8 Bit Boozers: The Video Game Pub Guide
One of the things I love about video games is immersion. A game so well crafted you can believe it exists, you can imagine yourself within it. If a world doesn’t make sense it’s jarring and I find myself less engaged, more aware that this in fact a game and I’m player rather than really seeing myself as part of the storytelling.
To world build then you need to see the pedestrian. You may be going to have a fun adventure in some fantasy or sci fi setting, but you need to see that people live within that world, that it’s populated and not just your playground.
A pub therefore is a great setting tool. A community gathering place. Often games will inject storylines starting within the pub, it is Dungeons and Dragons trope that you’ll head straight to the inn when you come to a new town, because of course there’ll be some wizard or other there looking to hire a group of adventurers. But more than just story hooks, you’ll see the people in this world. What they drink, what they eat, you’ll hear songs, you’ll get insight into how these people live their lives.
This is why video game pubs are so important. And as a beer and video game fan, I love exploring these 8 bit boozers in detail and tell their stories. Should you find yourself, in some of Tron like scenario, sucked in the video game realm, of course you’ll want to find a good pub and by reading this series you’ll have a head start of the best pixel pubs there are.
Episode 1: The Hound Pits Pub: Dishonoured
In Dishonoured you played former royal bodyguard Corvo Attano, tracking and assassinating all the people that betrayed him and conspired in murdering his empress/girlfriend. You explore new areas each mission, either sneaking past guards using stealth and cunning or going in all guns blazing. Your find your mark, take them out and then escape.
Between these missions you’re hiding out in the Hound Pits Pub, nestled within the fictional steam punk City of Dunwall, originally the writers were planning to either set the game in Victorian London or feudal Japan and both these influences carry through, particularly The Hound Pits features golden letters outside spelling out the name of the pub, brass fittings, tiled floora, a mahogany bar, a dimly lit décor dotted with old oil paintings, this unmistakably an English pub.
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Beer is brewed on site, you can see the copper in a side building, so Hound Pits Draught is the only beer that’s on tap. Harking back to its Victorian setting we have mulled cider and absinthe. The food builds the sense that Dunwall, as a port city, relies heavily on seafood: jellied eels (fresh not canned!), brined hagfish and grilled whale alongside the more traditional pub snack of a pickled egg. If you’re vegan your only option is dark bread!
A sign outside promises nights of ‘debauchery and merriment’, the name of the pub itself harks to the fact there are literal hound pits in the basement where dog fights are held on specific nights. There are no patron toilets at all, so business must be conducted in the alley, or straight into the Dunwall river which is located a few feet from the backdoor. No doubt cries of laughter erupt when a drunk patron inevitably falls in.
The Hound Pits is a fantastic storytelling tool. We learn that Dunwall is dirty, grimy and seedy and this is the kind of pub that feeds that beast of a city exactly what it wants: Bloodsports, debauchery, gambling, fatty, salty meat and beer by the barrel, high proof spirits that will burn all the way down but numb the pain of living in an industrial nightmare. You can imagine the cacophony of the Friday night crowd, wading through them and the fog of sickly sweet tobacco smoke to get to the bar and be served a cold pint of malty brown ale. The Hound Pits feels real, and so the city of the Dunwall feels real as well.
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