From the first few hours of reading through Obsidian’s latest visual novel, the amount of dedication and painstaking attention to detail drenches this tale of murder and mystery set in a small Alpine town in 1500s Bavaria. Make conversations with the townsfolk of Tassing as well as the nuns and clergymen of the adjacent abbey to form relationships, divulge information and come up with evidence on who committed these heinous murders as well as get to the bottom of the history and lore of this fictional town.
Pentiment offers a standard visual novel experience with many choices on how to converse with the characters in ways that could steer the conversation in your favor or in ways that could even have lasting effects throughout the years. There will be times where a character’s eagerness to divulge crucial evidence will rely solely on how the player has spoken to them throughout the journey with the possibility of forcing the player to look elsewhere for any sort of useful information if someone so decides that you haven’t been quite kind or convincing enough to them.
Point and click to traverse the town, talking to as many people as possible in a given section of a day. Choosing to commit to a certain task with one person could block off certain events with others. One example of this is in the beginning of the game where you can choose to have dinner with various families every night, forming relationships with these characters at the risk of alienating others. While talking to the right kind of characters will swiftly trigger story-events, if you’re like me you will exhaust every dialogue option with every character during every part of the day which definitely lengthens the run of the game. I did this, and while I know there has to be so much more to do, I still clocked in at about 25 hours by the time credits rolled.
As standard as the gameplay might be for its genre, what sets Pentiment apart from other visual novels is its aesthetic and the immense amount of research it took to bring its historical source material to life. The visual style is striking, conveying the artistry of Medieval manuscripts in all its beauty and crudeness. Of course the townsfolk live in an era so unfamiliar to ours and thus speak of places, objects and even concepts that either no longer exist or stood with a completely different meaning in the 1500s. Therefore, the writers have given the player an on-screen glossary for any unfamiliar terms. Definitely after playing this game, I feel like I had a much better understanding and appreciation of this era of history than I had before.
Written and directed by Josh Sawyer, director of one of the greatest games of all time, Fallout: New Vegas, it goes without saying that the narrative, dialogue and character writing for Pentiment is absolutely stellar which kept me engaged which is incredible considering delving into such a foreign setting would have been detrimental in keeping my interest, but the characters, even after all these centuries, feel relatable and nuanced enough to keep the story rolling.
Pentiment is a tale about transition, era bypassing eras, traditions being replaced, ideas being reformed and not only do we see this in the time progression aspect of the story but also in the era itself, when the medieval period was slowly coming to an end and the early modern era which began prioritizing art, science and writing over religion and tradition, coming to the forefront of society. Even the Christian town itself, where the story takes place, is formed upon the works of the Romans and other pagan peoples before them. True to its name, Pentiment isthe repurposing of a painting to convey something different by painting over the old ideas with a literal new coat of paint. It’s these overarching themes that Obsidian does so well with its games and what makes Pentiment a remarkable narrative piece of art in and of itself.
Pentiment offers a standard visual novel experience with many choices on how to converse with the characters in ways that could steer the conversation in your favor or in ways that could even have lasting effects throughout the years. There will be times where a character’s eagerness to divulge crucial evidence will rely solely on how the player has spoken to them throughout the journey with the possibility of forcing the player to look elsewhere for any sort of useful information if someone so decides that you haven’t been quite kind or convincing enough to them.
Point and click to traverse the town, talking to as many people as possible in a given section of a day. Choosing to commit to a certain task with one person could block off certain events with others. One example of this is in the beginning of the game where you can choose to have dinner with various families every night, forming relationships with these characters at the risk of alienating others. While talking to the right kind of characters will swiftly trigger story-events, if you’re like me you will exhaust every dialogue option with every character during every part of the day which definitely lengthens the run of the game. I did this, and while I know there has to be so much more to do, I still clocked in at about 25 hours by the time credits rolled.
As standard as the gameplay might be for its genre, what sets Pentiment apart from other visual novels is its aesthetic and the immense amount of research it took to bring its historical source material to life. The visual style is striking, conveying the artistry of Medieval manuscripts in all its beauty and crudeness. Of course the townsfolk live in an era so unfamiliar to ours and thus speak of places, objects and even concepts that either no longer exist or stood with a completely different meaning in the 1500s. Therefore, the writers have given the player an on-screen glossary for any unfamiliar terms. Definitely after playing this game, I feel like I had a much better understanding and appreciation of this era of history than I had before.
Written and directed by Josh Sawyer, director of one of the greatest games of all time, Fallout: New Vegas, it goes without saying that the narrative, dialogue and character writing for Pentiment is absolutely stellar which kept me engaged which is incredible considering delving into such a foreign setting would have been detrimental in keeping my interest, but the characters, even after all these centuries, feel relatable and nuanced enough to keep the story rolling.
Pentiment is a tale about transition, era bypassing eras, traditions being replaced, ideas being reformed and not only do we see this in the time progression aspect of the story but also in the era itself, when the medieval period was slowly coming to an end and the early modern era which began prioritizing art, science and writing over religion and tradition, coming to the forefront of society. Even the Christian town itself, where the story takes place, is formed upon the works of the Romans and other pagan peoples before them. True to its name, Pentiment isthe repurposing of a painting to convey something different by painting over the old ideas with a literal new coat of paint. It’s these overarching themes that Obsidian does so well with its games and what makes Pentiment a remarkable narrative piece of art in and of itself.