Pentiment has an official reading list, partly composed of some of the books that the team used for reference when building the game's art, plot, and characters. They're an interesting collection of books, and since my love of Pentiment overflowed after finishing it originally, I poured that excess enthusiasm into reading them. Now that I have read them all and replayed Pentiment with the knowledge in hand, I thought it would be interesting to dive into the inspirations and how they helped me to have a more complete understanding of the historical and cultural background of the game. Hopefully it won't be too dry, but also bear in mind that this is a very loose analysis. I'm not going to go back and find passages to cite unless they're super important to the point I'm making. I'm enough of a nerd to read five books for a backlog review, not for an academic article.


First things, the books: I read the following from the reading list, which you can find here: (https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2022/11/10/recommended-reading-of-medieval-history-from-josh-sawyer/)

1 The Name of the Rose: Umberto Eco

2 Peasant Fires: The Drummer of Niklashausen Richard Wunderli

3 The Cheese and the Worms, Carlo Ginzburg

4: The Return of Martin Guerre, Natalie Zemon Davis

5: The Faithful Executioner, Joel F. Harrington

6 Dürer's Journeys: Travels of a Renaissance Artist—Susan Foister and Peter Van Den Brink


The Name of the Rose is perhaps the most important book on the list in terms of understanding the inspiration behind Pentiment. I admit I watched the film before reading the novel, but they are rather different beasts. Besides certain common elements between Pentiment and Name of the Rose, like the fictitious Abbey, certain elements straining the credibility of the historical setting (tassing having all strata of social classes present, the 15th century scriptorium vs. a random ass mountain abbey having a gigantic labyrinthine library), and main characters borrowing from real historical figures who are name-dropped in the story (William of Ockham in Name of the Rose and Albrecht Durer in Pentiment), the main connection is that they both use the classic detective murder mystery setup as a framework to explore both theology, historical moments, conflict, etc.

This is the part where the movie most differs from the book; it makes sense given that you can't really fit all that into 90 minutes. It chooses to keep the juicy murder mystery and some background political intrigue but dispenses with the broader narrative of the book, which is about apostolic poverty and the Avginon papacy. Essentially the gravity of the murders add a sense of urgency in solving them because the Abbey is defending its political independence as neutral ground for a meeting of the pope(or anti-pope really)'s men and several monastic orders and representatives of the holy roman emperor to debate the merits of how the church should function, if it should reject all property and live as paupers, which has both a religious significance but also a political one in the conflict between the Avignon Papacy (essentially for a while the pope left Rome and went to France and this had a pretty massive impact upon european politics of the time with a politically ascendant France) and the HRE and the various religious orders like the Benedictines and Franciscans. This is mirrored in Pentiment, which also uses the murders of Baron Rothvogel and later Otto as a framework to highlight both the purpose of historical memory, the nature of justice and peace in early modern Europe, the importance of religion in their communities and how alien that can feel to modern audiences in rich countries, life, death, our ideas of the past and how they influence us in the present, and a whole bunch of related themes.

Similarly, in Act 1, the murder is also presented as politically inconvenient for the abbot, who seeks a speedy resolution to the issue much like the abbot in The Name of the Rose does, but for the different reason that his Kiersau Abbey is an oddity in the church, maintaining practices such as a double monastery, which have long been frowned at by the catholic authorities but have simply remained unnoticed due to its insignificance. A long, embarassing murder investigation could bring the hammer down on them, which leads to the Abbotts callously attempting to throw Andreas' mentor, Piero, for the murder so that the monastery may continue without issue. There is also the matter of the scriptorium and adjacent library with a secret entrance by the ossuary in Name of the Rose and Crypt in Pentiment (though in truth, I think Brother Volkbert confirms that the crypt just holds bones, so it's probably also appropriate to call it an ossuary) being direct references.

In both stories, the skill of the detectives is a bit suspect. In the case of William of Baskerville, whilst he is definitely closer to the Platonic ideal of your Sherlock Holmes figure, being less of an unbelievable omniscient who has information, the reader doesn't like many of the examples of bad detective fiction (cough cough, BBC Sherlock). His assumptions and thought processes are reasonable (for the most part), but he sure takes his time in solving the case. In fact, he arguably fails pretty much everything he sets out to do. Seven people lie dead, the library got burned down, and the matter of apostolic poverty they had come to debate eventually led to it being branded as heretical, though the Avginon papacy did disappear in due time as the seat of the Holy See returned to Rome. Of course, he does have a sort of moral victory over the reactionary Jorge who set the murders in motion to hide the existence of a lost tome, which would, in his view, help to elevate comedy and laughter, which he views as subversive and leading to heresy and the corruption of the divine truth. It is fitting given the frequent debates in the book that the climax would involve essentially a philosophical discussion. This parallels somewhat Pentiment's ending, wherein Father Thomas brings down the Mithraeum below the church to erase the proof of St. Satia and St. Moritz being essentially just Diana and Mars, pagan figures worshipped before the Bavarian Christians settled on tassing. Andreas is also not the greatest sleuth, though, in large part, being an interactive medium, the character of Andreas' skills depends upon players' actions. Nevertheless, the constant of Andreas having to make difficult choices using incomplete information is a constant; it's impossible for him to ever fully uncover the truth of the matter with the limited time and resources he has to investigate the murders, and much like many things, including historical events, it's not really possible to actually 100% discover the "true" killer. There are likelier candidates, of course, and a good argument can be made for the most reasonable culprit, like in Act 1, where it is rather doubtful that Ottilia did it; I think Lucky is almost certainly the murderer; and it's interesting just how much a second playthrough can change a lot of what I thought. In Act 2, it's rather less clear, with Hanna and Guy both having threads pointing to them.

Either way, there is also the matter that Andreas and Pentiment as a whole are also concerned with the perception of truth rather than the whole matter of it, similar to the Name of the Rose: case in point: when Andreas returns to Tassing a few years later in Act 1, the Innkeeper will refer to a warped version of the events of the original murder, suggesting that either way the truth of the events has already passed into unreliable folklore. There is an angle to consider when choosing a culprit in both acts when considering the consequences for the community. Its still refreshing to me in an industry that still has seemingly not moved on from boring black and white low honor vs. high honor binary choice bullshit that Pentiment presents you with the infinitely more interesting to my mind issue of Ottilia Kemperyn. An old, misanthropic, heretical widow whose husband's death was caused by the murdered Baron Rothvogel's savage beating has essentially given up on life. Her house is just about to be taken away from her by the church because she has no heirs and cannot own property herself. If one were to invent utilitarianism in the 15th century, one could argue that letting the obviously innocent Ottilia take the heat for the murder of the Baron is the optimal choice; indeed, standing up for her by challenging the church's claim to her house does cause her to retain the house onto Act 2, but the church is predictably angry at your actions, and you've done little more than buy a woman a few more miserable years of her life. Of course, in doing so, you will be utterly perverting justice and sentencing a woman to the executioner, whose only crime was being born a peasant woman in the 15th century, with all the trials it entails. These tough choices are not limited just to Andreas, with Act 3 the townsfolk are still reconciling their choices in dealing with Otto's murder in 1525 and subsequent burning of the abbey (which mirrors the ending of The Name of The Rose with the Abbey and Library burning down also) and whilst they all have different perspectives on the issue, its interesting that some regret the foolishness that brought the hammer down on them and resulted in bloodshed whilst also recognizing that that very sacrifice led to their current positions, there is some optimism in the ending, with some arguing that the Abbot's ecclesiastical authority being replaced with the lord's secular one has been beneficial, with slightly less strict oversight and Lenhardt being murdered at least had temporary material improvements for the peasants who wouldn't be completely gouged by the new miller. As with everything, one can only move forward; the wheel of time stops for no man, and making peace with our mistakes and seeing a broader perspective is supremely important to life.

Peasant Fires doesn't cover the more famous 1525 German Peasant rebellion, but rather the lesser known Niklashausen rebellion of 1478, wherein a drummer whipped up a mass of pilgrims to rebel against the ruling authorities, claiming that he had received a divine vision of the virgin Mary, who called on him and the faithful to overthrow the corrupt church and kill the priests, that god had ordained for all land to be held in common and the feudal lords of the time had corrupted his will. The book explores the role of festivals in medieval Europe, with some serving as outlets for repressed anger at the authorities, like carnival being a time of playfully "reversing" the established relations of nobility, royalty, and peasantry. It highlights how, for most peasants, the calendar would be seen through the lens of the various public festivals throughout the year, from Christmas to Carnival to Lent to Easter, etc. Despite the much harsher working conditions, there were many more public holidays for the Europeans of the 15th century than there are for the Brits of today. Its influence is most apparent in Pentiment's Act 2, with Otto claiming a holy vision has revealed that the Lord is with the townsfolk of Tassing against the increased taxes and restrictions of the Abbot, mirroring the drummer. Otto's murder occurs during St. John's Eve, a very popular summer festival, with anger boiling over with the Abbot threatening excommunication to anyone he finds in the forest getting up to mischief. In both examples, the peasants are drawn to revolt against ecclesiastical authorities due to the increasing restrictions on their rights and material conditions. In Tassing, there is a noticeable decline in living standards, with the poor Gertners being particularly destitute due to increased taxes.

In the 1478 rebellion, the drummer started rallying people to the cause by preaching near the pilgrimage site of Niklashausen. In Pentiment, the Abbot further angers the peasants by closing the Shrine of St. Moritz, which is also a pilgrimage site and source of some religious comfort to the Catholic denizens of Tassing who often prayed to Saints for deliverance. The book goes into some depth regarding pilgrimages in the early modern period. While the sale of indulgences is much better known given its importance to the reformation, it is often overlooked that pilgrimages served a similar purpose. The idea of purgatory was such that pilgrims could reduce the suffering of themselves and/or deceased relatives by visiting a site of pilgrimage and receiving a partial indulgence for time in purgatory. It was another way in which the peasants would be essentially emotionally blackmailed into either donating or traveling to a holy site, which of course also had the effect of increasing the prestige and economic power of a church that hosted one of these relics, like the hand of a saint, a piece of the true cross, or what have you.

The main issue with the book is that the sources are very spotty, and so the author basically speculates on a large chunk of them. He at least admits that this is the case and makes clear what is his own imagination and what’s supported by the evidence, but still, it's a rather short book to begin with. Its illuminating at the very least regarding just how fucked medieval peasants were economically, the role of festivals and pilgrimages, and the power of mystics in inciting rebellion.

The Faithful Executioner is a work of microhistory focused on the life of the executioner of Nuremberg during a particularly busy time for such a professional. It has the advantage of drawing upon an unusual source: a detailed journal written by the said executioner during his time working for the city. It was rare for a man like him to be able to read, much less to leave such thorough notes about his work. It's a very interesting tale, which I recommend picking up. It's both a greater history lesson about the role of the executioner and the specific conditions in 16th-century HRE, which led to a significant increase in their work, and the personal story of a man’s quest to advance his and his family’s station from the unfortunate place it was put in. It also does a lot to make us understand the perspective and social attitudes that influenced this institution, which is, to our modern eyes, quite cruel and ghastly, without just making an apology for the indefensible. Its relation to Pentiment is obvious; it is a work that is deeply concerned with justice, crime, and punishment, and the appearance of justice and truth is often times more important than the actual thing itself. In chapter 1, whichever culprit gets selected will get executed violently and publicly, either by the executioner’s sword in the case of the male suspects of lucky or ferenc or being choked to death in the case of the female suspects. Interestingly, in the faithful executioner, we are told that execution by sword at the time was usually reserved for the nobility (even often times being the result of a bribe to the judges to forgo the more slow and painful executions down to the more “dignified” decapitation). I imagine, though, that the choice of the sword was more of a creative decision, being the quickest way to show the culprit being killed. In the case of Prior Ferenc’s execution, it was slightly botched, requiring three slashes to finish him off. In the case of the faithful executioner, part of the titular executioner’s great reputation, which allowed him to eventually appeal his status (executioners were part of the official underclass, unable to perform “honorable” professions, and were oftentimes banned from joining a guild and other legal discrimination), came from the fact that he very rarely botched an execution; indeed, the executioner himself could be in danger when performing a beheading, and it was common for crowds to turn on the executioner if it took more than 3 strokes to fall the criminal. Its not surprising to me that states eventually realized how counterproductive public execution was, with modern ones being performed in some prison room away from the public. The fact is, and Pentiment explores this as well, that it's all well and good to believe that someone deserves to die or that they had their brutal end coming to them; certainly, there are many rapists, murderers, etc., and even if one opposes the death penalty on principle, we would not be sad to hear that they were killed. And yet, I dare to say that if you were to witness such a person being violently killed, well, most well-adjusted people would respond with horror and even sympathy for such a situation.

Certainly, I don’t weep at the thought that some of the hanged nazis at Nuremberg were actually left choking for quite a few minutes before expiring, but even with them, were I to be in the room, I would look away from such a horrible sight. Humans are empathic for the most part, and it's hard to see such things without feeling bad.

It's a sobering moment watching the execution of Ferenc, who might be suspected of performing occult rituals and murdering a man in cold blood, but it's another to see him praying for mercy before being brutally cut down. The victory is hollow; there is a reason why Sherlock Holmes stories end with the suspect in custody and not Sherlock Holmes gloating in front of the gallows with the criminal’s corpse hanging forlornly from the scaffold. Okay, okay, that's enough unpleasantness. Let's move on from this grizzly subject.

The Cheese and the Worms is another work of microhistory, this time on the subject of Mennochio, an eccentric miller in 15th-century France who used his rare literacy and access to a variety of books passed around by his neighbors (who were unusually literate for the time also) to develop his own eclectic brand of religious thought, which eventually got him into trouble with the Inquisition, who were mostly baffled by what seemed to be a unique brand of heresy invented by essentially one random peasant guy, far from the norm of wandering preachers, secret societies, and the like. Its influence is most apparent in the figure of Vaclav, a Romani knife sharpener who will share his equally weird beliefs if you’ll indulge him, which, funnily enough, if you do, he gets burned at the stake for heresy, as evidenced by the town-wide family tree next to the mural in the game's ending. In the case of Vaclav, they’re a weird syncretism of gnosticism, Christian mysticism, and just his own blend of strange esoteric religious theories. The role of increased literacy and the printing press allowing more people to read “dangerous ideas” is brought up often during Acts 1 and 2, with Father Thomas and others being wary of the effects it could have in riling up the peasantry and the danger of certain ideas spreading. The elephant in the room is, of course, the protestant reformation and the 1525 peasant rebellion, which were greatly aided by the increased availability of the written word, further increasing the demand for a translation of the Bible written in German and other vernacular languages as opposed to Latin, which was mainly spoken by the priesthood. Its no surprise that this eventually led to an explosion of different Protestant denominations, as anyone who could read the Bible for themselves could develop a novel interpretation of the scripture.

In the case of Menochio, while from a modern perspective it seems very repressive and authoritarian to be jailed and later executed for having unorthodox beliefs like the universe being created from a primordial cheese eaten by worms who became God and his angels and created the world, it's hard to be sympathetic when the dude just could not shut the hell up about his beliefs. Like, idk about you, Im an agnostic or atheist or whatever, but if I could possibly be executed for it, I would not go around telling people about how god is fake and cringe. Its also funny reading the accounts of the inquisitors, who for the most part, whilst obviously terrible and repressive, would let most cases like a single heretical peasant off with essentially a slap in the wrist, say you’re sorry, do a penance, your priest vouches for you being a good man and for the most part be allowed to rejoin society, but bro just couldn't do it. The number of executions the inquisition actually did was a lot less than we would think; it was usually reserved for wandering preachers, big religious leaders who were trying to get a schism going, etc.

The Return of Martin Guerre is interesting because its “plot” is basically 1-to-1, almost adapted into Pentiment’s character of Martin Bauer. The book was written by Natalie Zemon Davis, a historian and advisor to the French film of the same name based upon the real-life historical figure of Martin Guerre. After her experiences with the production, she decided to write a more “official” account of the story without the necessities of a 3-act structure and cinematic storytelling. Martin Guerre was a peasant in what is now modern-day Basque Country (part of Spain and France) who one day disappeared from his town and, unbeknownst to them, went off to Spain to join the army and eventually got wounded in battle during the Italian wars of the mid-16th century. Meanwhile, a man claiming to be Martin Guerre who bore an uncanny resemblance to the man arrived in Martin’s home town and, after some initial skepticism, was able to slide into his old life through his appearance and seemingly access to knowledge that only the real Martin Guerre could know. It also highlights that under the law of the time, Martin’s wife would not be allowed to remarry, and the way in which women were treated, her standing in society, and her ability to fend for herself were adversely affected by having an abandoned husband. Even worse, the real Martin could have died off in battle, but even this would not necessarily be enough to be able to remarry unless she could somehow prove her husband had been killed. It's not surprising then that she may have been, let’s say, willful to “be fooled” by the impostor, knowing that this was a once-in-a lifetime opportunity to solve her situation. Even more so after “Martin” received his deceased father’s inheritance and greatly increased the wealth of his household.

In Pentiment, Martin Bauer similarly runs off during Act 1 after stealing from the murdered baron and “returns” before Act 2 to take over the household after the death of his father. If pressed, you can uncover the fact that this man is actually Jobst Farber, a highwayman who ran off with Martin and eventually, when he died, used his resemblance to the man to take over his life. Similarly, in Pentiment, Martin’s wife Brigita seems consciously or unconsciously aware of the deception but begs Andreas not to rat him out of town, as he’s been a much better husband than Martin ever was, and in a purely utilitarian sense, his identity theft is seemingly the best outcome for everyone. If one remembers Act 1’s Ottilia Kemperyn, households without children or men to inherit property are very much unprotected, and it's easy to see why Brigita prefers to turn a blind eye to this Farber character’s lies. In the real-life case of Martin Guerre, the prosecution was initiated by Martin’s father-in-law who suspected foul play, but “Martin”’s wife was supportive of her impostor husband. Indeed, what ended up resulting in his execution was actually the return of the real Martin Guerre to the town, who, amusingly enough, seemed less able to answer the questions of the judge in regards to information that the real Martin Guerre would know than the fake one! Thankfully for the wife, sometimes misogyny works out in women’s favor, and she was essentially unpunished (and the real Martin Guerre was reprimanded for abandoning his wife and family) for what could have been considered adultery and false witness with essentially the old “ah well, she’s a woman, it makes sense her feeble mind would be fooled by a talented huckster like this” argument. Not as much of a happy ending for the impostor who got executed but was surprising apologetic, much like Martin Bauer is if you accuse him of murdering Otto Zimmerman during Act 2 of Pentiment.

The final book, I’ll admit, is one that I basically skimmed because it was really fucking boring, and I already read a biography of Albrecht Durer a while back, so a lot of it was just stuff I already knew. It was worth owning, if nothing else, A3 copies of Durer’s famous works. Albrecht Durer informs the character of Andreas quite a bit (though he is also a bit William of Baskerville and Andrei Rublev); indeed, his Act 1 design is heavily inspired by a famous Durer self-portrait. They are both painters from Nuremberg; they both (in Act 2) seem to really dread returning to their wives, which they hate back in Nuremberg; and during the lunch with Brother Sebhat, when a kid is having the concept of different ethnic groups and skin colors existing, Andreas chimes in that in the Netherlands he saw art from the New World that was greater than anything Europeans had ever done, echoing Durer’s admiration for New World art in particular made of metal; him being the son of a goldsmith, it makes sense he’d feel particularly fond of such things.

The use of Durer’s famous Melancholia 1 painting is a key aspect of Andreas’ character journey. In Act 1, his inner psyche is depicted as a court composed of King Prester John (a mythical figure in European folklore often thought of as the Ethiopian emperor), Beatrice from the Divine Comedy, St. Grobian, and Socrates. Whenever Andreas is debating a difficult decision, they can be called upon to give their two cents in a sort of id, ego, and super ego-type arrangement. In Act 2, however, it is only Beatrice who gives advice, her moderation and temperance having devolved into self-doubt and fear. At a key point, Andreas finds his court trashed and all absent safe for Beatrice, sitting in the pose of the famous aforementioned melancholia print: “Now I am all that remains, the melancholy of life’s autumn,” a manifestation of essentially a mid-life crisis for Andreas after becoming a successful artist but feeling hollow inside. Its fitting as well given the beliefs about mental health, a common conception of artists and creatives at the time as “melancholics," and a conception of depression and mental illness as markers for creative genius that sadly persists to this day.

4500 words later, and I'm both embarrassed by how long this has been and frustrated by how much more I could have gone into details on each of the entries, but I think that's enough for now. If anything, I hope this encourages anyone who’s played pentiment to check out one of the books and maybe draw their own connections I might have missed or forgot to include. Whenever I think about what differentiates a 5-star game from a 4.5- or 4-star game, I think this is it. A 5-star game will get me to read six books totaling probably like 1000+ pages. I’m currently reading through The Brothers Karamazov as part of The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa’s readable books list (so far I’ve read Winesburg, Ohio, Confessions of a Mask, and Rumble Fish), and maybe I’ll write a similar piece at some point for each (though bear in mind I started reading the first book in this collection a year ago, so y'know).

Uma obra prima, sem sombra de dúvidas. Um dos melhores jogos que eu joguei nos últimos tempos.

A Obsidian é o meu estúdio favorito da indústria e Pentiment foi um lembrete recente do porquê: Ninguém consegue construir uma narrativa tão envolvente e com uma qualidade de escrita tão absurda quanto eles.

Pentiment é brilhante naquilo em que se propõe a ser: Uma história de mistério envolvendo um assassinato, mas que conversa com temas sobre religião, história, tradições culturais, papéis sociais e muito mais.

Não vou entrar em detalhes porque sinto que é o tipo de jogo que vale a pena jogar sabendo o mínimo possível (então, fica aqui de aviso direto: Se você tem interesse em jogar e esbarrou nessa review, eu só digo: Jogue!). No máximo, pelo bem da clareza, eu posso dizer que Pentiment é como se você misturasse Disco Elysium com a Áustria do século XVI (e eu digo isso como o melhor dos elogios).

Se eu tivesse que fazer alguma crítica negativa, nem que fosse por obrigação, eu diria que senti falta de alguns elementos mais interativos (tem certos momentos no jogo onde você precisa resolver puzzles ou mini-games pra prosseguir, e apesar de serem todos bem simples e diretos, eles dão uma variada, mas são bem raros. Podia ter um pouco mais disso). Ainda assim, não é algo que me incomodou de forma alguma e nem muda minha convicção de dar a nota máxima pra esse jogo.

Enfim, perfeito, dispensa comentários. Mais uma obra de arte da Obsidian e do Josh Sawyer.

More conflicted about this than I'd like to be considering I adored almost all of it. The ending is exceptionally sloppy, almost comically so. I think what's to blame is Pentiment's strict adherence to its inspirations, especially Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. The murder mystery of Pentiment is the weakest link from start to finish, a blemish on what is otherwise an exceptional portrayal of everyday life in a small 16th century Bavarian village. A Boku no Natsuyasumi-like microhistory examining the inner lives of peasants and artists alike across both the shifting tides of medieval historical and theological movements and the trials and tribulations of mundane life. It's dedication to the marginalia of life is genuinely inspiring. The best moments of Pentiment have such texture and appreciation of life they feel like they're taken out of a Renoir film or an iyashikei (think Aria or Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou). Writing about this after finishing it I still have a bad taste in my mouth because of that ending, but I feel like with time that bad taste will fade and my overall outlook on this game will be overwhelmingly positive. Might even raise the score to five stars at some point.

I genuinely hope the lads at Obsidian can make more stuff like this. I hated The Outer Worlds' eye rolling Rick & Morty-isms and thought New Vegas was mid but this is something really special, even in spite of the blemishes it inherits from Umberto Eco. An absolute must play!

Beautiful game with an intruiging mystery that gets a satisfactory resolution. Interesting, multi dimensional characters with reasonable motivations drive the story forward. The only problem I have with the game is, unfortunately, the gameplay itself is extremely lackluster and consists mostly of walking to every place and NPC and exhausting all the dialogue each time you get control over your character. If you don't have a problem with walking simulator type games, this is a brilliant kind-of-one

pentiment é aquele tipo de jogo discreto que guarda muita magia e beleza. ele é relativamente curto, não chega a ser nem 20 horinhas mas ele consegue te envolver na trama rapidamente. você se apega ao andreas e aos personagens e realmente surge um sentimento de 'quero ajudá-los!'.

o jogo traz diversos assuntos, te mergulha na arte, religião, em liberdade de escolha, morte e sobrevivência. não vou me aprofundar muito para evitar spoilers mas é impecável. o visual é maravilhoso, tudo parece uma pintura, as movimentações e detalhezinhos, é extremamente caprichado. é um jogo de escolhas, você molda sua personalidade e conhecimentos e lidará com as consequências que seguirão ao longo da história. além ser bastante narrativo, 'pentiment' te conta com muitos detalhes sobre fatos históricos então não é exatamente um jogo dinâmico, não é a proposta dele, seu ritmo é mais devagar mas consegue prender sua atenção com o enredo bem trabalhado e misterioso. enfim, vou guardá-lo com muito carinho. agradecimentos ao távio pela recomendação!

Pentiment is a special game in every respect; a true labor of love. Every time Josh Sawyer speaks about his work in interviews, particularly in the Noclip Documentary, you can see the passion and joy he had for this project in his eyes. In our fast-paced era where games are released and almost as quickly forgotten, Pentiment stands out among the ranks of games that are exceptional and, for this reason, has left a lasting impression on me.

It tells its story so wonderfully slow-paced and with such attention to detail. Every citizen in Tassing has their own unique handwriting, depending on the social class Andreas assigns them to. This is accompanied by such a relaxing ASMR quill sound that I had to snap myself out of a trance several times to follow the story. I like how historical themes of the time are explained and contextualized. In the middle of the game, the Peasants' War is presented in a way that is so understandable and interesting to me, unlike any other medium could achieve. It is only through this game that I engaged with my local history because a major battle of the Peasants' War also took place in the town where I have lived for a long time, and this is deeply rooted in the town's history. Before, I never felt the urge to be interested in it, and now a game from 2022 has done that. It's wonderful.

Many characters are written so realistically and lovingly that I wanted to experience every single dialogue with them because they almost always had something interesting to say. I appreciate that the game uses quiet moments to exchange information with the villagers over a shared meal or just to talk about the latest gossip. I also like that I can play Andreas in different ways. You can play him as a hedonistic jerk who never backs down from a fight, or as a theologically trained pedant who wants to impress everyone with his logical thinking. The decisions you make have significant impacts; for example, towards the end of the game, a character transformed so positively that I was truly delighted. It's nice that Josh Sawyer hasn't completely forgotten his role-playing roots but has skillfully woven them into the game.

It remains true to its main theme throughout the entire game: the examination of history and how it influences so many aspects of our lives in various ways, and how history can be interpreted differently and sometimes corrupts, But it also shows how incredibly important belonging and community are, and that every person deserves them. The ending is one of the best I have ever experienced, and having Lingua Ignota sing the credit song is the cherry on top. It is a truly almost unique experience that everyone should play if they are not averse to extensive texts.

Part RPG and part history lesson, Pentiment is one of those truly unique gaming experiences that I don't think has any parallel. The story is told through an art style modeled after the game's 16th-century setting, and you engage with all kinds of interesting characters as you try to uncover the truth behind a major overarching mystery. Through all of that, the game offers plenty of contextual information about the actual history of Central Europe at the time, providing insight into why you're doing what you're doing and why characters are the way they are. And like any good RPG, you get to make certain decisions that influence the world around you and can engage with NPCs in a way fitting for your character. The gameplay loop is fairly simplistic, so don't go in expecting a complex RPG system--think of it more like an interactive novel with some additional gamified elements. Overall, another big win for Obsidian!

Describing the process of pitching Pentiment to the executives at Obsidian Entertainment, Fallout: New Vegas director Josh Sawyer stated, “I never would have proposed Pentiment if it weren’t for Game Pass,” the Xbox subscription service which offers a Netflix-like model for playing new games. Indie game development creates brilliant games, but Pentiment is the sort of achievement that can only be made with the decades of expertise leveraged by its development team and the resources afforded by studio development. One look at its art in motion reveals the nature of this staggering accomplishment – they have married the medieval art of liturgical Dutch masters with a game Sawyer described in the linked interview above as “Night in the Woods meets The Name of the Rose.” The presentation of this game is clever and full of the kind of ideas smaller teams cut for scope.

Full Pentiment review here.

This is a very niche game. A 16th century visual novel murder mystery. The closest game I can think of to compare it to is Disco Elysium without the RPG elements and tamer. The historical accuracy, characters, and story are all amazing. Some of the gameplay is a bit janky but not bad enough to make the game unenjoyable. My biggest complain would be the auto-save only feature similar to Hellblade. If you like this era of history or really like murder mysteries with good stories and characters this is worth playing.

I love Obsidian, they're one of the few game studios whose activites I actually kind of sort of follow - and yet it's only some months ago that I learned that Pentiment even exists to begin with. The game seems to have largely fallen under the radar but you can kind of get why, because let's face it - it's not exactly media sexy is it? 2D narrative adventures are a hot item and Obsidian's track record in writing stories and characters has built them a strong reputation, but to put it politely Pentiment looks and sounds dry. It's a story about an artist visiting a tiny village in 1500s Germany to work on a commissioned art piece, with no voice acting included among its heaps of text and the visuals looking like a drab version of the era-specific illustrations if compared e.g. to the more flashy and whimsical Inkulinati (but the design inspiration is the only similarity between the two games). That description is ggoing to sound interesting only to a very niche subgroup of people and it's not exactly something that comes to life in trailers either.

But of course there is more to the game than that. Pentiment starts out as the story of Andreas Maler, the aforementioned artist who's staying in the village of Tassing while working on his art. Andreas is a relative neutral party caught between the rising tensions of the local monastery and the ordinary peasants living in the abbey's shadow, and so when a visiting noble is murdered in Tassing and one of Andreas' friends is framed for it, he takes it upon himself to find the real culprit independent of the existing biases around him pointing fingers at one another. Pentiment is sneakily a classic murder mystery in line with the cosiest of classic British TV series, and it's a real good one at that too. Andreas only has a limited amount of days to figure out the whodunnit by talking to the locals, digging into the town's secrets (sometimes literally) and making deductions and educated guesses based on what he finds out; some of this is based on the decisions made by the player on Andreas' background, all which open different routes and close others. The game doesn't rub a canonical answer on the player's face at any point and it's left to the player to trust themselves to have done their work, to make the right decision and then live with it in good conscience, in this age before DNA tests and fingerprint scans that could definitely prove the guilty party.

And those decisions like who you believe is the right murderer and how you got to that information do matter, in a classic Obsidian style. After the first chapter Pentiment reveals itself to be not just the story of Andreas but ultimately it is the story of Tassing itself. The murder is simply the first chapter and how you conducted your investigation leaves a permanent impression on the village and its people. As you advance through the chapters and navigate through the time skips in-between, you get to live through the aftermath of the positions you took. Over time generations grow and change, some scarred by what has happened in the recent history you just played through and others finding new lives through the events. There is no world-ending threat and even the local lordship barely presents itself in Pentiment's narrative - there is simply this small German village going through interesting times, with the player caught in the eye of the storm in various ways.

I lapped it up. Pentiment's first chapter is engaging enough because Obsidian's character writing is so good and the detective has a great balance of feeding the player information but letting them make their own decisions out of their findings, but it's the later game that got me hooked. The more "lived-in" experience you accrue in Tassing, the more familiar you become with the various characters and families living in it, and soon you begin to learn tidbits about the village's history which becomes engrossing to wade into. The last chapter is a particular highlight because after the game's biggest time skip, it's all about the generational ripples that the stones cast in prior years have caused, and the center of the narrative becomes to make sense of it all by reflecting on why things have happened the way they have. By that point you know all these characters by name and though in the game's world particular details begin to blur over time, you as the player are still armed with knowledge of times gone past that makes it all the more fascinating to navigate through this history. It's such a wonderfully done micro-level worldbuilding and narrative exercise, and playing detective (for various reasons) becomes engrossing.

Whilst the writing and the obviously well-done research are the game's establishing facets, the presentation also plays a huge part of why it sucked me in. The ye olde art style doesn't look that thrilling in the pictures and loses its novelty after the first in-game hour, but the magic is in all the little details. The illustrative style is everywhere, including in the character's speech bubbles where different fonts illustrate the various social ranks (which change with dramatic effect if you learn about the characters beyond your surface level assumption), where sloppy handwriting results in typos for the less educated characters and where the ink begins to splutter as their emotions rise. The game's sound world is minimal as well and for the most part there is no music, but that makes any appearance of additional audio cues all the more impactful: a sudden crash or the cacophony of an angry mob sound alarming when you're used to the quiet countryside life, and occasionally the game gives centre stage to the the period-faithful music to highlight moments of great emotion in a manner that makes its sparse soundtrack powerful. Pentiment's audiovisual pleasures are not flashy but they're impactful, perfectly used in strategic ways to heighten the story.

Pentiment is not vying to be another grand Obsidian classic. It's an intentionally smaller-scale game in very many ways, but that's why it also feels so refreshing and unique despite its first impression looking so dry at the initial glance. A narrative "adventure" game like this also makes sense as a genre for Obsidian to branch out to, and I really hope we see them flex their writing team in other projects like this going forward. It's a heartily recommendable game if you enjoy character-driven story pieces where choices feel like they matter, but where the game neither patronises the player nor rubs its decision-making in their face.

Finally played it after that NoClip documentary.
It's quirky and interesting for sure!
But I can't help it - some things happened in this game that made me go :"no".
At the end of the first arc, you must decide who to kill off and you will be wrong - as there is no right answer at this point. However, you do not get time to further investigate in the story (and that pissed me off as a detective-story-loving person).
You're automatically pushed into a timeskip where the same thing happens - with even less time to investigate and more people hating you. This was too much negativity both from me, the character in-game and the NPCs at the same time and made me just dop this.

Despite my lack of interest in the historical time period of this game, I found myself invested in the story especially the first two acts and the ending. I found the majority of the 3rd act quite boring, and poorly paced. However overall I enjoyed the story and different choices to make throughout interesting and well written. The art and music were phenomenal, and really added to the presentation of the era. Definitely check this out if you enjoy adventure games and especially if you enjoy the history of the time period and location this game takes place in.