Why You Need to Play Pentiment

I think that gaming audiences generally need slightly higher standards for storytelling, as it often feels like we conflate production value and fidelity with good writing. Maybe this is why I can’t get onboard with claims about games like Horizon Forbidden West and Mafia: The Old Country having amazing narratives; in my view, these games have fantastic visuals and art design, not fantastic writing. They look and move like movies much of the time, but they lack the substance of a truly great film, novel, or TV show.

If you feel similarly dissatisfied with the spate of contemporary “story-driven” games, I have good news for you: there are plenty of hard-hitting video game stories out there, they just don’t always look like something hot off the PlayStation Studios press. One such game that never gets enough love, in my opinion, is Pentiment, Obsidian Entertainment’s 2022 RPG that is, pound for pound, the developer’s best-written project. If you love history, literature, and choice-based gameplay, not to mention storytelling that actually feels mature, nuanced, and complex, then Pentiment is the game for you. Many have overlooked it—don’t let yourself be one of them.

Pentiment Is a Must-Play for History Buffs

One of my favorite novel series is Ken Follett’s Kingsbridge, also commonly referred to as The Pillars of the Earth. Each book is set several centuries apart, but the first few entries take place in medieval times and the Middle Ages, and follow the nuns, priests, and monks of a fictional English town. Crucially, this series takes an empathetic, nuanced, human look at the lives of these religious servants, and by doing so, becomes a useful tool for better understanding this period of history beyond sanitized facts and figures.

Pentiment is quite similar in this way. It’s set in 16th-century Bavaria, during a period of immense economic and religious upheaval in Europe. Players assume the role of Andreas Maler, a humble painter visiting the fictional town of Tassing to complete an apprenticeship. Andreas is charming and affable (depending on how you choose to play him), but despite this, he is roped into a confounding murder plot tied to Church conspiracy, Ancient Roman history, and tight-knit social strife.

This story, which is infinitely more multifaceted than it seems at first, spans several decades, allowing players to fully absorb the depth of this fictional world. The counterweight to this grand scope is the relatively pedestrian nature of Pentiment’s characters, none of whom have considerable power beyond Tassing: the majority of the cast members are monks, artists, nuns, and workers who keep Tassing functional and thriving. This focus on commonfolk makes Pentiment, like Kingsbridge, a useful supplemental tool for learning about this period of history. But more than this, it makes the story far more emotionally affecting and relatable, especially when you consider how much of an impact you can have on it.

Not Just a Picture Book: Pentiment’s Choice-Based Narrative Is Deep and Compelling

Without getting too deep into spoilers, suffice it to say that the player, as Andreas, can decide the ultimate fates of several different characters, causing the broader narrative to shift and settle in response to their presence or absence. Andreas’ background is also highly customizable at different points in the story, and these elements will have a considerable impact on how he, and the player by extension, interacts with the world. For example, you can choose which languages Andreas speaks, which will allow you to understand dialog in that language in-game; if Andreas doesn’t understand a given language, then neither will you.

In a word, Pentiment’s gameplay is all about consequences. Choices rarely feel trivial or contrived, and it really feels like you are untethered, in a sense: the game never steps in to keep you from making the “wrong” choice, even if that means sending an innocent person to their death. It’s this bold and unflinching approach to choice-driven storytelling that makes Pentiment stand out against other impressive or immaculately written story games like Disco Elysium, Citizen Sleeper, and even some of Obsidian Entertainment’s own RPGs, which are famously robust, flexible, and well-written in their own right.

I hope that I’ve done a competent job of conveying Pentiment’s strengths, which are so myriad and diverse that they’re somewhat hard to pin down in plain English. But here’s the thing, Pentiment is only $20 and “free” if you have Game Pass, so it’s hardly a risky investment. Chances are you’ll find something to appreciate about it—doubly so if you’re in the market for a killer story. No pun intended.