this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2025
263 points (99.3% liked)
PC Gaming
12226 readers
478 users here now
For PC gaming news and discussion. PCGamingWiki
Rules:
- Be Respectful.
- No Spam or Porn.
- No Advertising.
- No Memes.
- No Tech Support.
- No questions about buying/building computers.
- No game suggestions, friend requests, surveys, or begging.
- No Let's Plays, streams, highlight reels/montages, random videos or shorts.
- No off-topic posts/comments, within reason.
- Use the original source, no clickbait titles, no duplicates. (Submissions should be from the original source if possible, unless from paywalled or non-english sources. If the title is clickbait or lacks context you may lightly edit the title.)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yes, it seems we do have different ideas of the word medieval. To me, medieval is not an abstract idea, it’s a specific period in European history. To be medieval a setting has to bear significant resemblance to that period.
This is not medieval. It’s very ornate but it bears no resemblance whatsoever to medieval art or architecture. If anything, it’s closer to Victorian than medieval. Everything I’ve seen in HK screenshots tells me it’s a fantasy pastiche of elements. It has no affinity with any particular period in human culture. Rather, it’s a cut-and-paste construction. (I hate the word appropriation because it implies theft. I do not want to imply that).
Like if a fantasy game is set on Mars with a bunch of green skinned Martians as characters then it’s not medieval even if the characters use Anglo-Saxon instead of English. It’s a pastiche of science fiction, fantasy, and medieval elements and it suffers from the same issue that a lot of bad Star Trek episodes had (see: planet of hats), which is verisimilitude:
Why did this society, which otherwise seems completely alien, just happen to evolve a conspicuous element that’s uncannily similar to an element in human history?
"Why did this society, which otherwise seems completely alien, just happen to evolve a conspicuous element that’s uncannily similar to an element in human history?"
The game was designed to include gothic architecture and medieval society, rather than those elements evolving within the game.
It's natural that the game would be designed with elements of human society and history given that humans designed the game around the character of a "knight", calling to mind swordplay, castles, legends and chivalry.
If the story was all about food delivery in Adelaide in 2011, the setting and language would be very different.
Since the HK stories focus on fantasy swordsmanship, fallen castles and knights, strongly associated in the human world with chivalrous poems of legends(King Arthur, for example), the descriptions and dialogues of HK reflect that.