A Violent Medium for a Violent Era: Brutal Medievalist Combat in Dragon Age: Origins and Kingdom Come: Deliverance

Summary

This essay highlights the emphasis placed on brutal combat through the audio-visual and mechanical elements of recent medievalist digital games. Through the analysis of a pair of case studies – the roleplaying games Dragon Age: Origins (2009) and Kingdom Come: Deliverance (2018) – it argues that while this violent and bloody medievalism is in part a product of broader trends within cinematic, ludic, and experiential medievalism, these trends are exaggerated and modified through the particular requirements and expectations of digital games as a medium and roleplaying games as a genre. The essay further contends that this combination of tropes and tendencies leads to a unique and particularly graphic representation of violence that mixes medievalist and gaming trends in a somewhat distinct manner. Furthermore, it notes that the influence of popular medievalist tropes has led to the creation of a distinct and “medieval” set of combat mechanics within several games.

Understanding the representational trends within medievalist digital games and the factors behind the prevalence of these trends is increasingly important. Historical digital games can exert a huge influence on their players’ understanding of their subject period, and there is a growing body of evidence that this effect can be deeper and more pronounced than that exerted by other media. It should also be noted that the potency of this influence appears to be particularly pronounced within medievalist games (alongside those set elsewhere in the premodern world). The impact of these games within and outside the classroom demands a more thorough understanding of the medievalist worlds that they present, particularly as these games are increasingly used for historical education4 and research.

Medievalist computer games exhibit a set of tendencies and tropes that are related to but nonetheless distinct from those found within other forms of medievalism. Certainly, medievalist computer games are influenced by other medievalisms both consciously and unconsciously: literary approaches to the medieval are echoed within computer games as they are in multiple other media; cinema and television provide the basis for the audio-visual effects and framings within many games; medievalist musical trends form the foundation of audio effects and ambiance in games; card and tabletop games inform many of the core mechanics of computer games; roleplay and re-enactment events and societies exhibit similar “experiential medievalisms” (as described by Tison Pugh and Angela Weisl) to those that emerge within digital games.