Fryske Academy researcher Peter-Alexander Kerkhof's name may be familiar to you from his playful and informative critique of medieval video game pigs (opens in new tab), but Obsidian's medieval adventure game and RPG I generally enjoy Pentiment, a hybrid of the two. [Pentiment's intro cutscenes use lorem ipsum placeholder text (opens in a new tab) instead of real Latin.

Pentiment is a true triumph (opens in new tab), a thought-provoking adventure game by an old hand who makes great CRPGs. Part of its charm is its commitment to its 16th century setting: the game depicts, for example, the particular quirks of creating colored manuscripts (as reflected in the title, which is a reference to the phenomenon of pentiment (opens in a new tab)), the archaic and agrarian way of telling time

The scholarly work is a work of art.

Its academic rigor made the intro placeholder text all the more striking for Kerkhof. At the beginning of the game, pages of colored manuscripts are turned, and eventually a panel depicting the opening scene of the game appears. The text surrounding this panel is lorem ipsum (open in new tab), a Latin-style nonsense placeholder text used in print and graphic design to indicate how the final layout will look.

Kerkhof tweeted this mistake, and director Josh Sawyer of Pentimento noticed it; Sawyer replied to Kerkhof, "If there is a lorem ipsum anywhere, it is a bug. We used real Latin (either sourced or translated in-house) for every page of visible text." Hannah Kennedy, art director for Sawyer and Pentimento, said the error will be fixed in the game's next patch.

Now, with that out of the way, let's get to the most important issue. According to Kerkhof's previous writings on video games (opens in new tab), the industry has a habit of featuring modern, pink, pot-bellied pigs in medieval settings, as opposed to the hairy, wiry, boar-like pigs of yesteryear.

Kennedy told Kerkhof that "most of our animals are based directly on other woodcuts of the time, not necessarily from written (and sometimes more accurate) records."

Kerkhof is also pleased, with the only caveat that the pentimento pork is a bit thicker. He told Kennedy, "Let me be clear, the medieval pigs in Pentimento are by far the most historically accurate I've ever seen in a video game."

To learn more about Pentimento's unique presentation, I previously spoke with Josh Sawyer, who used the game's font I spoke with him about the character's class and worldview (opens in new tab).