Fans of true crime know there’s nothing more compelling than slowly unraveling the motivations behind a murder, and learning more about the intricate web of relationships that ultimately drove someone to take deadly action. A new morsel of information can suddenly transform a tragic accident into a crime of passion or an elaborately staged plot. If you’re hankering for a suspenseful mystery where your choices — who you talk to, what evidence you find, even who you share a meal with — have serious consequences, look no further than Obsidian Entertainment’s critically acclaimed Pentiment.
Released for Xbox in 2022 — and later ported to Nintendo Switch, PC, and PlayStation — Pentiment tells the story of a traveling artist whose brief stay in a small Bavarian town changes his life forever. Andreas Mahler is temporarily living in the town of Tassing while he illustrates manuscripts at the nearby Kiersau Abbey. Early on, you’ll shape Andreas’ personal history — his previous travels, academic interests, and language skills — through dialogue choices. From there, you’ll be tasked with investigating a murder and discovering the culprit. Along the way, you’ll uncover other crimes and misdeeds, several of which are linked to a broader mystery about Tassing’s history. If this all sounds a bit like schoolwork, if school was this interesting all the time, we’d all have doctoral degrees.
Pentiment‘s three-act story takes place over the course of 25 years, a period which sees dramatic social and cultural changes. That means the characters you get acquainted with in the first act evolve over the course of the story: they get married and have families, assume new roles in the town or monastery, and pass away. And the choices you make in the first few hours — who to listen to, who to befriend, who to accuse — reverberate throughout the whole 15- to 20-hour experience. After you’ve made a consequential decision, you’ll see a message that says, “This will be remembered.” And every time, it will give you a flutter of worry as you think: Have I done the right thing?
Apart from a captivating choose-your-own-adventure story that rewards multiple playthroughs, Pentiment stands out for its truly singular art style. There’s no Unreal Engine 5 generic photorealism here — everything you see looks and feels like a centuries-old, hand-lettered manuscript. There’s no voice acting, and characters’ dialogue appears in a variety of fonts. These indicate whether they’re part of the peasantry or the aristocracy, or if they were educated in a university or a religious institution. When the nuns and monks share stories or wisdom from their favorite texts, the illustrations come to life on the page, like when Sister Illuminata tells Andreas about Virgil’s Aeneid. Every aspect of the game’s visual design contributes to the storytelling in fascinating ways.
There aren’t many games like Pentiment, which manages to make a society so foreign to our own feel intimate, lived-in, and familiar. If you’re looking for an engrossing murder mystery where your choices have story-shaping consequences, you’re in for an unforgettable experience.
Pentiment’s defining detail is its fonts
Words have a life of their own in Obsidian Entertainment’s new game
