In April 1518 things are actually going quite well for Andreas Maler. His masterpiece, an illustration for a monastery, takes shape. In addition, painters, whose work has taken them to the small town of Tassing, have concrete plans for the future: to return to Nuremberg, get married, open a workshop, things like that. But then a murder occurs. And Maler must become an investigator to save a suspected friend from the executioner.
So far, so normal for a video game located in the late Middle Ages – and yet not. In terms of pop culture, the supposedly dark age is more subscribed to sword fighting, castle building and plague, Viking raids and armies of knights, and less to detective stories à la “The Name of the Rose”. It is even more unusual, however, when a US development studio moves the plot to Bavaria in order to unfold it there in a historical context and in a look reminiscent of tapestries. This is one of the reasons why “Pentiment”, which was published this week, is treated as an insider tip of the year in the German trade press. Daddling not made, but at least settled in Bavaria.
This takes shape as a fictitious tassing: as a small world at the great turning point of times. While book presses are already working elsewhere, manual copying is still being done in the scriptorium of the nearby monastery. The farmers are dissatisfied with their status, and the situation seems tense overall. In the village, someone scolds a nobleman on horseback, while a few yards away a shepherdess complains about her colleague standing around doing nothing. And one printer reacted to Painter’s jokes: not everyone enjoyed the luxury of “working on just one page for days”.
In this setting, painters are what count. As with other adventures, the players move him from one side of the screen to the other, roam through the place and monastery, look for clues, talk to people, weigh up options – and thus decide how Painter is perceived and how the plot develops. The protagonist himself can also be individually characterized. Did he spend his wandering years as a rowdy rascal in Flanders? Or is he trying to promote himself as a businessman?
The graphic looks as if an old handwriting had learned to walk. The characters speak in bubbles, sometimes their words appear fine, sometimes awkward under pen scratches and sometimes even with mistakes that are erased and corrected by an invisible hand. A glossary conveys the people and terms of the time. Lots and lots of text waiting. Without reading there is no chance, if any, of solving the murder mystery.
Bavaria, whether medieval or not, is comparatively fresh as a game setting. In 2012, for example, the “Oktoberfest Manager” was released, a development game in which you have to make it from the stand operator to the Wiesn host, including fine beers such as the “Plörrenberger Märzen” and guests throwing up. And the aim of the text adventure “Bavarian Odyssey”, which will be released in 2021, is to save a crashed alien from the locals.
The approach of “Pentiment” is much more serious. Behind the title is the Californian studio Obsidian Entertainment, otherwise better known for titles like the post-apocalyptic action role-playing game “Fallout: New Vegas”. However, “Pentiment” chief developer Josh Sawyer has German roots and is a studied historian: letting the action take place near the Brenner Pass has the narrative advantage of letting different cultures meet, he told BR. Sawyer even compiled a reading list for publisher XBox Games Studios, including a biography of Nuremberg executioner Franz Schmidt and an English-language volume on Albrecht Dürer’s travels.
Seen in this way, painter’s adventure is also a kind of continuation of history lessons with other means, despite all the desire for entertainment. On the other hand, if you expect adrenaline rushes instead of speech bubbles from the Middle Ages, you could either experience a surprise or a disappointment. And that quite quickly: Right at the beginning, the game takes you temporarily into the painter’s head, to dialogues with Socrates, the holy ruffian dressed in fool’s robes and the priest-king John – in a palace of thoughts, a world within the world.
“Pentiment”, for PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S. The game is part of a new game subscription from Microsoft or available for around 20 euros on the Xbox and Steam platforms.