After a number of rumors, the next project from Obsidian's Josh Sawyer has finally been revealed: it is indeed called Pentiment, and it's a narrative crime story of sorts set in 16th century Bavaria and styled like a medieval manuscript.
While we got a look at a visually fascinating trailer at Xbox's showcase today, IGN spoke with Sawyer ahead of the announcement about what exactly Pentiment is. As Sawyer explains it, Pentiment follows a medieval artist named Andreas Maler, an educated journeyman who's near to becoming a master artist. While visiting an abbey to make an illuminated manuscript, a monk who is also Andreas' friend and mentor is accused of a murder he claims he didn't commit. Since no one else steps in to solve the case, Andreas dedicates himself to finding the real killer.
Sawyer tells us that key to Pentiment is that it never explicitly tells you who the murderer really is. Andreas will have to decide who he thinks committed the murder, or at least who he thinks should be punished for it even if it isn't the actual murderer. And those decisions will ripple out through the rest of Pentiment, which covers a span of around 25 years and multiple crimes and murders that Andreas keeps getting caught up in.
Though there are mysteries at its heart, Sawyer is adamant that Pentiment isn't explicitly a detective game, because it doesn't contain typical detective mechanics. He says it's more of a narrative adventure with mystery and murder elements, and as per his past work, lots of player choice.
"There will be familiar elements in terms of choice and background development and consequence for people who like our RPGs," he says. "But it really, at its heart, is a narrative adventure story."
And he's also adverse to the comparison with another narrative detective story, Disco Elysium.
"We never set out to make a game that's like Disco Elysium," Sawyer says. "Structurally, it is much more similar to a game like Night In The Woods or Mutazione. I think our dialogue is pretty good, but it simply is not structured and developed the way that Disco is. Obviously, the viewpoint is very different. But the whole focus of the game is just not the same. So yeah, please don't hold us to that standard."
We spoke to Josh Sawyer at length about the development of Pentiment, and you can find our interview here. And he's not the only person at Obsidian we spoke to. We also chatted with Adam Brenneke about Grounded as it approaches its full 1.0 launch, and we spoke to studio head Feargus Urquhart about Obsidian's relationship with Xbox and the future of Obsidian -- stay tuned for our interview in the coming days.
Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.