Game News Josh Sawyer's long-awaited historical RPG is called Pentiment, coming next year

[vonAchdorf]

I don't think that SJWism will be a problem, it's a historical game and not his twitter account.

But I'm not sure about Josh's ability to mould all the knowledge he has into an interesting (adventure?) game with RPG elements.

 

[Bigg Boss]

I'm not sure how you can have a game during that time period without combat without limiting the location to one tiny map like with DE.

 

[vonAchdorf]

I wouldn't mind if Josh explored some more obscure aspects of the era at the fringes of the well-known.
But of course packed somewhat mainstream friendly. A game made by 12 Californians must sell a couple of copies, even if it's made on the Microsoft dole.
It will probably have some "magic" - one of his favorite topics.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

normal peasants didn't even have a name

-Hi my peasant neighbor 93935. How was the day?
-Hi 7479, my wife 8585 had recently given birth to a healthy son. We are going to call him 9612
-9622? Beautiful, you must be very proud.
-No, it's 9612!
-Ohh sorry.... Those stupid numbers. If only there was another way to differentiate between people.... BTW, how is lord Matsunaga doing?

 

[Bigg Boss]

HEY YOU! NOT YOU, YOU! NO NOT YU YU, YOU. NO NOT YU YU YOU AHHHH FORGET IT.

 

[arcanum]

Historical setting is good because there are so many games in dull generic fantasy setting (infinity engine trash, etc)

 

[Viata]

normal peasants didn't even have a name

-Hi my peasant neighbor 93935. How was the day?
-Hi 7479, my wife 8585 had recently given birth to a healthy son. We are going to call him 9612
-9622? Beautiful, you must be very proud.
-No, it's 9612!
-Ohh sorry.... Those stupid numbers. If only there was another way to differentiate between people.... BTW, how is lord Matsunaga doing?

They did have name, they didn't have surname (a right for samurais) and usually their names were their profession. So "farmer #1213" more like.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

You start the game as a medieval peasant working in a collective commune, and work your way up to become union leader who plans to bring down the feudal system by farming a lot of soy and flooding the markets with it.

 

[BING XI LAO]

Oh boy, have I a bad feeling.

Can't wait to play a 'historical' middle ages rpg made by sjws.

I wouldn't be surprised if there will be some female/trans knights, evil templars/crusaders, noble Muslims and a good amount of homosexuality.

To top it of it will be filled to the brim with todays sjw moral 'values' which will be shoved down your throat while playing the game.

I'm willing to bet you that this game will not have women, non-Europeans or uncloseted LGBTQs in anachronistic roles. Sawyer is serious about his history and it overrides his politics.

Yeah?

Then why does the first art asset depicting an european king suspiciously look like a negro/arab?

Because he's not European, he's Prester John: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prester_John

Well, doesn't that make my point?

They use a mythical figure who was very probably not even real to shoehorn in a black negro king.

Ok, I give you that there is a historical foundation for such a character (even if it is fictional).

But for me it's pretty telling that that's their first released art asset.

It's telling us that you're a moron

When is the last time you posted anything that wasn't this exact kind of vapid reddit snark?

These are some 15th-16th century European depictions of Prester John:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prester_John

And this is you being a dumbfuck anklebiting someone yet again:

 

[Infinitron]

Prester John was at times believed to be from India, Central Asia and eventually Ethiopia, so there would be varying depictions. Demachy's original illustration is actually darker than Obsidian's version.

 

[Burning Bridges]

normal peasants didn't even have a name

-Hi my peasant neighbor 93935. How was the day?
-Hi 7479, my wife 8585 had recently given birth to a healthy son. We are going to call him 9612
-9622? Beautiful, you must be very proud.
-No, it's 9612!
-Ohh sorry.... Those stupid numbers. If only there was another way to differentiate between people.... BTW, how is lord Matsunaga doing?

??

Japanese peasants were just called "gardener", "fisherman", "cook" or whatever. The right to bear a real family name was a great honor that most people were not deemed worthy of.

 

[Quillon]

But for me it's pretty telling that that's their first released art asset.

This. No matter how light/dark skinned he was.

 

[perfectslumbers]

RPGCodex when they find out brown people existed before the 1950s

Japanese peasants actually did have surnames, they just weren't officially recorded in documents and were only used in private. When peasants were made (literally forced, for the sake of taxation and education,) to have surnames again in 1870 they generally just adopted the same private surnames they had for the past 200ish years anyway (the years where surnames were for the privileged and samurai only.) In official capacity they were identified by other things, such as the shop they own or the village they were from.

Japanese naming conventions have a long and complex and sparse history, and most of it is in Japanese. Suffice to say the millions of farmers in Japan were not all simply called "farmer." I presume that this misconception originates from the novel Shogun, but I'm not totally sure. Either way there were many historical documents where peasants had given names, such as this letter from 1461 http://hyakugo.kyoto.jp/contents/detail.php?id=25474 (page 3) or this farmland sales registry http://kameyamarekihaku.jp/sisi/sir...gi_auto.html?pf=hayo07912-001.JPG&pn=田地売渡証文断簡 Totally different from samurai signatures which looked like this http://www2.harimaya.com/sengoku/html/busyo2/kasa_1557.jpg

 

[Black]

So not a new Darklands.

Who wants nuobsidian to make new Darklands?

 

[Viata]

So not a new Darklands.

Who wants nuobsidian to make new Darklands?

Well, that was what Josh wanted to make. But turns out the game he wanted to make is not the game he is making. Go figure.

 

[TheEntitledOne]

It would have been cool 10 years ago.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

I hope Josh becomes bankrupt and a homeless beggar when this fails spectacularly.

Josh is a good systems engineer; as in fix shit so that it works when he is given a ruleset/constraints. But when he calls the shots? He shits out BSB stuff like Project Eternity with its clusterfuck HP sponge combat and absolutely shit decisions like no xp for combat.

Also SJW wokeness is strong in him. So nothing good can come out of his efforts.

Also all hail the SLAV overlords of d20 murderhoboing, Owlcat games.

 

[Zeriel]

So not a new Darklands.

Who wants nuobsidian to make new Darklands?

Well, that was what Josh wanted to make. But turns out the game he wanted to make is not the game he is making. Go figure.

Wouldn't surprise me if he's just too autistic to understand what other people enjoyed about Darklands, and the only thing he liked about it was some tiny detail that no one else gives a shit about, but he didn't like the skills system, combat, etc.

 

[Background Character]

Aw man I wanted an Ars Magica cRPG

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

I hope Josh becomes bankrupt and a homeless beggar when this fails spectacularly.

Josh is a good systems engineer; as in fix shit so that it works when he is given a ruleset/constraints. But when he calls the shots? He shits out BSB stuff like Project Eternity with its clusterfuck HP sponge combat and absolutely shit decisions like no xp for combat.

Also SJW wokeness is strong in him. So nothing good can come out of his efforts.

Also all hail the SLAV overlords of d20 murderhoboing, Owlcat games.

Josh was in charge of New Vegas and it was awesome.
Then again, Decline comes for us all, that was ten years ago.

 

[Dyspaire]

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

I wonder if Obsidian will ever realize the only thing we all want from them is another Fallout in the vein of New Vegas?

Skyrim-like game? NOBODY CARES.

Some game like Disco Elysium? Don't know don't care don't give a fuck.

Like, you nibbas all work for Microsoft now. Just show up on the higher ups' office and say "Sup, we want to work with the Fallout license again."

Dudes literally have THE CREATORS OF FALLOUT working for them. It doesn't get more cred than that. Just call everyone they can who worked with FNV (Gonzales is a must) and DO IT. It would be the most hype thing in whatever year it launches.

Then again, maybe they could make a decent engine for Avowed and use that later. A Fallout game in a non-dogshit engine would be awesome.

Spoiler

Arcanum Spiritual Sucessor on a good TB-ISO engine would't hurt, either. Imagine something like Arcanum with D:OS tier turn-based combat, I would legitimately masturbate to it.

 

[Lacrymas]

Another New Vegas? No, thanks. Another isometric Fallout? Yes, please. Can I have some more, sir?

But that's all in the realm of fantasy (ironically). The creators of Fallout no longer possess the IP rights, so they can't make a new Fallout game. They could try to create yet another post-apocalyptic setting and make a game in it, but that requires quite a lot of man-hours, creativity, inspiration, and motivation. That last thing is key. They are all middle-age dudes with functioning lives at this point, so all of these things are maybe out of reach.

 

[d1r]

Tags: Josh Sawyer; Obsidian Entertainment; Pentiment


Hopefully this means Pentiment will be announced soon, perhaps at Geoff Keighley's The Game Awards event next month. The image, by the way, appears to be a depiction of the legendary Christian king Prester John, seemingly based on an 1800 illustration by French artist Pierre-Antoine Demachy. Mmm, I can already taste the pretention.

Yeah, this is sure something the crowd WOULD LOVE TO SEE.

Combatless
Historical
Dialogue-heavy

This will flop even harder than Daikatana.

 

[Maxie]

why look far and wide for some non-Euro Prester John fellow if not for diversity points elbow-pressed into the pretense of historicity