It’s been a long time since I’ve been hooked on a simple adventure game like Pentiment. An exciting, steady-paced detective thriller set in the Bavarian countryside of the late Middle Ages, with storybook art inspired by the colorful manuscripts of the period. Gameplay basically consists of hunting around for clues, questioning townspeople, and trying to draw your own conclusions about the evidence you find, but its minimalist approach is what Pentiment tells Works well for rich and complex stories.
Our inquisitive lead is first Andyas Muller, an idealistic aspiring artist who comes to the picturesque town of Tussing to pursue a career at the nearby monastery’s scriptorium. We are. He quickly becomes embroiled in a macabre intrigue, tempting you to delve into the town’s shrouded past and uncover secrets many would rather keep hidden. , which allows us to define many elements of Andreas’ backstory. Having a college degree in Theology helped a lot when some pesky monks and nuns tried to get my way by quoting the Bible from me.I was able to do so quickly.But , my background choices didn’t break new ground as much as I’d hoped, and their impact on dialogue mostly boiled down to a few different options for flavor text.
Thankfully, in the traditional adventure game sensibility, there aren’t many unintuitive puzzles where you have to find bits and bobs in the world and combine them to create a key. So the task of each mystery is to talk to the right people, convince them to tell you what you know, and compare their stories to others you’ve heard. , is to use your time wisely. When you commit to pursuing specific leads, time moves forward and you will never be given enough time to pursue them all. The added tension has forced us to make many interesting decisions. I look forward to returning and finding out what I missed in future playthroughs.
The town of Tussing and its surroundings come to life in a cohesive, beautiful, somewhat minimalist art style inspired by illustrations that are accurate to the exact same period that Andreas himself is working on. Vast fields, magnificent churches and even secret crypts radiate color, life and character. Even the textboxes feature a variety of beautiful scripts that differ based on a person’s social class: flowing handwriting for farmers and sacred blackletter script for church members.
The sound design is also excellent. The relatively quiet atmosphere of village squares and monasteries during prayers is subtle but very effective in conveying a sense of place. As for the noise of the pen scratching the vellum as you speak, it can give you goosebumps. The soundtrack likewise transported me to the Middle Ages with traditional melodies and period-accurate instruments.
The whole production feels like a love letter from a serious medieval history fan to all like-minded players like me. or even wonder, “What would Socrates do?” Far from being a pop culture caricature, developer Obsidian Entertainment explored the daily life of the Holy Roman Empire in the 1500s. , theology, and sociology. I almost gasped when I realized that the folktales told by some of the townsfolk were the bastards of a battle that took place near here in Roman times. I felt preoccupied with one of my special interests.
The dialogue and character writing are also exceptional and effective. Andreas himself is a complex character that changes greatly throughout the snapshots of his life in which we join him. It’s one of those quests for purpose, with a huge cast of memorable characters that evolve with the city. And none of these decisions are easy. You could never know exactly what happened, who was responsible, and what they deserved to be punished by the appropriate authorities. It is to decide which course of action is the least of the evils of
I also really enjoyed how quick and fast-paced the dialogue was. Just referencing Obsidian’s own Pillars of Eternity game gives us an example of how throwing too much text at once on a player can throw a wet blanket at Swashbuckling his adventures. Pentiment wisely eschews that tendency with flavorful interactions in which each character speaks only one sentence of hers or two of him at a time. Diaries about important people and worldviews are also cleverly concise. You are never expected to spend a few minutes reading to understand what is going on.
