Pentiment is a brilliant game about being a terrible medieval murder-solver
Obsidian's gorgeously illustrated new game owes as much to The Name Of The Rose and neo-noir as it does traditional mystery stories
Games Features Pentiment
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[This article contains spoilers for the first act of Pentiment.]
I watch the executioner’s blade fall. It doesn’t cut clean; the condemned monk falls forward in obvious agony, beautifully sketched blood pouring from the wound in his neck. Another hacking cut, then a third, and finally the head of the convicted murderer rolls free, its face frozen in an artfully rendered expression of pain. I had the option to look away from the carnage, a few moments earlier, but I didn’t take it. After all, I was the reason this innocent man was dying a murderer’s death.
Pentiment snuck up on me. After two straight games (the decidedly lackluster Outer Worlds, and then the simply-not-for-me Grounded) that suggested that studio Obsidian was drifting further and further away from the sorts of word-nerd games (Fallout: New Vegas, the broken and brilliant Knights Of The Old Republic 2, and, most recently, 2016's Tyranny) that had made me fall in love with it, I was hesitant to trust again. The art style—modeled, with incredible ingenuity, on the look of the illustrated manuscripts of the game’s 16th-century setting—certainly appealed. The conversations I’d seen people have about the game’s gorgeous fonts intrigued me. But it wasn’t until I learned that the core of the game was a murder mystery, set in a medieval Bavarian monastery, that I realized I needed to play it.
I was hooked from the jump, as the game immersed me in the world of tiny Tassing, a village built around the fading Kiersau Abbey, where my character, journeyman Andreas Maler, was temporarily working as an artist. I hummed happily at the game’s character creation, picking those traits—a logical mind, a bit of medical knowledge, a grounding in rhetoric, French, and Italian—that I thought would aid me in the investigation I knew would inevitably break out. And, in the meantime, I simply enjoyed the game’s art, and also its writing, which spoke about sometimes obscure topics in relatable ways that allowed warmth and character to shine through. And then, of course: The murder!
But something happened as I employed the standard implements of the detective game’s toolkit—autopsy, interrogation, investigation, subterfuge, deduction, and more. The ticking clock hanging over the death of a local noble began putting more and more pressure on me, and on Andreas. Choosing a likely suspect, I began devoting more of my limited resources to investigating this man, burning whole precious afternoons pursuing my hunch. The digging (sometimes literal) paid off: The day before the judge was to arrive in Tassing, ready to pass immediate sentence on the most likely culprit, I had a motive, murder weapon, and opportunity all lined up.
And then, during a chance meal with some of Tassing’s less privileged townsfolk—those meals being a recurring feature of the game’s scheduling, allowing for information gathering and gorgeously rendered versions of period-accurate foods—a traveler casually mentioned seeing something that blew my entire theory out of the water. I suddenly knew that my prime suspect was almost certainly innocent…and that I had an afternoon, at most, to try to put together an alternate hypothesis, with evidence to back it up.
I tried. I really did! I tugged at threads. Re-thought certain conversations. Looked for new motives and examined certain clues in new light. I got far enough to have a decent guess at what might actually have happened—but as the archdeacon arrived in town to pass judgment, ready to hand out the demanded death necessitated by a noble murder, I knew I didn’t have the juice to actually prove my new theory. And if I couldn’t prove it, Andreas’ kindly mentor—the chosen scapegoat for the killing, if no more likely candidate could be put forward—would be executed for the crime.
I didn’t lie, okay? I didn’t invent one single fact, as the tribunal put its full attention on Andreas, aware that he had been investigating the murder with some diligence. Instead, I simply presented the evidence I had dutifully collected—evidence that I knew would condemn my first suspect, an innocent man, to death. What else could I do?
Pentiment takes, as its most obvious influence, Umberto Eco’s 1980 historical detective novel The Name Of The Rose. (It’s actually one of several games, most of them produced in Europe, that have either directly adapted, or heavily referenced, Eco’s book; it’s a strange little sub-genre of interactive fiction.) And, like Eco’s novel—where Holmes-esque friar William of Baskerville, for all his cleverness and logical acumen, inevitably causes far more damage and destruction by investigating a crime than he would have by simply leaving well enough alone—it’s a story in which a would-be detective wandering into a crime is far more likely to be a force of chaos than one of justice. I have solved a lot of murders in video games at this point, unraveled god knows how many insidious plots, and come out the intellectual victor. Few of those triumphs have ever affected me as much as watching a man who I’d condemned to an unjust fate scream his innocence, even as that first horrible blow fell.
Pentiment is an artful game, in multiple senses of the word. Even when you think you’ve become inured to its striking visual style, it’ll pull some trick—an allegorical dream sequence, or a trip traipsing through the illustrations of a literal storybook—to remind you of the beauty of what you’re looking at. But it is, if anything, even more artful in the way it tells its story. Both Andreas and I had the best of intentions when we set out to solve a murder. We did the most we could with the limited time and resources available. And then we failed, in ways that left long-lasting wounds on an entire community. For a genre that so often celebrates cleverness for the sake of cleverness, it was a sobering and, yes, an artful reminder of the limits of what good intentions can achieve—and the full breadth of the horrors they can inflict.
14 Comments
I’ve been playing Pentiment as well. I just got to the part where the Baron’s body is discovered, so I’ve got quite an investigation ahead of me. I’m very interested to see where it goes, though if I recall what I’ve read correctly, the game never reveals the canonical murderer, so you’re always guaranteed to feel a twinge of guilt.The other game I’ve been playing is Xenoblade Chronicles 3. I’m nearing the end of the game (probably 10-15 hours left) and will try to finish it not this weekend, but next. That should give me enough time to wrap up loose ends.
Come on man. Spoilers.
This weekend is all Overwatch 2, since the Season 1 ends Monday night (possibly Tuesday morning, but I have a day job). The main battle pass ends at level 80, but the game keeps giving you character titles (“prestige”) up to level 200.I just hit the level 175 reward last night, and have 22 1/2 levels worth of grinding to go earn the “Cyberdemon” title. I don’t see myself grinding this much for future seasons, so having the final reward title from the first season of the “new” game is always going to stand out.Going forward, I will probably just do enough to complete the 11 weekly missions (which will probably clear the daily rewards as well). Minor credit to Activision-Blizzard for removing / scaling back some of the more difficult missions, meaning free players should be able to “buy” every second battle pass…that being about as frequently as they’re planning to add new characters.Honorable mention to Marvel’s Midnight Suns game, which I’ll be turning to after the grind has come to an end. 2K / Firaxis made a card-battler, which sounds like it borrows the “between missions hangout” idea from the old X-Men Legends games, and makes it a way to unlock card-based upgrades for your characters. Avoiding spoilers, but the early reviews are surprisingly positive….which at least suggests the delaying of the game’s release proved worthwhile.
Midnight Suns is pretty good, going by my impressions after 10 hours. Not quite up to XCOM, but a lot more polished and fund than most.
I am about finished with the postgame stuff in Pokémon Scarlet, with about 15 ‘mons left for a complete Dex. Then I am going to use the day one dupe glitch to drown myself in Master Balls in money, turn off airplane mode, do the patch and try one of these brutal Charizard raids.Every single complaint that I have seen about these games is valid, but under the ugly is the best mainline entry in my all-time favorite series since Pokémon Black & White. I am very excited to see what happens with the first game that comes out that has the benefit of a completed Scarlet/Violet and a completed Legends Arceus (my favorite monster collector ever) as points of reference.Other than that:- Still loving Vampire Survivors, though the length of the runs keeps me more chipping away than devouring. I only just now grasp weapon evolution and am looking forward to trying out all the evolved gear. Ol’ Man Garlic for life.- 15 hours into Persona 5 Royal, and while really enjoying it, it will definitely get pushed aside for Witcher 3 come the 14th, so I am bookmarking it here and will pick it back up next year.- My buffer between Pokémon and Witcher will be Signalis, and I’m very excited to see what the buzz is about as someone that only came to the Resident Evil series this year (played 0, 1 remake, 2 remake, 3 remake all in a row and am waiting for 4 remake)
I swore I wouldn’t exclusively Monster Prom 2: Monster Camp for weeks on end, but either the game is better written than its predecessor, I’d forgotten just how compelling the world Beautiful Glitch has created, or I just need this world more in 2022 than I did in 2020. The big secret ending arcs don’t veer wildly and unexpectedly into legitimately heartfelt stories or jarring tragedies like the first game in its finest moments, but the little stories that make up the basic interactions with your hot monster crushes have far, far more substance to them and make the individual scenes more compelling than who you wind up watching a meteor shower with on the last night of camp.In one scene, my nonbinary Tik Tok influencer grim reaper crush is talking to someone whose soul they’re about to take, and the soon-to-be-departed man says he never crossed off a single item on his bucket list. I get the choice between helping him cross off “cross off an item on my bucket list” or “become immortal.” My boldness stat is higher than my smarts stat, so if I do the first one, the dying monster was a merperson so his list was laminated, and crossing off an item on the list is physically impossible. I become obsessed with inventing a pencil that can write on laminate underwater (the reaper and the dying man both tell me a pen would be cheating) and lose the respect of my crush, resulting in lost stat points.If I choose the latter, I clear the stat check, so the dying man makes a pact with the reaper to meet up once a year to fulfill a different item on the bucket list. The game describes a couple of their annual meet-ups and describes their deepening friendship, then one last meeting a year after the final item on the list has been crossed off where they share a drink, toast to the man’s life, and see him off to the afterlife, with an ending frame showing the two toasting with glasses of champagne against a sunset. The text says I’m long dead before this final scene, but my role in suggesting this arrangement earns me a handful of stat points.Those two paragraphs represent half of the possible outcomes for a single event, since if my stats were different I could succeed in the first choice or fail at the second. I have now seen over 800 of the game’s 1,196 scene outcomes. I have earned all the secret endings and unlocked every last piece of art in the game’s gallery, and yet, AND YET, just reading each of the ways a single scene can resolve is so satisfying. I’m getting dangerously close to the point where I may say, “Well, a 100% save file’s within arm’s reach, so…”I’m gonna make myself start a new save in Ring Fit Adventures this weekend. I’ve put on some weight, and I’ve barely touched the game in 3 years. It’s time.
Firing up another run of, you guessed it, Disco Elysium.
It’s a shame God of War Ragnarok came out right after Plague Tale: Requiem to likely snatch game of the year out of its grasp, but I’m glad games this compellingly written came out in such quick succession.In the downtime I’m now playing WH40K Darktide, which isn’t as entertaining as Vermintide 2 (a lack of specifically written hero characters isn’t helping), but it’s some solid run-and-gun-and-smash action all around.
I’ve been jamming on Solasta: Crown of the Magistar with a couple buddies lately. The story is ok and the cutscene animations are hilariously jank, but the D&D 5e ruleset implementation makes for the best D&D combat since Neverwinter Nights.
I wrapped up Jedi: Fallen Order yesterday, and it’s a very strong example of a good game, really solid, that could have been great had it been given just a bit more time in the oven. There’s sort of a Metroidvania-esque exploratory element in that you learn new movement tech as you go, but at the same time there’s very little reason to backtrack or go far off the beaten path- it’s a very linear game and I feel like they maybe wanted to make some of the levels more complex but just didn’t have time. There’s also a bit of technical jank, faces look weird, and even on a story level it feels a little abbreviated, the ending is definitely rushed and there’s one character who joins the party late and doesn’t get a lot to do. It’s one of those things where you can tell the publisher started leaning on them to just get the game out and they had to pare back. Hopefully if/when there’s a sequel (I feel like it was confirmed but can’t be sure) it’ll build on the foundation here to do something really great. In the meantime, this is still a good game, and if you watched Andor and want to kill some space fascists, this does offer a good Stormtrooper-murdering experience. I have gotten past the big mid-game reveal in Tunic, by which I mean I still don’t completely know what’s going on. May take a slow path figuring out exactly what to do next, it seems there are a couple of ways to go about getting to the end, maybe different endings? I’ll investigate.
I liked The Outer Worlds and am excited for its sequel. I liked how it kept a sense of scale by keeping to a single solar system rather than the typical galaxy-spanning adventures typical of space operas. I liked the setting — yes, it was another corporate dystopia which are getting a bit tedious, but I liked how this dystopia was basically the 19th century Gilded Age in space rather than yet another cyberpunk thing. And I liked the companion NPCs — they were probably the most interesting set of companions I’ve encountered in a CRPG.
It’s not a bad game but it suffers from a repetitive structure- each planet has the corporate town and the remote communities and between there’s always monsters and generic outlaws who attack on sight. Like to be sure it’s part of the commentary on capitalism that the companies are homogenizing these worlds but there has to be a way to get that point across and still have a varied gameplay environment. As is, every new environment being pretty similar to the last means there’s less incentive to keep pressing forward. Also the slow-mo is not a good replacement for VATS, I’m not playing an RPG to get better at aiming.
Pentiment is definitely on my list of games to play. I loved return of the Obra Dinn and I hear it’s like that. Right now, I’m playing the AC Valhalla Dawn of Ragnarok DLC. It’s definitely the most entertaining of the ACV DLC for me.
Marvel’s Midnight Suns released this week, and it is exactly the X-Com and Slay the Spire baby that I didn’t know I desperately needed. Wish it wouldn’t crash every two hours on my Steam Deck, though.