Saturday Morning Gaming: Pentiment First Impressions

Obsidian is the game company that is known for making some of the best sequels out there. Knights of the Old Republic II, Fallout: New Vegas, and Neverwinter Nights 2 are the biggest of the big hits. More recently, they’ve put their efforts into making games like Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny, and The Outer Worlds.

If you like the whole “RPG” thing, you know Obsidian and you know that the criticisms of Obsidian include “buggy and unfinished and frustrating” rather than “sucks”. New Vegas? Holy cow, was that game buggy and unfinished and frustrating or what? It’s also the greatest of the Fallout games. Knights of the Old Republic II? Holy cow, that game was so unfinished that it pretty much only had the Light Side ending. The Dark Side ending was effectively a monologue. (They’ve since finished the game via patches.) But what’s most frustrating is that the game was really *INTERESTING*. Your choices mattered.

Like, a lot of games have “choices matter” in the form of “how do you feel about this thing that you would have done anyway?”

They give you the option of doing it for pure intentions, doing it for money, and doing it but resenting that you’re doing it. You’re still going to do it. Just how do you *FEEL* about it?

Obsidian made games where the branches involved more than merely how you felt about things. It changed how the world interacted with you. This had the added effect of making the game *REALLY* replayable. Like, you wanted to see what the world was like if you picked Mister House instead of the NCR. Then you wanted to see what the world was like if you picked Caesar’s Legions. And those games gave you different experiences above and beyond how you felt about any given choice.

So, for a particular flavor of RPG, Obsidian was in a class by itself.

Well, they have a new game! Pentiment.

I’m only about an hour into it (Elden Ring, man… Elden Ring) but I love it already. You play Andreas Maler, an artist/craftsman in the early 1500’s. You are doing your work at the local Abbey and you are renting a room from a kind family just outside of town. OH AND THERE’S MURDER!!!!!! But, not, like because of combat. You’re more like Jessica Fletcher, trying to figure out whodunit while getting your next book ready.

The experience of playing the game is absolutely delightful. The game has your text fill in as if it were being scratched in by a quill (and you get to see the ink *DRY*). Here, check this out:

I got that screenshot mid-sentence because I wanted you to see the shiny ink drying after it’s written.

There’s also a function where the game gives you information that your character knows but you, the player, might not know yet. So, like, if a character mentions Otto, *YOU* have no idea who Otto is but Andreas is someone who hangs out with Otto all the time. So how does the game break the fourth wall just a little to tell you about Otto?

BY SHOWING YOU THE WHOLE PAGE!!!

Andreas is blessed with a handful of advisors in his head: Beatrice, Socrates, and Saint Grobian. Occasionally, you’ll be asked to do something and you’ll have to choose between the advice of each of these advisors:

The game kicks off with you going to the Abbey to do work on your manuscript and figure out how to get paid. Along the way, you’ll have a conversation with a handful of people who will ask you about your background and you’ll establish yourself.

This isn’t a combat RPG. It’s one that focuses rather heavily on exploration, conversation, and making decisions (quite regularly, the game will tell you “THIS WILL BE REMEMBERED” after a particular conversation choice).

I haven’t spent anywhere near as much time with it as I’d like (Elden Ring, man… Elden Ring) but if you’re interested in Medieval stories and are kinda turned off by combat, this is the game for you.

So… what are you playing?

(Featured image is Pentiment’s Opening Menu screen. All screenshots taken by the author.)