Pentiment came out of the shadows on June 12th. Indeed, during the Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase, the new Obsidian game was unveiled with a surprising and unexpected aesthetic. Less RPG than narrative adventure game, Pentiment remains a somewhat incomprehensible oddity for many. What are we supposed to do there? How will we play the game? Fortunately, Josh Sawyer has entrusted himself to Gamekult’s microphone to tell us much more about his latest project.
A heart project
Josh Sawyer is an icon in western role-playing games. From Fallout: New Vegas to Pillars of Eternity, his name resonates in the hearts of lovers of the genre. When he announced 18 months ago that he was working with a small team on a personal project, the man got our full attention. This project is Pentiment, an adventure game that takes place in a German monastery in the heart of Bavaria in the 16th century.
Josh Sawyer himself defines it as this new game “the most personal” her career. A title that draws from his private life, whose grandmother is German and speaks the language perfectly, but also from his student life. “My research focused on the Holy Roman Empire from the 15th to the 18th centuries” He specifies before emphasizing that he also wanted to highlight this country, which is often used for Nazism in video games. “It was important to me to talk about it differently than the most stimulating cultural crossroads of its time” he confides.
If Germany quickly seems to be taken for granted, the same applies to Pentiment’s ambitions. Josh Sawyer “dream of making a game based on true story” and don’t want to repeat yet another RPG. The genius designer wants to try another genre, “a narrative adventure in the spirit of Night in the Woods or Oxenfree” and of course embraces the indie spirit. Results ? The game goes into development with less than 10% of Obsidian’s workforce: 13 people.
Atypical optics
However, this does not prevent Pentiment from having ambitions. A narrative ambition driven in particular by a system of choices/consequences that is at the heart of the experience. But also a visual ambition, with a clean artistic direction inspired by illuminations. Again obvious. “We immediately agreed on this style with my artistic director Hannah Kennedy to symbolize the era” says Josh Sawyer before explaining the meaning.
The illumination makes it possible to formalize a central idea of the game: The 16th century was a turning point full of political and social upheavals, which saw the transition between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. For example, it marks the transition from parchment and book illumination, which were the dominant means of communication for centuries, to the printing press, which will gradually replace them. If we chose an abbey as the central location of the game, it is because the monasteries of the time, as spelled that way, were the last bastions of the resistance.
Writing is precisely one of the important themes of Pentiment. The developers paid special attention to this topic in order to “show the variety of styles of the time”. So they have integrated six writing styles, five of which are entirely handwritten. From French cursive to Italian to Gothic script, they were all modeled by hand. “A time-wasting sinkhole for our developers” with the aim of “to let the players feel the physicality of the writing, the effort it required of the monks, the way the parchment absorbed the ink…”.
Obsidian and player selection
The other difficulty mentioned by Josh Sawyer? The casting. Pentiment presents almost 200 people, all of whose lines of dialogue and all of their behavior trees had to be written and anticipated. A task at which the creator has “I was able to concentrate properly” fully during development. And while he realizes that this is the part he prefers, the work done wasn’t easy to allow for “It’s up to the player to understand that events happen because he caused them.” A challenge that is at the heart of Pentiment’s proposal.
As I said, Pentiment is more of an adventure game than an RPG. There is no combat there, but players must personalize the artist that we will embody. Or rather, to draw the contours of his life, his journey. Was he a student in Switzerland? In Italy ? Did he learn different languages on his travels? The decision is up to the players. decisions that decide “how to hold a conversation or solve the puzzles of the game”.
The choices will therefore be at the heart of the experience. During the investigation that is being carried out, each of our actions, our decisions will have an impact on the village and its inhabitants.
Will you accuse someone because you sincerely believe he or she is guilty? Or just because you don’t like it? Or because she’s the one your community will miss the least? No one will tell you if you’re right or wrong: there are no right or wrong answers in the game, just a bunch of suspects and an incomplete body of information to rely on. On the other hand, the village community will respond to your intuition accordingly. Since the game takes place over 25 years, you have to deal with the consequences and the weight of your decisions over several generations.
Repentance and its hidden meanings
In the end, Pentiment promises to be an atypical project. A far cry from Obsidian’s blockbusters, Josh Sawyer’s title is more of an indie effort than the usual studio AAA. In addition, his parent admits, his work was inevitably inspired by other indies. “The style of Oxenfree or Mutazione had a big impact on how we do pentiment. Much more so than Disco Elysium, to which we have often been wrongly compared…”.
Smaller, more personal, Pentiment is almost a niche game reserved for experienced players. Nearly ? “In fact, we were amazed to see how many people were excited. It’s always a relief, but also something very intimidating. Not only do we have to do everything we can to release the game in November, but we now know we’re expected at the turning point.” shares a Josh Sawyer under a little more pressure than he was a few months ago.
In any case, the future looks bright for the man and his small team. His heart project is coming to an end and he will soon be able to share it with millions of players. Will there be more surprises in Pentiment? “I won’t spoil anything! All I can say is that the title actually has multiple layers of meaning.” He likes to challenge us. A challenge that, like so much of Josh Sawyer’s work, we want to be meaningful. See you in November for the answer!
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