Developer: Obsidian Entertainment
Publisher: Xbox Game Studios
Release Date: 15th November 2022
Platforms: Windows, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
Reviewed on: Windows
***Warning – mild story spoilers are mentioned.***
This is a review I never expected to write. You see I don’t own an Xbox and have no intention of ever buying one. Indeed I have never even played an Xbox or set eyes on one outside of a shop. Not because I have any particular devotion to my chosen brand of plastic gaming machine but because I only have the time and budget in my life for one console platform. That has been PlayStation since I gave up on my Sega Saturn around 1998.
I do however own a half decent PC which I play the odd game on. I recently decided to do some housekeeping and do the task I’d been putting off for quite some time – reinstalling Windows. While I was doing this I was presented with a screen advertising PC Game Pass. £1 for a month? Well, I was about to go away for a few days travelling with only my laptop to keep me amused so why not, that’s a cracking deal. I set a reminder in my calendar to cancel the sub, got out my wallet and signed up.
I browsed the list of top titles and one game jumped out at me – I’d heard a lot of talk about Pentiment on various podcasts since its release a couple of weeks earlier and it had really piqued my interest. Lots of reading I’d heard though. Well, how bad could it be? I’ve put hundreds of hours into the Yakuza series, surely it couldn’t be any worse than those?
And, you know what? It isn’t, it really isn’t bad at all. I’m gonna call it out right now – if anyone refuses to play this game or puts it down solely on the basis of “too much reading” they are doing themselves a major disservice.
I’d actually go further and say that I believe voice acting this game would ruin Pentiment. To return to the example of Yakuza, Yakuza 6 was the first game in the series to be fully voice acted for all dialogue. At face value this seemed a positive change but it quickly became tiresome. Instead of waiting for characters to finish talking I would hit the X button as I’d finished reading the subtitles well before they had said everything. I could see a voice acted Pentiment being the same. The average reader can read much quicker than normal conversational speaking speed after all.
There are a few other reasons I believe Pentiment is better without voice acting. The game is presented in an absolutely beautiful visual style and the text of the dialogue is an integral part of the overall look. What’s more, there are frequent glossary links to words and phrases in the text. I don’t see how this could be removed even if voice acting were added so to me the audio would be superfluous.
Another reason I don’t want to see (hear?) voice acting is that it would inevitably be in English. This is a game set in 16th Century Bavaria, no one would be speaking English. With the dialogue being presented as text it can be regarded as translations of the characters’ words. Hearing Andreas address the monks in the scriptorium in American English, or even worse English with a German accent, would utterly kill immersion. This is the same reason I will die on the “subs over dubs” hill every time.
Or, in the unlikely event that it was voiced in authentic languages you’d be reading subtitles anyway…
Besides all of that, the textual presentation serves a purpose – the font in which different characters’ speech is written tells us something about them. Religious or more educated people have their words presented in more elaborate script, the kind we might expect to find in manuscripts of the era. The peasantry on the other hand are depicted in crude hand written words. Key words which the player may not be familiar with are highlighted and a quick button press triggers a glossary definition.
There are numerous little embellishments like a foreign language Andreas understands being written in its own words initially before morphing into English. This is a simple mechanic but actually works utterly brilliantly. We are explicitly told that Andreas “knows some” other languages, not that he is proficient in them. This is exactly how a non fluent speaker deals with a second language – they take it in then translate to their native tongue.
None of this would work as well or at all with voice acting. I‘ve heard some suggestions of a possible voice acted version to make the game more accessible. Personally I think this would be detrimental to Pentiment as an experience because as noted the text only approach lends itself to so much more than simply conveying the characters’ words.
And finally, there isn’t really that much reading. We are not talking walls of text here, at most chunks of one or two sentences or maybe a choice of a few bullet points. It is all delivered in very easily digestible chunks.
OK, got that out of my system, let’s talk about the game.
As mentioned, it is set in 16th Century Bavaria and revolves around our main character, Andreas Maler. Andreas is an artist who we first meet working at the abbey in a small Alpine town called Tassing. The game mechanics are traditional point and click interactions with a 2D game canvas. Andreas can talk to various townspeople in and around Tassing to learn about the world and what is going on in it.
One of the very few minor quibbles I can make about the game is that navigation using a controller can sometimes be a bit clunky. There are some paths that go diagonally up or down on the screen but it is very easy to just run straight past when you are attempting to access said paths. Likewise some icons can be a bit footery to correctly activate. This is absolutely a minor issue though.
Not only can Andreas talk to the townsfolk, he must. Pentiment is a story driven by conversation and character development. The first couple of hours is heavy with this – you find yourself in the little Alpine town with superficially nothing to do other than get to your work at the abbey so the best thing to do is absolutely talk to the locals and get to know them and their relationships.
The days and nights are split up into chunks – go to work in the morning, eat your lunch, work again then dinner and the evening. You can eat with various people around town and these meals are another opportunity to learn more about your fellow inhabitants.
After a couple of hours in the game mostly spent working at the abbey and talking to the townsfolk the first major event happens. There is a bloody murder at the abbey – a visiting lord is found slain. The immediate blame is targeted at one of the monks who was found with the apparent murder weapon in his hand. Unwilling to accept his friend’s guilt Andreas takes it upon himself to investigate the murder and clear the monk’s name. The Archdeacon is coming to the abbey to pass judgement on the case so the clock is ticking.
Andreas has multiple leads to look into around the murder but a finite amount of time for his investigation – and not enough of it to follow all the leads. This forms one of Pentiment’s main game mechanics – having to make choices about what actions to do in the knowledge that you won’t be able to do everything.
It’s not explicitly stated that you won’t be able to cover all the leads when you start investigating but there are many sign posts to this effect and before you embark upon a course of action that will take some time you are informed of this. For example in my playthrough I never returned to the scene of the crime to help one of the monks inspect the body – no doubt I was therefore lacking some evidence. If the player hasn’t realised this, the penny will absolutely drop when they are compelled to go and testify to the Archdeacon with invariably some loose ends not tied up.
Pentiment has some RPG elements but it is most certainly not a role playing game per se. There is no combat in the game, no resource management or skill trees to navigate. What there is though are choices. Many choices. Choices which will have consequences – both in the short-term and down through the years. To return to the example of testifying to the Archdeacon, some of my dialogue choices antagonised him and subsequently he did not want to listen to my opinion as to who was the culprit. I presented two lots of evidence and intended to incriminate one of the suspects. The Archdeacon dismissed my appeal to speak and proceeded to judge against the other suspect! The best laid plans…!
The ruling on the murder investigation concludes Act One of the game – there are two further acts which take place many years later. I won’t go into the story of those but suffice to say they play out in similar fashion. You talk to local people, uncover plots, gather evidence, make decisions – all in the knowledge that you can never do it all.
Although I have said that Pentiment is not an RPG there are elements of role playing incorporated. You make decisions about Andreas’ background which will have an impact on the narrative options you encountered – like the aforementioned languages. Andreas can understand some other European languages but he is not a polyglot who will speak all the tongues he encounters in the adventure. In my game I decided to be a hedonist which opened up a range of sometimes bawdy conversation options!
In the third act, the game changes approach slightly but the gameplay remains the same. In one of very few minor complaints I did feel that the impacts of my decisions in the final act were less meaningful and there was generally a slight decrease in agency as the game proceeded towards its finale. But, I’m really nitpicking, there was no impact whatsoever in my enjoyment of the last third of Pentiment.
The visual style of Pentiment is glorious – it is depicted in the style of mediaeval illustrations – totally fitting as these are what Andreas creates. It might not be to everyone’s taste but I love the look of the game. To me, it is genuinely beautiful. The sound design is somewhat more minimal – most of what you hear when playing the game will be the scratching of a quill across parchment as the text of characters’ speech is written. There are episodes of music in key places which are really well done and trigger emotions corresponding to what is happening in the game at the time.
Apparently the title Pentiment is derived from pentimento, an artistic phenomena where previous work is painted over but may still be visible later on.This is exactly what we encounter in the game. It is split into three distinct time periods over the course of around thirty years and through our investigations and conversations with locals we see how events can echo through time and be perceived very differently by different parties.
Although I have said that I felt the third act was somewhat less empowering in terms of game choices, this pentimento effect is very much in evidence here. Towards the end of the game the player speaks to a number of different groups of locals about a key event which occurred at the end of the second act. They all have different opinions about what exactly happened and the repercussions and whether or not the event had been beneficial for the parties involved. When speaking to the groups they all have totally reasonable justifications for their conclusions and it is left to the player to ultimately decide which version they subscribe to – if any!
This is a key example of Pentiment’s greatest strength – its writing. As I’ve talked about the primary game mechanic is conversation and choices – lots of both. We are really made to feel that the vast majority of our decisions matter and will have very real impacts upon the characters we live among in the town of Tassing. The game never holds your hand or judges you and is frequently morally ambiguous – something I loved! At the end of both the first two acts we have to make decisions of literally life or death and we never learn if we made the “right” decision. Indeed, it is heavily implied later on that there is no such thing. To me this made the game an absolute joy to play.
I am no expert about 16th century European history but I am prepared to trust Obsidian that the content of this game is historically accurate. As such the attention to detail is wonderful and in fact quite educational. For example I learned that the Wild Hunt that I’d heard of from The Witcher 3 is in fact genuine northern European folklore.
Ostensibly Pentiment is a murder mystery narrative driven point and click video game. But, it’s so much more. It’s a commentary on the nature of perception, how time is an utterly critical factor in our lives, about how relationships evolve over that time: growing and withering equally. It was a truly magical fifteen hours and I was genuinely emotional when I finished the game. It’s not often I use the word but it’s a masterpiece, a lovingly crafted piece of gaming art.
I’ll always be eternally grateful I decided to reinstall Windows last week!
-Calum