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Minecraft’s new Piglin Brute mob is a solid 8/10 bruteA salute to Brutes.
A salute to Brutes.
Imagine my pleasure, then, to learn thatMinecraft, as a sort of chaser to the pint of content that was the 1.16 “nether” update, now features brutes. Arguably it already had them, in the form of the blundering, sausage-nosed Iron Golems, but I feel like they fell too close to “gentle giant” territory to be considered authentically brutish. There is no such argument, however, to be made about the Piglin Brute. It takes the Piglin, a mob that was already a good five or six on the brutometer, and cranks it up to a solid, grunting eight. So, let us consider the Piglin Brute.
The roost of the brutes.
Apparently, we were meant to be introduced to these hefty exemplars of the fact that God can make mistakes when 1.16 dropped a couple of weeks ago. But they were conceived quite late in the update’s development, and so Mojang decided to finish them off and release them as a little treat for us all now. I like the timing, there. I like the idea of the cherry on the 1.16 cake being abrute, of all things. It’s like you’ve just finished a nine-course tasting menu at a fancy restaurant, with the concluding thimble of peach dust (or whatever) having taken you to the very edge of feeling comfortably full, when a sweating titan bursts from the kitchen with a bleak laugh, and slaps a bucket of half-cooked sausages in front of you.
What do Piglin Brutes do? Brute stuff, of course. They wander aroundBastionRemnants, where the piglins make their home in the nether, grunting in baffled, vacant hatred. If they see you, they’ll try to do you in. But unlike their more gracile brothers, they won’t be fooled into neutrality if you’re holding, or wearing, gold. They’ll just wallop you anyway. Because just like a child’s appetite always has room for sweets, a Piglin Brute’s tiny minds will manage miracles when it comes to spotting opportunities to batter things.
but can I fight u?
Their weapon of choice? A golden axe. Not the legendary side-scrolling beat ‘em up, but a big axe made of gold. I doubt it keeps much of an edge, because gold is such a soft metal. But it’s also an extremely heavy metal, so sharpness doesn’t really matter. That’s pure essence of brute, that is: spending a fortune to make a bladed weapon out of gold, only to use it for caving in people’s skulls. Bravo.
“We are not really alive; we are just being forced to live.”
Well, they were loud. Just one Piglin Brute is enough to produce a constant stream of bewildered lungnoise, as it struggles with the paradox of being angry at having nothing to damage, but having nothing to damage in order to vent its anger. A crowd of them, therefore, produced a spectacular, cacophonic dirge of self-hatred. They kept swivelling their heads round to peer sullenly at each other, presumably in the vain hope that in the brief moments they had looked away, their colleagues might have become enemies. But every time they were disappointed, resulting in more sorrowful grunts.
“I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.”
Just as I felt that I had seen all there was to see of the Brutes, one of them climbed up onto a spire of stone, and a circle gathered around its base, looking up at their fellow with eyes like dirty lychees. Was this the big surprise? Was the climber about to make a speech? I floated nearer, still unregarded, and waited for the oratory to begin. But after about six seconds, the would-be demagogue just climbed down again in abject defeat, after realising it had neither the capability nor the appetite to express any thought beyond abstract aggression.
All the world was listening, but there was nothing at all to say.
