Pentiment preview – playing with history

metro.co.uk:

GameCentral peers behind the curtain for Obsidian’s Pentiment and learns how it could make art and history fun for everyone.

Considering Obsidian Entertainment is already plenty busy with two major role-playing games (Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2), plus the full release of survival game Grounded (which is next month), we’re kind of surprised it has the time for a fourth project, but Pentiment isn’t quite like anything else they’ve ever done.

Announced during Microsoft’s not-E3 presentation in June, it looks like it has a much smaller budget than their other projects. So much so that you’d assume it was being helmed by a small indie team, and not one of Microsoft’s premier studios.

In a way, that’s not wholly inaccurate. We recently attended a digital preview for Pentiment, where game director Josh Sawyer (who also directed Fallout: New Vegas) revealed that the team consists of only 13 people.

Although it’s not unknown (Ubisoft did something similar with Child Of Light and Valiant Hearts: The Great War), that’s an unusual approach for any big developer, which allows smaller teams to put out more niche projects while everyone else focuses on the next triple-A blockbuster.

While we couldn’t play the game ourselves, we did learn plenty of new details, as well as the intentions and motivation behind Pentiment’s development. Set in Upper Baravia during the 16th century, a time when it was part of the Holy Roman Empire, you play as an artist who finds himself caught up in a series of murders and scandals that span across 25 years.

Described as a narrative adventure game, Pentiment is very different to previous Obsidian projects, something Sawyer admits to. Between its 2D presentation and emphasis on dialogue and character