Honour, Deliverance, Legacy: Representations of the Middle Ages in Digital Gaming

Permeating into all aspects of modern media, the Middle Ages occupy a significant place in popular culture. Film and television have long kept the period in the public eye, but, at the turn of the century, the Middle Ages was to find a new home: the digital game. Over the past two decades our medieval past has been digitised and reformatted into a playable experience, garnering considerable popularity (and capital) along the way. Like the gaming industry itself, representations of the Middle Ages in this time have changed. Advances in technology have enabled developers to embrace new ludic structures and create ever-more visually appealing worlds. Accompanying such change is a disparity in representation that cannot be ignored. This is the focus of this thesis. Using the analytical framework of Adam Chapman, it examines representations of the medieval found within three games: For Honor (2017), Kingdom Come: Deliverance (2018) and Ancestors Legacy (2018). Analysis of their ludic structures is accompanied by analysis of their content, revealing what type of Middle Ages is represented and how.