Format PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series
Developer Obsidian Entertainment
Publisher Xbox Game Studios
Origin US
Release 2022
Your first act in Pentiment is a simple one, yet loaded with layers of deeper meaning. The game begins with the camera zooming in on a thick book, propped up against a large wooden board. Suddenly, it flips open to reveal a page of Latin text – at which point a smooth, ovalshaped stone appears, inviting you to press it down against the page to erase the printed words and images. Even without any additional context, the process feels taboo – effectively charging you with rewriting history. It’s tied to the game’s title, too: like a palimpsest, it refers to visible traces of a prior work, scraped away or covered up by fresh paint or ink. As game and narrative director Josh Sawyer puts it, “You’re creating your own version of the story that is going down. But also, your story is built upon many other stories that have come before you.”
In this particular instance, Sawyer acknowledges the debt to Pentiment’s primary influence – one that, for most players, is hidden in plain sight. Those fluent in Latin (and also familiar with Biblical verse) may recognise the opening lines ‘In principio erat Verbum et Verbum erat apud Deum et Deus erat Verbum’ (‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’) as from the Gospel According To John. Which is accurate, Sawyer says, but only because Umberto Eco’s historical murder mystery The Name Of The Rose also begins with those lines – the rest of the page is actually Eco’s work translated into Latin. “It’s me saying, ‘I, Josh, am writing this story on top of The Name Of The Rose – it’s inspired by it and builds upon it, and you are telling your own story within this framework as well.’ So it was to convey all of these things at once.”
Having studied the Holy Roman Empire for his history degree, Sawyer decided to move murder mystery saga forward in time, shifting the location from Eco’s Italy to the Bavarian Alps. “I find the early modern period particularly fascinating – that transition point between the Middle Ages and the modern periodstory –
