Obsidian’s Pentiment brings history to the fore for its adventure

destructoid.com:

When you first see Pentiment, it’s quite plainly different from most other games. It’s a historical thriller, an adventure told in another era using art, sounds, and design conducive to the overall feeling of life in 16th century upper Bavaria.

It’s no surprise, then, that this is a passion project for the developers at Obsidian putting it together. We got a chance to take a look at some of Pentiment ahead of Gamescom and participate in a Q&A with some developers behind the project. And it didn’t take long for Pentiment to seize my attention.

Pentiment follows Andreas Maler, an artist working in a scriptorium. Though just a journeyman, Andreas becomes embroiled in a series of murders over the course of 25 years. In the process, he’ll be tasked with investigating the murders and, hopefully, bringing the truth to light.

The entire art style of Pentiment is incredibly accurate to the art and aesthetic of the 16th century. Obsidian’s team, made up of 13 developers, spent a lot of time digging into history. Part of it was for the explicit art style, but another part was to just get the general feel of life in this era.

Art director Hannah Kennedy says the team looked at different paintings from the time period, and artists from that region, to get contextual info on how people lived back then.

These details stem out and seep into even the game mechanics. Each character’s lettering is based on their own background and upbringing. A clergy member might lay out empty lettering that gets filled in with ink afterwards. But this was near the rise of the printing press, and so someone working in that industry might have their dialogue stamped in by lettering tiles, in machine-like fashion.

The murder-mystery has to contend with