Idea For Non-Gruesome Butchery

[That1GameGuy]

So, the devs don't want to add most depictions of butchery due to graphic content, which is perfectly understandable, but I still think a more tactile method of harvesting animals would suit this game well.

My solution is that when harvesting an animal, instead of getting the standard window, you'd just be given the hide, potential antlers, and a large featureless meat-rectangle. This rectangle can be placed, and the player can begin begin butchery with a knife or cleaver. The size, shape, and content of the meat is different depending on the animal and their weight.

The flesh cube is made of four different mini-voxel types: redmeat, bushmeat, fat, and bone. A product is outputted when an at least six voxel chunk is separated from the rest of the bone connected meat. Knives destroy voxels while a cleaver can select an area to be cleanly separated. Bigger cuts can give multiple outputs, assuming the number of voxels was divisible by six, any odd voxels are simply destroyed without giving any meat/fat.

In order to determine the output, each voxel type has a point value: redmeat: 1, fat: 2, bushmeat: 3. So lets say you cut free some meat that has four redmeat and two bushmeat voxels.

Redmeat: 4x1 = 4

Bushmeat: 2x3 = 6

The resulting cut will be bushmeat.

This minigame would allow experienced butchers to do things like harvest redmeat from high bushmeat content animals, or optimize for fat creation. I also think having to put in more work to get meat would help balance food, as I feel it is too strong for how easy it can be to get large quantities of it with a modest pig farm.

[Bruno Willis]

This sounds amazing, but I think it could end up being pretty gruesome anyway.

I'd love it if the meat, fat, bushmeat, etc. were wrapped around a length of bone, but I feel like that could be gruesome. It'd be really cool if the shape of the bone was sort of random - sometimes it's just a length of bone, sometimes it's ribcage like, which would be harder to butcher from. 

[williams_482]

I respect the attempt, but to tell the truth I found your description pretty stomach churning. Chopping up a "meat rectangle" doesn't need to have visible blood or guts or eyes or whatever to make some people, apparently myself included, quite uncomfortable. 

[LadyWYT]

I like the idea, but I do agree with @williams_482, a featureless rectangle that vaguely resembles a meat product is rather gross, if not downright unsettling. I'd rather see the meat left as-is for generic cuts, with some special drops available from larger creatures. By special drops I mean like a rack of ribs, or a tenderloin, or the classic ham shank style of meat that you could cut into several generic cuts with the bone leftover(before or after cooking).

9 hours ago, Bruno Willis said:

This sounds amazing, but I think it could end up being pretty gruesome anyway.

I'd love it if the meat, fat, bushmeat, etc. were wrapped around a length of bone, but I feel like that could be gruesome. It'd be really cool if the shape of the bone was sort of random - sometimes it's just a length of bone, sometimes it's ribcage like, which would be harder to butcher from. 

Basically this, minus needing to really butcher it. Think just butchering the creature as normal in the game, but getting a variety of convenient premade cuts like t-bones and whatnot, as if it's the grocery store. 

[Bruno Willis]

Honestly, I'd love it if butchery were a bit more challenging and gruesome. We're killing animals here people! It's not like it's a nice thing to do.

It seems like it'd be pretty challenging to add more detail to butchery without making it clearer that we're cutting up a creature. 

[MKMoose]

There has been a pretty big (2000+ messages) discussion on related topics in the discord server. There are two main suggestions regarding butchering. The first focuses on the realistic process itself, and that could end up being pretty graphic and uncomfortable even if implemented in a less explicit way, not unlike proposed by the OP. The devs have said that detailed butchering and skinning is likely never coming to the vanilla game, because "certain team member(s) have a visceral reaction of nausea to depictions of gore that hew too closely to reality." However, that presumably doesn't exclude less detailed mechanics that achieve the same gameplay goals.

And that leads to the second point about the gameplay purpose of butchering, which I think would fit the game very well as a relatively labor-intensive way to obtain more realistic quantities of meat and other resources from animals. Instead of killing six or so boars in a single hunting trip to get a decent supply of protein, you'd be able to kill a single boar, carry it home, set it on a butchering hook, break it down, make a meal from some of the meat and preserve the rest. The reward per amount of time spent could be similar, but the process would be much more involved, sophisticated and satisfying. This doesn't inherently require any graphic visuals, and I'd imagine that it shouldn't cause significant issues if implemented appropriately - if the current vague knife movements and the animal suddenly turning into bones are fine, then doing the same on a butchering table or hook instead of in the middle of a forest should be tolerable. Animal husbandry would then also have to be made more demanding as well to keep it balanced, with the reward being higher.

[Dark Thoughts]

I use the Butchering mod and think that's fine in its representation, and honestly less weird / gross than what you described. lol

Edit: That being said. Considering how the rust monsters are severely corrupted & deformed humans, with split heads and ripped apart chests, I fail to see how a skinned carcass and a red liquid filled bucket would be too gory. The vanilla game is way grosser than that already.

Edited February 12 by Dark Thoughts

[MKMoose]

6 minutes ago, Dark Thoughts said:

Considering how the rust monsters are severely corrupted & deformed humans, with split heads and ripped apart chests, I fail to see how a skinned carcass and a red liquid filled bucket would be too gory. The vanilla game is way grosser than that already.

Quoting Redram's clarification in the discord thread on it (I don't think I can find anything going into more detail):

Quote

This is separate from the body horror elements of the game, which are divorced from reality enough to not provoke these reactions (I'm told).

While on the topic, there's also this post by Redram from a couple years ago, in a thread about hunting.

[Dark Thoughts]

6 hours ago, MKMoose said:

which are divorced from reality enough to not provoke these reactions (I'm told).

Yeah, sorry. Can't relate to that at all. I really don't want to be dismissive but to me this seems like some people being a bit hypocritical. If the game had ultra realistic graphics I could maybe understand it more generally, but that still would have to include the rust monsters.

[LadyWYT]

22 minutes ago, Dark Thoughts said:

If the game had ultra realistic graphics I could maybe understand it more generally, but that still would have to include the rust monsters.

The monsters are grotesque, yes, but they don't really look like real people/animals, and there's a different between rusty metal and ambiguous gray goop, and blood, flesh, and tendons.

Hence why I suggested premade cuts of meat as drops earlier. It's more likely that some will be squeamish around the carcass, than perhaps they would be around a model of just raw meat(like would be found in a grocery store).

[Entaris]

All you'd have to do is make draining the blood minimalistic in effect and then you'd have nice clean meat

[Yakkob]

On 2/11/2026 at 3:50 PM, Bruno Willis said:

Honestly, I'd love it if butchery were a bit more challenging and gruesome. We're killing animals here people! It's not like it's a nice thing to do.

It seems like it'd be pretty challenging to add more detail to butchery without making it clearer that we're cutting up a creature. 

my thoughts exactly. its about time people grow a backbone.

[Bruno Willis]

5 hours ago, Yakkob said:

my thoughts exactly. its about time people grow a backbone.

IDK, people should be queasy about killing animals. It isn't nice, but I eat meat so...

I guess part of it is that you can be a vegetarian in V.S. and if killing animals would make you uncomfortable, don't do it.

But it's a game, and I get that the devs want everyone to have fun and enjoy a wilderness survival fantasy, not contemplate the morality of meat. 

[Dark Thoughts]

21 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

The monsters are grotesque, yes, but they don't really look like real people/animals, and there's a different between rusty metal and ambiguous gray goop, and blood, flesh, and tendons.

The animals don't look like real animals either, and neither do any of the parts beneath their skin, which we have in form of fat, bones, muscles, and the skin already - none of which seem problematic either, because apparently people create abstract ideas of what those things actually are.

21 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Hence why I suggested premade cuts of meat as drops earlier. It's more likely that some will be squeamish around the carcass, than perhaps they would be around a model of just raw meat(like would be found in a grocery store).

Hence the hypocrisy. I guess cutting things up in a certain form factor all of the sudden does not make it what it is. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

35 minutes ago, Bruno Willis said:

IDK, people should be queasy about killing animals. It isn't nice, but I eat meat so...

I eat meat too, not much for reasons, but at least I also don't delude myself when it comes to that topic in order to justify eating it. VS is a survival game though... I think if there's ever a point in somewhat accurately representing butchery it should be a survival game. Not even for gore reasons, but I also think we should be able to make more use of things from those animals. Like, if I have to kill an animal for my own survival, you better believe I'll be using as much of it as I can, or at least try to learn to do so.

This whole "out of sight out of mind" mentality when people see a packaged piece of meat is just weird to me.

[Bruno Willis]

6 minutes ago, Dark Thoughts said:

I eat meat too, not much for reasons, but at least I also don't delude myself when it comes to that topic in order to justify eating it. VS is a survival game though... I think if there's ever a point in somewhat accurately representing butchery it should be a survival game. Not even for gore reasons, but I also think we should be able to make more use of things from those animals. Like, if I have to kill an animal for my own survival, you better believe I'll be using as much of it as I can, or at least try to learn to do so.

This whole "out of sight out of mind" mentality when people see a packaged piece of meat is just weird to me.

Likewise, the out of sight out of mind thing makes me pretty uncomfortable, but I think it's worth keeping gore out of player's faces if possible while still getting some good gameplay. I don't think there is any way to add detail to butchery without making people uncomfortably aware that they're turning a living creature into cuts of meat. It is what it is.

Either the devs leave that part of the game tastefully abstracted, or they add a bit of mechanical depth to butchery, and it makes people uncomfortable (as it should). 

I don't mind either way. I don't play vintage story to get my hands into offal.

Actually, scratch that, I want random pieces of offal from butchering. Liver and kidney omelet! Yum!

[Dark Thoughts]

8 minutes ago, Bruno Willis said:

I don't mind either way. I don't play vintage story to get my hands into offal.

Actually, scratch that, I want random pieces of offal from butchering. Liver and kidney omelet! Yum!

The Butchering mod definitely has you covered on that front!

Personally I feel the graphics style alone makes it abstract enough to not be too gruesome. It's not like we're asking for a detailed visual representation of gouging the eyes out of a socket or something.

[Bruno Willis]

17 minutes ago, Dark Thoughts said:

Like, if I have to kill an animal for my own survival, you better believe I'll be using as much of it as I can, or at least try to learn to do so.

Actually, that's a really fair reason to add more mechanical depth to butchery. It'd add quite a lot if you could choose to kill fewer animals, but get good at butchery and get more out of them.

I like how bushmeat is used in recurve bows, symbolizing using sinew. That's a really nice abstraction of a real process. It references reality without being too obsessive or gruesome. If there were some way to do that with the butchery process that'd be good.

I like the idea that bush butchery leaves a carcass which attracts flies and wolves, vs. home butchery which is cleaner and more profitable. That way, being wasteful is gruesome, and being respectful is cleaner and less disturbing. 

7 minutes ago, Dark Thoughts said:

Personally I feel the graphics style alone makes it abstract enough to not be too gruesome. It's not like we're asking for a detailed visual representation of gouging the eyes out of a socket or something.

Totally agree. Keep it abstracted, but use the abstraction to reference real world practices. 

[marmarmar34]

Seeing how contentious this all is, it's probably best to be left as a mod. I may actually download it if I ever feel like adding that much more detail to my world. But either than that, I'm perfectly OK with the system we have right now.

[williams_482]

On 2/12/2026 at 4:02 PM, Dark Thoughts said:

Yeah, sorry. Can't relate to that at all. I really don't want to be dismissive but to me this seems like some people being a bit hypocritical. If the game had ultra realistic graphics I could maybe understand it more generally, but that still would have to include the rust monsters.

It can't be hypocritical because no thought whatsoever goes into visceral "I am fine with this" vs "I am NOT fine with this" response to visual stimulus. That "ick" or lack there of is a purely instinctive emotional response. People react more or less strongly to different things, and separately people can become more or less desensitized to things that originally bothered them. None of that can be easily boiled down to simple comparative "if this is okay than that must be" statements about totally separate things.

For whatever it's worth, I don't eat meat in the real world. I'll also fully admit to being relatively squeamish about gore-adjacent things. Nothing in vanilla Vintage Story triggers any sort of negative response from me. 

I think Vintage Story, like TOBG, taking a highly abstracted approach to harvesting dead animals is why I don't have any problem with it. Both games totally gloss over showing any kind of blood or gore, and simplifies meat down to supermarket like items of "red meat," "raw pork," or what have you. Similarly, stuff like drifters mutated bodies, bony soil, apparent sacrificial altar ruins with skeletons scattered about, etc, all hint very strongly at things which would be very uncomfortable to encounter in real life, but are streamlined enough to be merely creepy. I think that's the right zone for this game to inhabit, and the devs seem to agree.

For people who want more comprehensive butchery mechanics and are less bothered than I about the accompanying visuals, there is already at least one well regarded mod out there. I won't be touching it, but I'm glad it's an option. 

Edited February 13 by williams_482

[OBAMFSpike]

On 2/11/2026 at 1:50 PM, Bruno Willis said:

Honestly, I'd love it if butchery were a bit more challenging and gruesome. We're killing animals here people! It's not like it's a nice thing to do.

It seems like it'd be pretty challenging to add more detail to butchery without making it clearer that we're cutting up a creature. 

First play thru on a single player world and the moose turned around and attacked me. It was horrifying! 

It was also Game On. 

Just like Vintage Story. The meme of the remnant bear attack with Vintage Story is spot on. 

[Bruno Willis]

27 minutes ago, williams_482 said:

I think Vintage Story, like TOBG, taking a highly abstracted approach to harvesting dead animals is why I don't have any problem with it. Both games totally gloss over showing any kind of blood or gore, and simplifies meat down to supermarket like items of "red meat," "raw pork," or what have you. Similarly, stuff like drifters mutated bodies, bony soil, apparent sacrificial altar ruins with skeletons scattered about, etc, all hint very strongly at things which would be very uncomfortable to encounter in real life, but are streamlined enough to be merely creepy. I think that's the right zone for this game to inhabit, and the devs seem to agree.

For people who want more comprehensive butchery mechanics and are less bothered than I about the accompanying visuals, there is already at least one well regarded mod out there. I won't be touching it, but I'm glad it's an option. 

Yeah, I'm leaning towards the current abstracted approach, personally. We already get plenty of gameplay out of the actual hunting aspect, and other things need more attention right now (like spinning and weaving). 

[Josiah Gibbonson]

I really hope they go this route. The game is complex in so many other aspects, I'd love another aspect to hunting that isn't just "spam right button till dead, then knife it up for maximum profit." 

[Yakkob]

here's my 2 cents, as someone who has dabbled in leatherworking, a grew up around people who hunted;

the way I see it, they should go into excruciating detail, if they are worried about people being too squeamish, merely add options (eg, a toggle to fully disable the complex butchery, and another which only removes the rougher parts), while I can't say I've ever went hunting IRL, I have taken the lives of a fair number of animals, in the form of mercy killings, and/or accidents; and if I needed to, I would have absolutely no moral problems with doing so purposefully, it just does not interest me in the slightest, while other things do, plus I have little need since I'm not particularly fond of venison or rabbit, and I can get the other parts I do use (antlers and hides) from either family, flea markets or as sheds, so I have close to no need or interest in hunting. 

[Dark Thoughts]

1 hour ago, williams_482 said:

like TOBG

?!

1 hour ago, williams_482 said:

there is already at least one well regarded mod out there.

Not really. It's highly incompatible with other mods, such as the FotsA mods and compatibility keeps breaking. And who the hell knows for how long that mod will stay alive.

[LadyWYT]

5 minutes ago, Yakkob said:

here's my 2 cents, as someone who has dabbled in leatherworking, a grew up around people who hunted;

the way I see it, they should go into excruciating detail, if they are worried about people being too squeamish, merely add options (eg, a toggle to fully disable the complex butchery, and another which only removes the rougher parts), while I can't say I've ever went hunting IRL, I have taken the lives of a fair number of animals, in the form of mercy killings, and/or accidents; and if I needed to, I would have absolutely no moral problems with doing so purposefully, it just does not interest me in the slightest, while other things do, plus I have little need since I'm not particularly fond of venison or rabbit, and I can get the other parts I do use (antlers and hides) from either family, flea markets or as sheds, so I have close to no need or interest in hunting. 

It would be nice if it could be a toggle, but I'm not sure how something like that could efficiently be made a toggle for the vanilla game itself. If the player has to physically skin the carcass and then chop it up into cuts of meat, it seems like a change that would be difficult to just toggle on and off. 

Assuming it could be made a toggle though, the bigger problem that I see is, someone is still going to have to model the skinned carcass and then maintain that model. It's one thing to model something like a steak or chicken leg, given that while those are animal parts they aren't still part of the animal. A skinned carcass though still looks like the living creature, and that will usually be what more people are squeamish around since it still looks like an animal.

In any case, if the squeamishness is due to the grisly nature of a skinned carcass, but the raw cuts of meat themselves aren't a problem, then it seems like different cuts of meat could be added as hunting drops to give hunting a little more depth, without grossing the devs or players out in the process. If the issue is with realistic cuts of meat though, then more realistic butchering should be left to the modded realm for the time being. If the development team gets shuffled in the future and there's no reservations about such depictions though, then maybe it could change in the future, but I don't think it's something worth hiring or firing specific devs over.

Personally, I don't really want to see a butchering process much more realistic than what's already depicted in the game. I'm certainly aware of how gruesome a process it is in reality, as I've been there, done that, but it's not the kind of thing I'm looking for when it comes to videogames. 

1 hour ago, williams_482 said:

I think Vintage Story, like TOBG, taking a highly abstracted approach to harvesting dead animals is why I don't have any problem with it. Both games totally gloss over showing any kind of blood or gore, and simplifies meat down to supermarket like items of "red meat," "raw pork," or what have you. Similarly, stuff like drifters mutated bodies, bony soil, apparent sacrificial altar ruins with skeletons scattered about, etc, all hint very strongly at things which would be very uncomfortable to encounter in real life, but are streamlined enough to be merely creepy. I think that's the right zone for this game to inhabit, and the devs seem to agree.

For people who want more comprehensive butchery mechanics and are less bothered than I about the accompanying visuals, there is already at least one well regarded mod out there. I won't be touching it, but I'm glad it's an option.

Pretty much this. It's also why some choose to send their animals to a reputable local butcher in real life, rather than doing the work themselves on the farm and saving some money.