Pentiment: A Master Class in Humanity

**ALERT! This article will delve into spoilers for the entirety of Pentiment. If you haven’t finished the game, do not keep reading.**

There are very few video games in my lifetime that have stuck with me spiritually. In fact, I could probably list them off in chronological order right now:

Final Fantasy VI & Chrono Trigger

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger taught me that video games didn’t need to be constant action to be captivating. All it took was memorable characters, magical settings and an incredible story.

As for Zelda, I’ll never forget the feeling of going out onto Hyrule Field for the first time, feeling like there was an entire world to discover. And of course, that final battle between Link and Ganon, locked in a ring of fire, might have been the most on edge I’ve ever been while holding a controller in my hands. It was the arrival of what gaming could become. Ocarina of Time felt like a cultural moment and I luckily happened to be around at the right time.

And then there’s Oblivion, I sank hundreds of hours of my teenage years into that game. It was the most absorbed I’d ever been into a game. It felt like I was no longer just running around a digitally created world. Instead, I had become a citizen of Cyrodiil, going through a mix of emotions through epic quest lines like the Thieves’ guild and the Dark Brotherhood.

I’ve long thought that those would be the games that would represent my core gaming memories. That I couldn’t recreate the unforgettable feelings I had playing those games because they came in my youth when I had more time, less responsibilities and could realistically spend entire days in a virtual world. I had made my bed that I would never be blown away by a game like that in my adulthood. But I was wrong.

I’ve finally found a game that will stand the test of time in my memories. That game? Pentiment by Josh Sawyer and company at Obsidian Entertainment.

The premise of this masterpiece is fairly simple. You control Andreas Maler, an artist working an apprenticeship in a Bavarian abbey during the early 1500s. During his time in Tassing, the village in which Andreas is working, an important Baron is murdered during his visit. Andreas’ mentor is accused of the crime and Andreas decides to undertake an investigation to prove his mentor’s innocence. This sets off the chain of events that will take the player through a sprawling adventure covering 25 years in the characters’ lives.

An incredible amount of research went into this game. Sawyer and his team have been able to piece together an amazing story that happens to be historically accurate to the era in which it takes place. Tassing may not be a real town in Bavaria but it may as well have been. The characters depicted feel real. The abbey and its people, locked in a battle to stay relevant amidst Martin Luther’s publication of his Ninety-five Theses, makes the player feel like they are truly existing in 1518.

The story is fascinating. Since Pentiment is a narrative-based game without any fighting whatsoever, it has to deliver on its plot to keep the player invested. You’ll be nervously trying to figure out what happened to your favorite villagers every time a passage of time occurs. Your decisions, possibly seeming inconsequential in the moment, will come back to impact people a decade down the line and then, you’ll feel the weight of your decisions. You’ll want to get to the bottom of the Tassing murders, not because of any achievement it’ll unlock, but because you’ll want to do right by the village’s residents.

Still, none of that is why this game will always hold a special place in my heart. Instead, the reason this game affected so much was the way in which Pentiment portrayed the protagonist, Andreas.

At the beginning of the game, Andreas is a young up and coming artist. He’s working his way towards becoming a master artist and due to be married back at home to a woman named Sabine. Andreas works at the abbey to make ends meet, all while working on his own masterpiece that will allow him to become world-renowned.

Andreas is hopeful and dreams of his career as a famous artist. He has clear talent and an even clearer drive to become one of the best painters of his time. You can feel the youthful hunger pushing him to keep working.

After Andreas has solved the first murder and cleared his mentor, Piero, from any wrongdoing, the game takes its first time jump. The act resolves with Piero and Andreas giving their goodbyes and then jump cuts into the second act where Andreas is standing in the same spot he left Piero only now, Andreas is standing in front of his mentor’s grave.

It has been seven years since Andreas was in Tassing. He has since accomplished his goals of becoming a famous painter. He has done commissions for the richest men in the world. He has his own apprentice, Caspar, hoping to learn from the great artist. By all accounts, Andreas has become a complete success.

Despite that, Andreas is not happy. His work for others has left him with no time to create his own art. He’s married Sabine, mostly against his wishes, and had a son named August who we find out died as a toddler. Andreas has also broken his promises to keep in touch with his friends back in Tassing like Piero, who died before Andreas could reconnect with him, and Claus, the town printer who was Andreas’ closest friend during his time in Tassing.

In short, Andreas has depression and he doesn’t know how to handle it. He’s accomplished everything he had hoped for in life and none of it matters.

For me, the differences between Andreas from Act I to Act II is something I identified with tremendously. There’s something about the ignorance of youth that also empowers you to be more self-assured. Life hasn’t yet taken its toll on you and you have the confidence to show for it. The older you get, the more you face hard decisions and personal loss, the higher the chance that you’ll be affected by it mentally.

And this is where the game roped me in on an emotional level. The way it communicates Andreas’ dark thoughts to the players is beautiful. We are never outright told that Andreas is depressed, rather we are shown that he is.

It can be in simple ways like Andreas not having the energy to return Claus’ letters during his time away from Tassing. Claus had written to Andreas to tell him that his wife, Marie and his son, Bert had both died in separate tragic incidents. These are life-altering events in Claus’ life and despite being one of Andreas’ best friends, Andreas just never responds to the letters. He is too caught up in his own head to have the energy to write to his grieving friend.

Who among us hasn’t felt that same kind of energy in their lives? Andreas knows he should have answered and he doesn’t know how to apologize to Claus. We’ve all received a text from a close friend and not had the willpower to answer right away. Sometimes that becomes a few texts in a row left unanswered. Suddenly, you’ve gone months without speaking to your buddy and you don’t know how to restart the conversation without acknowledging your absence and thus, the silence between the two of you continues.

In another fantastic moment, Andreas ends up in Providence, a fortress he has erected in his own mind to keep him entertained. In act I, it was a cheery place where Andreas would dream about the events unfolding around him and make fun of the people he worked with. In act II, that is all replaced by a single entity named Melencholia. It is here that Andreas has a dream about August and it’s the first time we learn that Andreas had a son and that he died very young. It’s a heart wrenching sequence in which Andreas expresses guilt over not being able to save his son and tells him that he loves him.

As a parent, it was impossible not to place myself in Andreas’ shoes in that moment. Seeing Andreas, in his dreams, tell his dead son how much he loved him while also realizing August can’t respond to him hits heavy. These are the kind of moments that make Pentiment a special game.

Act II wraps up with Andreas seemingly sacrificing himself in the burning abbey, attempting to save books from its library. Again, the game doesn’t outright acknowledge Andreas’ actions but given my Andreas’ obvious melancholy over his life situation, it read to me like Andreas making a choice to die at that moment.

He has been beaten down by the last seven years and doesn’t see a way out. Even Providence, the happy place he concocted within his own mind, has been overtaken by grief and darkness. At that point, Andreas can’t find meaning in life so he opts to try and at least save something of value while choosing to end his.

In Act III you play as Magdalene, Claus’ daughter, since Andreas has presumably died in the fire 18 years ago. Only by the end of the act, the player realises that Andreas actually survived the flames and has been hiding out in the desecrated abbey ever since.

Since the fire, Andreas has been trying to solve the string of murders that have affected Tassing. He doesn’t believe that those he accused in the first two acts were truthfully behind it all and he sees connections between the separate events. Along with his detective work, Andreas is also losing his mind. His hermit act and continuing depression has taken a toll on his mental capacities.

To add onto his already existing grief and guilt, my Andreas was saved from the fire by his apprentice, Caspar. To my Andreas, Caspar was like the son he had lost so devastatingly early in life. He cared for his well-being and wanted to see him become an accomplished artist. My Andreas took the time to tell Caspar not to repeat his mistakes, to work for himself and to never lose sight of his passion. He pointed at himself as evidence for Caspar not to follow in his footsteps. While Andreas thought he had sent Caspar away before the riots fully exploded in Tassing, Caspar saw the burning abbey and ran back to save his master.

Ironically, by treating Caspar like a son, Andreas caused his death. If the gamer is more abrupt with Caspar and doesn’t fully accept him as an apprentice, Caspar will not return when Andreas tells him to leave, thus saving his life. It’s a great illustration of how the game can play with your attempts to role play. What might feel like minor decisions in the present can have devastating consequences down the line. It felt right to me that Andreas would see Caspar as the son he never got to raise and so I played it that way. It made it all the more impactful when that bond became the cause of his demise.

In the game’s climax, Andreas and Magdalene find themselves chasing down the real figure behind everything that has happened in Tassing. At the same time, Andreas finds himself going to his safe place of Providence for one final visit. This is where the game impacted me the most on an emotional level.

At first, Andreas speaks to Sabine, his wife back in Nuremberg, and Caspar. They tell him that he needs to let go of the shame, guilt and sadness he’s felt over letting them down. Sabine, for never returning to her after losing their son and Caspar for being the reason he died in the fire. Sabine highlights how they once had happy moments and that in a different life, they might meet again. Caspar tells Andreas that he shouldn’t place the blame for his death on his shoulders. Caspar merely acted how he would for a person he truly cared for.

Finally, Andreas speaks to August for the final time. In the past, August had never answered Andreas’ thoughts because after all, this is all in his head. However, this time, Andreas is committed to breaking through the darkness he has felt for decades and as a result, is able to have a conversation with August. His departed son tells him that he needs to let go of the guilt he feels for his death. August was a victim of the plague and there is nothing Andreas could have done.

Still, Andreas feels like there is always something he could have done more. I understood so badly his sense of fatherly duty. Being unable to protect your child from the dangers of the world is my biggest worry in life. It’s a fact every parent has to recognize but can never truly accept.

As the conversation between father and son finishes up, Andreas tells August that he loves him and the latter replies, and this might be a slight paraphrase because I negligently didn’t write it down word for word, “I know. I love you too daddy.” And boy, let me tell you… I don’t normally well up for most media but this, this got me good. In that moment, Andreas is able to find some peace with his son’s fate and finally leave Providence behind for good.

When the story wraps up, we get to see Andreas one last time. He has reintegrated in the Tassing community, likely sticking around the village, at least for a while. Paul and Anna, two of its residents whom Andreas had a big impact on during their childhood, let him know that he is welcome to stay with them as long as he wants. All Andreas is able to answer is, “I’m lost.”

That’s how his story wraps up. Andreas isn’t stuck in his mind anymore but he doesn’t get a happy ending either. He doesn’t know where he belongs anymore. He’s spent the last 18 years hidden away trying to solve a mystery that has now been resolved. His son is dead, his surrogate son is dead, his best friend (Claus) has just died, his wife is villages away and believes him to be dead, he has no real home or purpose. How it will go from there will be up to him, but at the moment he’s right to feel lost.

This is another great moment that hit me heavily. I’m lucky to say that I’ve never felt darkness to the extent that Andreas has. But we’ve all hit lows in our lives where it feels like we don’t know what to do or where to go. It’s easy to find yourself in a pit, it’s a lot harder to get yourself out of it. A sentiment that Pentiment excellently expresses in how it finishes Andreas’ story.

While the game takes place a long time ago in terms of history, its themes are timeless. Depression, the feeling of being lost in a large world and being powerless to overcome your situation are refrains we still feel today. Josh Sawyer and his team were able to masterfully tell a story that takes place in the 1500s will making it feel more relevant than ever. The humanity the game’s characters exude and the emotions that this game makes you feel are the reasons I will never forget playing through this game. And I will play it many times moreover.

In an age where I thought I would never feel the childlike tingle over a video game, Pentiment crushed through all of my misconceptions and gave me the best game I’ve played in more than a decade. Andreas and all of Tassing’s residents will remain a piece of me until the day that I die.

Pentiment is more than just a game, Pentiment is an artistic masterpiece and hopefully it will get the recognition of that status as the years go by.