Pentiment is a new RPG-ish adventure game from Obsidian Entertainment that, honestly, came out of nowhere for me. I had to rub my eyes when I first saw it in stores, first to figure out what am I even looking at and then to make sure I am seeing the name of the developers right. And I’m really glad I’ve finally had a chance to play it.
This is the kind of an adventure game that does many things I love seeing. It’s a story and choice driven title, but it’s not purely Telltale-esque, going even farther than the recent Gerda: A Flame in Winter in playing like a fully open adventure title. In fact if anything else, it’s most comparable with Disco Elysium, but less wordy, on a smaller scale (not in terms of the story though) and with a more “flat” movement. It’s not strictly 2D, but it’s not often that a screen has more than one layer you can walk left or right in. It also develops its story across several years. Not days, weeks or even months – years, to truly give weight to any actions you do in the game no matter how minor.
It doesn’t have any cool resources to manage, however, apart from time. It’s not always the case, but most of the game’s sections have a time limit in days, where each day is divided into several sections and during each section you can only do one important scene, even if you have several available. Meaning, that you will never be able to do “everything” in one playthrough and that is, really, part of the point of the story. Which I genuinely loved. It’s a nice tale about how history is experienced when you hear about it, when you live through it and when you think back to it years later. It takes its time to grow on you, but if you let it, you will learn to love and care about the characters and be genuinely invested in what happens.
Which is made somewhat clunky at times due to how the game actually plays. As mentioned, you move across the screens with the ability to interact with something, be it people or things. And the game itself is divided into many such screens, being an interconnected world you can usually explore more or less freely. However, there is no fast travel, the map is relatively big and you can stumble upon interesting stories completely accidentally (so you’re motivated to search them out), and you never know where the character you’re looking for is, until you find them. They’re not marked on the map, they don’t have a 100% set schedule where they definitely do specific things at specific time period (though some do), so if you’re looking for someone to talk to – you’re going back and forth across the entire map with no fast travel. And it does get annoying at times. As does the fact that while most of the time events that will progress time ask you if you wish to engage with them, that is not always the case. And optional events that do not progress time can also ask if you want to engage with them and you don’t know just how dedicated you must be in these choices.
That said, this is an amazing game that you can enjoy without being a history nerd, even though being interested in history does help. And I it’s probably the best game from Obsidian since Tyranny.