Pentiment is a passion project from a team of Obsidian developers who love history and want to tell a compelling story in an often-forgotten era of human history. Through tons of research and a keen eye for detail, Obsidian Entertainment has created a narrative adventure experience that feels true to 16th-century Bavaria. However, authenticity in such a complex and forgotten period of history is a balancing act, as the game has to remain palatable to all audiences, something Pentiment had to contend with throughout its development.

Accessibility was a factor that held off Pentiment for years as studio executives hesitated to believe anyone would play a game so grounded in the medieval era as this one. Illuminated manuscripts are difficult to read by today’s standards, and not everyone can claim to have a history degree like Pentiment’s director Josh Sawyer. Through clever accessibility features with options to tailor the experience to a player’s liking, Pentiment does manage to make complex history tons of fun.

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Pentiment Makes Buried History Easy to Follow

Pentiment Glossary

Part of the challenge of developing Pentiment was making its 16th-century setting appealing to all audiences. Historical fiction games like Assassin’s Creed or A Plague Tale often take many liberties with their historical settings, never relying too heavily on scholarly works of the era and mainly featuring historical figures that are well-known culturally. Pentiment takes a different approach and often revels in the deepest cuts of 16th-century literature, along with many references to people and locations lost to the centuries. Obsidian’s strategy for unraveling the history that inspires Pentiment while keeping the game going at a good pace is fantastic.

Pentiment makes history accessible through the creative use of its glossary, which is quick, informative, and lets the story flow without skipping a beat. Whenever a new historical term, location, or figure shows up in dialogue, Pentiment highlights that word, and with one press of a button, players can see a brief definition and background of the word in the glossary. However, unlike most glossaries that pull that player out of the experience, Pentiment cleverly pops out the screen and gives the player the definition while still seeing what is happening. There is no loss of momentum in Pentiment’s story despite players receiving waves of context almost constantly. Obsidian’s approach to history preserves all the fine details it needs for context and packages them neatly, efficiently, and rapidly enough for any player to feel like a novice historian, even if they know nothing of the time period going into the game.

Pentiment Balances Authenticity and Accessibility

Player's choices for Andreas' favorite subjects will unlock dialogue options and abilities

One of the most authentic elements of Pentiment is its meticulously crafted art style that brings a sense of medieval flair to everything, especially its fonts. As a game comprised mostly of dialogue sequences, typefaces help bring Pentiment to life, giving a new style of handwriting for the different types of characters that Andreas will encounter around town. Lower-class characters speak in scratch, while the monks up in the abbey speak in fancy typefaces that one may need to squint to decipher. Fonts are the cornerstone of Pentiment’s presentation. However, it's fair to say that many of these writing styles are challenging to read and inaccessible by today’s standards, and Obsidian agrees.

Obsidian remedies potential legibility issues by having a customizable set of options for fonts. If players find some of the words too bunched up due to the ligature usage of this time, they can disable ligatures and still read the fully authentic scripts of the era. Maybe players feel the dialogue is too crowded among ink swirls and letter flourishes and needs more room. If they do, they can increase or decrease font size to their liking.

If Pentiment’s font choices are too complex, or players have any other reason for not being able to read the game’s dialogue, they can switch to “Easy Read” fonts and still feel like they’re getting an authentic experience. On the flip side, if fans want to have an even more authentic experience with Pentiment, they can enable the “Medial S Letter” setting for an added flourish to the game and perhaps some difficulty distinguishing between “S” and “F” letters. Pentiment makes it so that all players can appreciate history and calligraphy at whatever pace they want, and should be celebrated for its unique approach to accessibility

Pentiment is available now for PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.

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