Pentiment is a unique game in a lot of ways (art style, setting, pacing) but in no way more so than the fact that it's a detective mystery game where you play...as a bad detective. That's not to impugn Andreas' character (unless you choose to make him that way), just that nobody with the lack of time and resources he has could have done much better.
The time is the early 16th century. The location is Lower Bavaria. The suspects are plentiful, and the evidence is all circumstantial. It's a losing game. And you will lose. No matter who you choose in the game's initial whodunit, you will feel as though you made the wrong choice. Even if you don't choose, someone who may not deserve death will receive it, while all those who do are free to keep on with their particular brands of evil.
To say nothing of the incredible amount of research and (from what I can tell) period accurate reference and style, Pentiment succeeds best where it confronts the player with their choices, often times choices made in the heat of the moment and with no better options on the table. This is a time-management game where there's never as much time as you think, a game spanning a quarter century where precocious children grow and change and have children of their own, a game less about generations of families than the groth and death and intertwining of one big community, myths and legends and fables all drawn over one another, everything built on top of the ruins of what came before. A game where your choices matter, not so much in the power fantasy sense where they completely shape the course of an entire universe like some other games claim (such acts are reserved for the Monarchy alone in this world), but where they matter because they effect how the people around you think and feel about you. It's never an absolute condemnation, but never absolution either.
Plenty of games deal with failure. Plenty of detective games, even. But only possibly Disco Elysium is as committed to showing you the consequences of your failure as Pentiment. Above everything else, that incredible art style and imaginative inner worlds, the simple annotations and unpretentious quest design, the extremely winning dialogue, character writing and world building (the different fonts for different classes of people is a masterstroke), it's this commitment to community, to the after effects of tragedy and loss, that make Pentiment the best game of 2022, and one of the best of the last decade.
Plus, you can make your Andreas a Latin pedant who constantly corrects people's grammar. Everyone hates it. This is true representation for Classics and Literature Majors.
The time is the early 16th century. The location is Lower Bavaria. The suspects are plentiful, and the evidence is all circumstantial. It's a losing game. And you will lose. No matter who you choose in the game's initial whodunit, you will feel as though you made the wrong choice. Even if you don't choose, someone who may not deserve death will receive it, while all those who do are free to keep on with their particular brands of evil.
To say nothing of the incredible amount of research and (from what I can tell) period accurate reference and style, Pentiment succeeds best where it confronts the player with their choices, often times choices made in the heat of the moment and with no better options on the table. This is a time-management game where there's never as much time as you think, a game spanning a quarter century where precocious children grow and change and have children of their own, a game less about generations of families than the groth and death and intertwining of one big community, myths and legends and fables all drawn over one another, everything built on top of the ruins of what came before. A game where your choices matter, not so much in the power fantasy sense where they completely shape the course of an entire universe like some other games claim (such acts are reserved for the Monarchy alone in this world), but where they matter because they effect how the people around you think and feel about you. It's never an absolute condemnation, but never absolution either.
Plenty of games deal with failure. Plenty of detective games, even. But only possibly Disco Elysium is as committed to showing you the consequences of your failure as Pentiment. Above everything else, that incredible art style and imaginative inner worlds, the simple annotations and unpretentious quest design, the extremely winning dialogue, character writing and world building (the different fonts for different classes of people is a masterstroke), it's this commitment to community, to the after effects of tragedy and loss, that make Pentiment the best game of 2022, and one of the best of the last decade.
Plus, you can make your Andreas a Latin pedant who constantly corrects people's grammar. Everyone hates it. This is true representation for Classics and Literature Majors.