Pentiment, a deductive medieval thriller: well written but a bit tiring

Listen to the audio version of the article

In Pentiment words are important. And Josh Sawyer, author of the game for Xbox Series/X and PC is a candidate to be one of the brightest video game writers on the scene. We are in the village of Tassen in the Bavarian Alps, above you is the abbey: you are in the 16th century, in a corner of the Holy Roman Empire. Andreas Maler is an artist, he is not yet a master but he will find himself drawn into a spiral of murders, scandals and intrigues. Obsidian’s is a deductive yellow set in the late Middle Ages. Where there are no puzzles to solve, there is no jumping and no fighting. It is a game without the contemporary “perspective”, which tells in its own way the transition from illuminated manuscripts to the first printed books. A graphic adventure with RPG elements where you are immersed in a medieval woodcut guided only by the dialogues and the curiosity to deduce what happened.

What we liked

We are near the “Name of the Rose” as an atmosphere, but basically you play with multiple choice dialogues deciding who Andrea Maler really is, his travels and his studies to help him understand the psychology, mysteries and habits of those around him. Don’t expect a treatise on the Middle Ages, the writing is agile and amused in some passages. But spending about twenty hours basically pressing the X key listening to the sound of writing and trying to find the killer is certainly the most surprising aspect of the game.

What we didn’t like

It’s tiring, sometimes annoying in its slowness. Particularly in the latter part of the game, there is a clear drop as if something has been missing from the project. And it’s a shame but the advice is not to look for shortcuts and talk to everyone but really all the inhabitants of Tassen.