Release date: 15 November 2022

Developer: Obsidian Entertainment

Publisher: Xbox Game Studios

Platforms: Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S/X

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"Pentiment can provide several good hours of entertainment due to the unique art style, attention to historical detail, and emotional depth of certain characters. But the repetitive gameplay, lack of exciting encounters, total absence of voice-overs, and good but essentially linear main story shall turn some players away.”

 

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The love project of Josh Sawyer couldn’t find a better time to be released, as the 2022 year turned out to be very dry in terms of exclusives and system seller releases for Xbox game studios. Intentionally (in the light of the upcoming Blizzard Activision acquisition deal) or not – it doesn’t matter. What we have is that a modest indie-like 2D graphic adventure was forced into carrying the heavy burden of being one of the main Xbox studios games to stand in the same row with the likes of the latest God of War title. As the result, Pentiment received an additional amount of attention and limelight. But did it deserve it?

 

There may be many narrative-focused adventure games, visual novels, and walking simulators out there, but when one of the industry RPG leading studios, spearheaded by the legendary game designer announces a story-oriented adventure one should take notice. Obsidian Entertainment is a veteran studio which is known for their deep role-play mechanic, intriguing unique characters, grey morale philosophy, and unrivaled approach to the player’s choice design games. So naturally, the expectations were high even for the 13 members development team.

 

Pentiment is a narrative adventure 2D role-playing game set in Duchy of Bavaria, in a fictional Alpine Town of Tassing and its nearby abbey, in the early to middle of 16th century. The player is invited to fill in the shoes of Andreas Maler, a journeyman artist, who is serving an apprenticeship as an illuminator at Keirsau abbey. Suddenly a murder happens right in the heart of the abbey and Andreas finds himself right in the mix of the events and is called to conduct a murder investigation. A good thing about the game is that it is very honest to the player. First – is the visual style. Some shall like it, some shall not. If you can’t stand it – this is game is not for you. Second – there is A LOT of reading, moreover, there are no voice-overs in this game, so if you don’t like reading – this game is not for you. Third – this game takes things SLOWLY. With the exception of Act II where things heat up and become messy pretty quickly. So if you like to be always in the middle of big action or easily get bored – find something else to do. You still there?

 

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The core gameplay is straightforward as it is. Andreas needs to navigate the town, talk to locals, and gather clues. At the start of the game, the player needs to choose Andreas’ traits, educational background, and language abilities. What Pentiment is doing great is breaking stereotypes about skill checks. For instance, selecting a trait dialogue option shall not mean by default the best choice. On contrary, bragging about knowledge of the law may annoy some characters, and using a rapscallion background to approach others may let them check their guard instead of opening up to you. The player needs to think about what he wants to say and to whom. But other than occasional additional dialogue lines and possible bonuses or penalties on certain checks, Andreas’ background does not influence the outcome of the story. Moreover, people around you react to your presence in the same manner regardless of your reputation. Despite that protagonist’s identity texture is well crafted and there is a clear evolution of his character through the course of the game. His struggles, doubts, grief, and inner demons are well presented and the dream sequences is a very interesting way of presenting the character’s inner world.

 

The town of Tassing looks good but is not alive due to the lack of encounters not dependent on the player. NPCs are static minding their own business and there is no interaction between them. Despite a great potential of creating comic situations and infusing humour, most of the time the game takes itself too seriously and the dialogue mostly fulfills information delivery and background introduction function, as there is little to no entertainment. There was only one sequence in the whole game that could make a person smile (the Library is the best place of all of them). One would expect exciting crazy activities like beer-drinking competitions, arm wrestling, stealing pigs, and fighting (all right there is one story non-mandatory fight).   All the mini-games are either about selecting food during dinner or some primitive pass time activities like fixing horseshoes. Gladly the design team had a good sense of dynamic and those activities don’t overstay their welcome. Interactions with characters also feel uninspired and dull at times. Generic responses for 90% of NPC’s who are not kids in the game are single line” “Good day.”, “Hello, Andreas.” and “God bless you, Andreas.” and it doesn’t matter to whom you talk. It’s been almost 25 years since Shenmue introduced multiple fully voiced generic answers for certain stages of story progression. When things start to heat up in the story, Pentiment introduces the “choice pressure” mechanic in the game. The player simply cannot get all the information he needs to have a full picture of the murder, as to get each clue Andreas needs to spend some time so the player needs to prioritize certain suspects and spend more time investigating them thus ignoring other possible alternatives. This a great design decision that adds variety to the repetitive gameplay.

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The story is dealing with topics such as faith, belief, doing evil for the greater good, finding your true calling, and where one’s place in this world. The foundation is sensible and adequate as the themes of the game are interesting to investigate. But what suffers the most is the story pacing and flow. The issue that shall be analyzed in the Dramatic Analysis.

 

Where the game excels is the visual presentation. The amount of passion and attention to detail is unprecedented. There are two modes of visible text in the game – one customized sophisticated fonts which are used depending on the person you talk to and simplified universal common font for all the text. The interface has a lot of detail but is clean and informative containing essential information: glossary, task journal, places to go, and people to see.

The music selection contains a number of medieval tunes, which were written by the music band. In terms of composition, the songs are strictly historical and historically inspired. There is no particularly emotionally impactful music piece but the score overall greatly complements the whole game’s atmosphere and feel. There are no voice-over lines for characters not even single short recorded sounds expressing confusion, laughter, etc. for key characters. Whispered lines are written in small letters and some strong emotional outbursts are delivered by a strange shaking sound.

 

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Special mention goes to the in-game book design. Studio members spent a lot of time on historical research of the era, reference materials, and historical experts’ consultations. The game breathes art and uniqueness the pictures are beautiful and the fonts look like what you would expect to see in medieval books. This game is a love letter for people who love high medieval manuscripts and the culture that surrounded them.

Technical performance was good and there were no FPS drops, stuttering, or critical bugs. But during the playthrough, several non-critical glitches were encountered such as an active quest mark on the map with nothing to do. There were a few instances of bugged conversation loops where you would go through the same conversation with a character twice, and even may change your choice in the mid.

 Pentiment can provide several good hours of entertainment due to the unique art style, interesting narrative techniques, attention to historical detail, and emotional depth of certain characters. But the repetitive gameplay, lack of exciting encounters, total absence of voiceovers, and good but linear main story shall turn some players away.

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WARNING: The section below contains spoilers about story, characters and endings.

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Strong points:

• Interesting narrative techniques, “You are damned if you do and you are damned if you don’t” approach.

• Counterintuitive relationship system design which resonates with real life.

• Story foundation ideas and topics the game deals with are appealing and deep.

• The main character is well-written and his emotional depth realizes its potential during the course of the game.

Weak points:

• Story flow is disrupted, lacks dynamic events and goes against the natural drama rising action progression principle.

• The game that heavily emphasizes the responsibility of choice having only one fixed ending.

 

One of the main features of the Pentiment narrative design is the approach and execution of decision-making and personal choice during the game. As the protagonist volunteered to investigate the murder he needs to gather the clues on potential suspects within a limited time to present the evidence to the Archdeacon. The game never reveals the identity of the killer, so the player is left in the dark and needs to carry the burden of being responsible for the brutal execution which causes a great emotional impact.

 

Relationship system design is another highlight of the game. Here we talk specifically about the relationship between Andreas Maler and his young apprentice Caspar during act II. He accompanies the protagonist during the larger portion of the act and in several scripted interactions Andreas can either gain or lose the favour of his young apprentice. If Andreas is caring, and gentle to Caspar that shall lead to the death of his apprentice as Caspar will be eager to sacrifice himself during the heat of the moment for his master. But if Andreas’ attitude towards Caspar shall be cold and strictly professional, that shall alienate Andreas, but save Caspar's life, as the latter shall not be obliged to risk his life for his master. This design is counterintuitive in the game’s logic as in most cases being a good guy is heavily encouraged in the games, but that is not always the case in real life. The fact the team chose this route is a very interesting and fresh perspective on the characters’ relationship interactions.

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One of the key elements that separate Pentiment from being a very good game is a story flow problem.  The core gameplay itself is quite repetitive and non-sophisticated but from time to time powerful events happen which raise the tension and the player’s interest and involvement. Those events are exciting as being high-pressure situations where the stakes couldn’t be even higher, but the main issue is that all these events happen during the first two acts leaving the third act without any meaningful drama.

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During Act I there are 2 high-impact points:

Baron’s murder (50)

The execution of the suspect (75)

 

During Act II there are 2 high-impact points as well:

Otto’s Murder (65)

The peasants’ revolt and Andreas Maller presumed death (95) as being undoubtfully the highest impact point in the whole game.

 

During Act III there are no noticeable impact points except for some suspense moments

The attack against Magdalene’s father (45)

Father Thomas reveal as a thread puller (30) which is not coming as an amazing surprise at this point.

 

The whole Act III is a disappointment in comparison with the rest of the game, as the last third of the game is built around mundane tasks running around the town talking to all of the locals, writing letters, and reading letters. Changing protagonist in the middle of the game is a technique that some game developers use (the most extreme example is “The Nomad Soul” by Quantic Dream). But it is also risky from a drama flow point of view as the game loses all the steam, and momentum of building the player’s affection for the protagonist. There is also almost no interaction with the new protagonist (Magdalene) during the first two-thirds of the game so the player doesn’t have any emotional connection to the newly introduced character.

 

The key solution to improve Pentiment’s dramatic flow in Act III would be adding high-pressure encounters (Magdalene getting attacked, her house on fire, another murder) and building a connection link to Andreas Maler during Act II. Another solution would be changing Act II and Act III places and adapting the story to accommodate the changes. Otherwise, Act III is played as a prolonged actionless epilogue.

But what is truly confusing is that the game that emphasizes the power of choice has only one ending with some variations of the mural. All the choices and the decisions the player made during the course of the game don’t matter. During Act III the protagonist is approached by different people to inquire about the mural and there are several instances the player needs to choose what Tassing history version shall be presented on the mural. In the end, both the game world and its characters never care about it and the player can observe the decisions he made only during the prefinal credits video sequence. This is very unfortunate as it robs Pentiment of an important element of the heavy narrative story-oriented games – replay value.

The damage control solution, in this case, would be to adapt the last scene of Magdalene talking to local people so that Tassing citizens would have different reactions depending on the final version of the mural. But ideally, multiple endings solution with desirably key choices made in the mid-game would be the true golden route.

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