Obsidian’s Pentiment is a murder mystery, but it’s the fonts that I’m obsessed with

polygon.com:

Obsidian Entertainment is best known for sprawling role-playing games like Fallout: New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity, but the studio’s next adventure is a big swing in the other direction. Pentiment, lead by game designer Josh Sawyer, is small. About 13 people are working on it, Sawyer says, and the historical narrative adventure features only “light RPG” elements. It’s designed to be easily played by anyone, not just those who crave a hundred-hour game with deep and robust role-playing mechanics.

Pentiment is visibly different from Obsidian’s other fantasy and sci-fi video games. It looks like its 16th century inspirations, drawing its unique aesthetic from a blend of late medieval illuminated manuscripts and early modern woodcuts.

That visual design informs an aesthetic element of Pentiment that I can’t stop thinking about: the fonts.

Pentiment’s narrative adventure plays out in dialogue between characters, including the playable center of the story, Andreas Maler, and the residents of the fictional town of Tassing. Maler is described as a journeyman artist who finds himself embroiled in the drama of a murder mystery and associated scandals. Not quite a blank slate, Maler’s background will be decided by players, and the decisions and dialogue players pick from will determine his story over the span of some 25 years.

But back to the fonts. Pentiment’s dialogue and decision-making plays out in word bubbles on screen, scribbled (with attendant scratchy sound effects) by an invisible quill. The wet ink seeps and bleeds into the parchment backgrounds, and dulls as it dries. Sometimes it splatters. Sometimes it is crossed out and corrected, as with real-life manuscripts. The quill will dry out mid-sentence, resulting in