One of the very best video games to come out this year involves wandering around the Bavarian countryside of the Middle Ages, quarreling with monks, and having loaded conversations over bowls of pottage. Pentiment is a miracle, and it isn’t too much of a stretch to say I mean that in the biblical sense.
The game takes place in the fictional German town of Tassing sometime in the early 16th century, as the printing press was steadily making its way across Western Europe and ushering along all the societal and economic transformations that come along with it. Pentiment puts you in the leather shoes of one Andreas Maler, a late bloomer from a well-to-do family. Maler is fulfilling an apprenticeship as an illuminator at the nearby abbey where, alongside a few other practitioners of the dying art, he spends days in the scriptorium completing manuscripts for wealthy clients. The narrative begins as Maler encounters one such affluent nobleman passing through town. There’s thorny history between Tassing and the nobleman, a patron of the abbey, owing to the latter’s less-than-savory visits over the years. Before long, the guy is mysteriously killed, a mentor of Maler’s at the abbey is scapegoated for the murder, and Maler finds himself in a race against time to figure out who really did the deed.
That’s just the opening gambit, however. Pentiment isn’t quite an interactive murder mystery in the vein of another fantastic game from this year, The Case of the Golden Idol, though, sure, for the most part you’re pursuing leads, talking to people, and gathering evidence for a theory of the case to be presented to a judge figure. But beyond that general frame, the game ends up being closer to the single-player adventure construct of an Oxenfree or Night in the Woods, which Pentiment’s director, Josh Sawyer, has explicitly cited as inspiration (alongside Umberto Eco’s medieval murder mystery The Name of the Rose). In a manner not too dissimilar to a visual novel, narrative takes precedence in these proceedings, and the story that plays out over the course of the game is one that spans decades, following Maler from youthful exuberance into burdened adulthood and then into … well, something else entirely. By the end of the game, his life has become fully enmeshed with Tassing, wrapped up in the inner lives of its people — the villagers, the monks, the nuns, their interrelations, their dreams, their constraints, their religious fabric — and vaulted deep into a seismic shift in power that will eventually reconstruct the shape of society, but not quite yet.
Mechanically speaking, there’s a pleasant simplicity to the game. As the first act (of three) kicks off, you’re presented with several leads, which you chase down through exploration and conversation with the wide cast of characters that make up Tassing. You won’t be able to go down all possible rabbit holes, however, as sometimes a particular path will eat up time, of which you only have so much. There are light RPG dynamics at play, with Maler being somewhat malleable as a player avatar. Though his personality is more or less fixed, you can choose aspects of his backstory and proficiencies, which in turn impacts various ways in which he’s able to relate to the world. Maler’s knowledge of particular languages, for example, might open up further comprehension when it comes to certain dialogue or documents, and selecting a more hedonistic origin story could allow your Maler to yield a desired outcome in moments where multiple results are possible.
That Pentiment possesses a minor but elegant layer of RPG-ness shouldn’t really come as a surprise given that the game comes from Obsidian Entertainment, a studio chiefly associated with western RPGs like Fallout: New Vegas and The Outer Worlds. But the unexpected mechanical blend of the game is also in keeping with what seems to be an intriguing contemporary movement that marries a vividly realized aesthetic with a foregrounding of dialogue as the primary verb. In this way, the game that Pentiment reminds me most of all is Disco Elysium, where the main avenue through which you influence the world isn’t a gunshot, but an attempt at witty repartee.
Speaking of aesthetic: What a looker! The art style, led by Hannah Kennedy, mimics the illuminated manuscripts that take up Maler’s day: flat perspective, distinct lines, ornate patterns, illustrated flora and fauna. It’s a distinct style that might take some getting used to — especially if you don’t already have a fondness for the art-historical interests that clearly drive Pentiment — but just let it wash over you. Same goes for the sound design, so evocatively realized that it ends up being the thing that really roots you in this fictional world: the crunch crunch crunch of footsteps on dirt, the creaks of an old wooden house, the crackle of candlelight. Like a good white-noise stream, it’s a vibe I could keep rolling in for hours.
You’re likely to roll for just about 12 or so, though, as Pentiment turns out to be on the short side. (Which is great and merciful, by the way. More short games!) But the story it leaves behind is one that’ll linger for much longer. The title of the game refers to a phenomenon in visual art where an underlying image, perhaps painted over to rectify a mistake or simply reuse the canvas, reemerges after the overlayer chips off: a sense of something original or prior or true coming to light. When looked one way, pentimento is evidence of a cheat or a cover-up. When looked at another, it’s just the nature of things. In Pentiment, what begins as a murder mystery ultimately chips away to reveal a soulful religious-historical drama about the way the world is made, what it takes to break it down, and what it means to build it back up again.