Pentiment
Obsidian Entertainment · 2022 · Historical, Story Rich, Investigation, Adventure, Interactive Fiction
PC
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About Pentiment
✦ AI summary
Play as a clever illustrator investigating murders in 16th century Bavaria, where your choices reshape the fate of an entire community over twenty-five years. Uncover conspiracy and secrets through a stunningly hand-illustrated world inspired by Renaissance art, with branching consequences that ripple across generations.
From Obsidian, this game is a historical narrative-driven game focusing on character development, heavily stylized art, and choice-driven storytelling in early 16th century Bavaria. Players will play as Andreas Maler, a clever illustrator caught up in a series of murders in Tassing and Kiersau Abbey over the course of twenty five years. Players will be responsible for conducting their own investigation to decide the fate of the community, but each decision will have lasting consequences and inexorably draws Andreas closer to the center of an underlying conspiracy.
Illustrated world
Experience 16th century Europe as the master artists of the time saw them. Art inspired by great illuminated manuscripts and the earliest printed books becomes a living, breathing world in Pentiment.Uncover mysteries
Choose different academic and social backgrounds and meet a colorful cast of characters as you discover the stories and secrets that lie within the small Bavarian town of Tassing and nearby Keirsau Abbey.Impact a changing world
In an era of great religious and political change, each decision you make can have a profound impact on the community’s future. Find your own way through this turbulent time and see the consequences of your choices play out over generations.What Steam players say
Recent verbatim reviews from Steam — separate from playze.io community reviews below.
I find it ignorant when video games are all lumped together. Some titles are made for entertainment only, and that is fine, but there are also those that can change your perception of the world, of history, or of reality itself. The melancholic story of Pentiment will stay with me forever. The entire game was made with so much heart, and so much understanding of the nuances of European history, that I was at times positively overwhelmed. Its story may be small geographically speaking, but it speaks of concepts relevant to every single person on Earth, despite being anchored mainly in Christian culture. It is a masterpiece in more ways than one.1 found this helpful
If I'm going play a murder mystery, I would like to be able to actually solve the murder. It turns out that the game is written so that you can never be sure who did it. This, in combination with hand holding during puzzles and the use of the illusion of choice made me lose interest after act 1. I'd rather read an actual book.
Josh Sawyer has never done me wrong
Beautiful work of art
Really quite very good.
A thought provoking contemplation on history, time, the things that change and the things that don't, and how the choices of the past shape our present and in turn how our own choices shape the future. Pentiment is wonderful as a look into life in rural 16th century Germany. The characters are realistic and genuinely fun and compelling, and showing how the people of the past weren't that different. However I found the gameplay elements and overarching mystery to be a bit underwhelming. A poor man's Disco Elysium. Still, the good of this game is enough that I think it is worth a playthrough, despite the weaknesses. While the decisions you make do influence the future in interesting ways, you have to make these choices more or less blindly, without knowing where they will lead or how they will be useful. You are only given opportunity to investigate a portion of the leads you are offered, and your backstory choices constrain you as well, so it sometimes feels like future choices are made for you. You don't really have a lot of control. (SPOILERS) [spoiler]At the end of the story, regardless of your choices, the mystery is unravelled and the true culprit and their motives …
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