The game director ofFallout: New VegasandPillars of Eternityhas been teasing a new project at Obsidian Entertainment for some time.Obsidian Entertainmentis known to be currently working on bothAvowed, a first-person fantasy RPG, andGrounded, a multiplayer sandbox survival game, so expectations were high. Needless to say, Obsidian’s announcement ofPentiment, a 2D RPG set in 16th century Bavaria, surprised everyone.Pentiment’s definition fittingly is “an underlying image in a painting, as if revealed when a top layer of paint has faded with age.”
What’s immediately striking aboutPentimentis the game’s art style.Pentimentis stylized as if pulled from the paintings on a page of a16th-century Bavarian book. What character animations there are have an odd, low-frame rate movement to them, and an overall lack of expressiveness. It’s unique, to say the least, particularly for an RPG that deals with rich and complicated themes. Perhaps it’s the straightforward style that will allowPentimentto explore a range of ideas without limitations.
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As forPentiment’s gameplay, describing it as a simple RPG would be underselling it.Pentimentis anarrative adventure RPG, full of complicated choices and puzzles that can have dramatic ramifications that can cause the story to shift one way or another. The trailer forPentimentdoesn’t go into depth on these mechanics, only showing how the player can choose their own background as well as a random puzzle, but it does capture the depth of the narrative at hand.
Pentimentis rich with conflict, fitting for a game that revolves around a murder and its investigation. Players take on the role of an artist working to solve this murder, though the plots that spin off from this investigation will likely prove the more consequential. Leaks ahead ofPentiment’s announcement compared the game toDisco Elysium, which may provide an idea of the scope of the project.
As far as howPentimentcompares to Obsidian’s other projects, it’s obviously a significantly smaller game thanAvowed,The Outer Worlds 2, or evenGrounded. It’s likely much smaller than Sawyer’sPillars of Eternity, too. The development team has been reported to be as small as around 12 team members, but Obsidian’s clearly confident enough in whatPentimentis doing that it’s willing to put together a small team for it.
Lastly, with Obsidian Entertainment now a part of Xbox Game Studios,Pentimentis confirmed to be a PC and Xbox exclusive. Further, it’ll launch as a day one release onXbox and PC Game Pass. That should make it much easier for fans of Xbox and Obsidian to tryPentimentout and see what the mystery is all about for themselves.
Pentimentreleases later this year on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
