One of the rare times where history is cool and interesting and made me cry.
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When it comes to stories set during the Middle Ages, alot of writers tend to focus on the brutalism of the time period. Scenes of people falling in the mud with the pigs, losing life and limb in war and combat, taverns full of mead and debauchery. Sometimes, someone gets lit on fire, but in all cases it is an unbearable life.
And all of that is true in Pentiment, except for the last part.
To me Pentiment is about, to borrow the words of one character, love. The world is harsh and unfair, and those who stand to gain will take advantage of the less fortunate. There isnt always enough to eat, and the seasons are unforgiving. And yet, still, people have passions. Interests. Connections to each other, hopes, dreams. People live out there in the wilds of Europe (in the past but now also) and thats something I think Middle Ages fiction tends to forget. People cared about things. They cared about each other. I have to imagine it was the only thing making any of it worthwhile.
Pentiment is seen through the eyes of an artist. Art, to me, is the joy of communication. You put paint to the canvas, ink to the page, you carve feeling into the stone, perform meaning in the light of the bonfires. In this way art is less the thing you hold in your hand, and is more the thing you hold in your head that you are trying to conjure and evoke into the minds of others - and so the artist is therefore driven to spend alot of time thinking and interpreting the world around them. The only real reason one would spend so much time formulating such involved communication has to be that these things matter a great deal, such a great deal that they must be shared, compelled by some instinct of connection. As things play out, it becomes clear Pentiment cares alot about caring. At every step, its thinking about caring, exploring the struggles of caring, the concept of caring.
And sometimes (often) that makes Pentiment a very tragic game. Tassing is a small town nestled in the Alps but it is in no short supply of heartbreaking stories. There is murder. There are consequences. There is sorrow, there are burdens, there are scars. Everyone agrees, Europe in the 16th century sucked ass (in fact, everywhere sucked ass back then). But Pentiment is also a game that believes the arc of these things bends towards good. Things get better, slowly. They build on top of each other, in layers, in steps, in iterations.
I played this game sort of assuming the word “Pentiment” probably meant something similar to “penance”. Some sort of remorseful, regretful obligation. Some sort of “catholic guilt” type thing. The game is fairly religious - if only because everything was religious in the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance.
But I looked up pentiment after playing and I learned that it actually has to do with painting. It is when the underlying image of a painting begins to show through.
What a perfect name.
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Minor Thoughts scrap pile:
- I hate choice-based games where every answer is the right answer, because it fundamentally means choices dont matter. This is one of the worst things to happen to gaming and I want it to stop.
- Similar to previous, this game does a poor job of keeping track of context. I will learn information from interacting with an object, then talk to someone who "introduces" me to that same information and your character will behave like this is the first time theyre hearing about it. The lateral-linearity is not interesting enough to be worth this hassle.
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When it comes to stories set during the Middle Ages, alot of writers tend to focus on the brutalism of the time period. Scenes of people falling in the mud with the pigs, losing life and limb in war and combat, taverns full of mead and debauchery. Sometimes, someone gets lit on fire, but in all cases it is an unbearable life.
And all of that is true in Pentiment, except for the last part.
To me Pentiment is about, to borrow the words of one character, love. The world is harsh and unfair, and those who stand to gain will take advantage of the less fortunate. There isnt always enough to eat, and the seasons are unforgiving. And yet, still, people have passions. Interests. Connections to each other, hopes, dreams. People live out there in the wilds of Europe (in the past but now also) and thats something I think Middle Ages fiction tends to forget. People cared about things. They cared about each other. I have to imagine it was the only thing making any of it worthwhile.
Pentiment is seen through the eyes of an artist. Art, to me, is the joy of communication. You put paint to the canvas, ink to the page, you carve feeling into the stone, perform meaning in the light of the bonfires. In this way art is less the thing you hold in your hand, and is more the thing you hold in your head that you are trying to conjure and evoke into the minds of others - and so the artist is therefore driven to spend alot of time thinking and interpreting the world around them. The only real reason one would spend so much time formulating such involved communication has to be that these things matter a great deal, such a great deal that they must be shared, compelled by some instinct of connection. As things play out, it becomes clear Pentiment cares alot about caring. At every step, its thinking about caring, exploring the struggles of caring, the concept of caring.
And sometimes (often) that makes Pentiment a very tragic game. Tassing is a small town nestled in the Alps but it is in no short supply of heartbreaking stories. There is murder. There are consequences. There is sorrow, there are burdens, there are scars. Everyone agrees, Europe in the 16th century sucked ass (in fact, everywhere sucked ass back then). But Pentiment is also a game that believes the arc of these things bends towards good. Things get better, slowly. They build on top of each other, in layers, in steps, in iterations.
I played this game sort of assuming the word “Pentiment” probably meant something similar to “penance”. Some sort of remorseful, regretful obligation. Some sort of “catholic guilt” type thing. The game is fairly religious - if only because everything was religious in the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance.
But I looked up pentiment after playing and I learned that it actually has to do with painting. It is when the underlying image of a painting begins to show through.
What a perfect name.
v
v
v
v
v
Minor Thoughts scrap pile:
- I hate choice-based games where every answer is the right answer, because it fundamentally means choices dont matter. This is one of the worst things to happen to gaming and I want it to stop.
- Similar to previous, this game does a poor job of keeping track of context. I will learn information from interacting with an object, then talk to someone who "introduces" me to that same information and your character will behave like this is the first time theyre hearing about it. The lateral-linearity is not interesting enough to be worth this hassle.