It's barely been a month since Pentiment was released, but already the adventure game has been causing some interesting conversations within the gaming community. Obsidian Entertainment's highly original RPG follows the fortunes of a small town in 16th-century Bavaria and its various residents, exploring the process of solving several mysteries over the course of twenty-five years. Its unique format, premise, and design have helped to make Pentiment stand out, but it's also had some unexpected results.
Historical games don't tend to be released too frequently, with many titles preferring other fantastical (and more fictitious) settings. If releases do center on a historic premise, like the popular Assassin's Creed franchise, they tend to combine this with plenty of fabricated elements or even some aspects of science fiction to make them more appealing to a modern audience. Pentiment has proved that its niche setup can find an audience, and its creative combination of mystery-solving and decision-making has shown what heady heights choice-based games can reach.
Pentiment's Choice-based Gameplay
Pentiment is hardly the first game to highlight decision-making within its gameplay, and there have also been other thoughtful, well-crafted RPGs where players have a hand in shaping the narrative. Games that are rooted in choices and strong storytelling have proven popular over the years, like many of Telltale's series or Supermassive Games' interactive titles, and there have even been similar games that have utilized a distinct painterly aesthetic like INTERIOR/NIGHT's As Dusk Falls. These examples all use decisions to shape their stories, drive the action, and create tension, but Pentiment takes this to another level.
There are a variety of ways that gamers are asked to steer Pentiment's gameplay, from shaping protagonist Andreas' background and skillset to accepting or rejecting romantic overtures from an NPC. Some of these decisions are momentous and clearly have a sizable impact on the story, like picking which character to accuse of murder, whereas others can seem deceptively commonplace like choosing who to share a meal with. The genius of Pentiment partly lies in the variety of choices that it asks players to make, as well as the unexpected impacts they have.
How Pentiment Sets The Standard For Future Titles
Nothing in Pentiment is straightforward, and that includes the decision-focused aspect of its gameplay. Even the smallest decisions close off storylines in clever ways, and some everyday choices can have the most unforeseen consequences. Pentiment masterfully builds its narrative alongside the myriad of mysteries and murders that Andreas and his allies are trying to solve, and the richness of the story comes from the complex relationships and histories that exist within the community of Tassing and the nearby Kiersau Abbey. The decisions play into this, as players are often presented with choices with only a fragment of information before more is revealed later on.
Some similar games can use their decision-based gameplay to force players into instinctual pressurized choices as a way to up the tension, rather than in the much more considered way Pentiment does. Pentiment's choice-based gameplay feels organic, creative, and engaging. As the game never canonically fully reveals the true mystery that binds the events and various plotlines together, Pentiment is very much about the journey and the process, instead of the destination. Pentiment helps pave the way for how sophisticated and complex decision-based gaming could be, and how players can be part of a living, breathing story instead of merely a passenger within an established narrative.
Pentiment is available on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. It is also available on Xbox Game Pass.