next patch.

Now that that's out of the way, let's get to the most important issue: how are the pigs? Kerkhof's previous writing on videogames showed that the industry has a habit of presenting modern, pink, pot-bellied piggies in medieval settings, as opposed to the furry, rangy, boarlike oinkers of yesteryear.

Kennedy told Kerkhof that "most of our animals are based off of other woodcuts directly from the time period, not necessarily from written (and sometimes more accurate) records," an approach that dovetails nicely with Pentiment's presentation as an illuminated manuscript in motion.

Kerkhof, for his part, is pleased, with the lone caveat that Pentiment's porkers are a bit on the portly side. He told Kennedy, "just to be clear, the medieval pigs in Pentiment are by far the most historically accurate I have ever seen in a videogame." If you'd like to read more about Pentiment's unique presentation, we previously spoke to Josh Sawyer about the game's use of fonts to indicate characters' class and worldview.

Ted Litchfield
Associate Editor

Ted has been thinking about PC games and bothering anyone who would listen with his thoughts on them ever since he booted up his sister's copy of Neverwinter Nights on the family computer. He is obsessed with all things CRPG and CRPG-adjacent, but has also covered esports, modding, and rare game collecting. When he's not playing or writing about games, you can find Ted lifting weights on his back porch. You can follow Ted on Bluesky.