It was way back during the spring of 2016 when Josh Sawyer first announced that he intended to direct a "historical RPG" after finishing his work on Pillars of Eternity II. Most people were expecting some sort of Darklands clone, but the game that would become Pentiment turned out to be quite different. Shortly after its formal announcement during the summer Xbox showcase, in a relief to genre purists everywhere, Obsidian decided not to describe the game as an RPG at all. Nevertheless, as part of our coverage of the travails of Herr Sawyer over the years, we bring you this launch announcement.


Pentiment has been reviewed by a remarkable number of press outlets, who I suspect may have thought they had the next Disco Elysium on their hands. Impressions of the game are quite positive, with several perfect scores (though notably GameSpot's reviewer was less of a fan).


Pentiment is available on Steam for $20, and of course you can get it from the Xbox store with Microsoft's Game Pass subscription as well. For my part, I rather doubt the game will be a Disco Elysium-calibre breakout hit, but at least Josh has earned some critical acclaim from his industry peers. Now that he's gotten this out of his system, I wonder what he'll do next.