Pentiment - Josh Sawyer's historical mystery narrative-driven game set in 16th century Bavaria

[Zariusz]

"We want the player to ask themselves what they value," says Sawyer. "If you think the most important thing is that the person you believe is responsible for the crime suffers for it, that will lead you towards certain characters. But if there are characters you just think suck, and you think deserve to be executed, maybe they're the people you pin it on."

I like choice but the way he worded this... as if both approaches are morally valid. its perfectly normal to blame people with heinous crimes just cos you think they suck, ha Josh? :D

I'm more than willing to badmouth Mr. Sawyer for the lulz all day and night (even though he made some games I really liked), but come on. He's clearly contrasting between doing what you think is just on principle and abusing your position to screw with your enemies. "Pin it on" should tell you that much.

There was literally the quest like this in PoE Trashfire
On one of the tribal islands, one local man is prepared for being executed, he is accused of stealing all available fruits that were prepared for some special ceremony(there is famine or some other shit, and that was for sacrifice for the gods or sum shit), he is anti social, greedy, selfish bastard who hates his island and even more his people who also hate him.
The thing is he didnt commit the crime, though he says he would like too, the real culprit is someone either from lowest class or from the craftsman class, i dont really remember. He wanted to use his herbalist knowledge and grow the fruits using his better method or smt but since his caste doesnt work in fields his opinion is easily discarded so he stole it anyway and started to prepare the fruits. He also thinks that there is nothing wrong with that asshole dying.
Typical "muh ignored scientific mind vs those backwards religious cretins" shit, its funny how the world contradicts this since no matter if created or not, PoE gods still have visible influence over the world so religious sacrifice is a viable choice. Basically you have to choose who is going to die by lying or telling the truth to guy responsible for executing that asshole.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Haters ITT are massively




Therefor, GOTY guaranteed.

 

[Haba]

Butthurt from what?

From the looks of it, it is a point-and-click adventure with minigames.

I guess someone could get angry about the historical inaccuracies, but eh.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Butthurt from what?

From the looks of it, it is a point-and-click adventure with minigames.

I guess someone could get angry about the historical inaccuracies, but eh.

Butthurt that Josh is a cultured 'woke' gentleman working on something interesting that is not fulfilling the Codextard's deranged fantasies.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Butthurt from what?

From the looks of it, it is a point-and-click adventure with minigames.

I guess someone could get angry about the historical inaccuracies, but eh.

Butthurt that Josh is a cultured 'woke' gentleman working on something interesting that is not fulfilling the Codextard's deranged fantasies.

Thanks, I needed a good laugh. Oh well, at least some people are into it.

 

[Quillon]

btw

You just have to deal with not knowing for sure, and some people will question your decisions. There's always gonna be someone who will always believe a person accused of a crime is innocent, so I hope that creates some uncertainty. On our side there's no canonical true killer, so we won't be telling the player they got it wrong. That's not really the point. It's more like: here's what you found out, this is the choice you made, and here are the consequences."

I'd rather like to think the author of a game/book/movie...whatever knows who the true killer or whatever the central mystery is, its ok if you won't tell the audience but its not cool telling them: "I don't even know". There should be that canonical killer in your head for your story to be believable. Now I'm thinking they just put mysteriously mysterious mysteries everywhere for the sake of mysteriousness itself. Good job sawya

 

[Infinitron]

btw

You just have to deal with not knowing for sure, and some people will question your decisions. There's always gonna be someone who will always believe a person accused of a crime is innocent, so I hope that creates some uncertainty. On our side there's no canonical true killer, so we won't be telling the player they got it wrong. That's not really the point. It's more like: here's what you found out, this is the choice you made, and here are the consequences."

I'd rather like to think the author of a game/book/movie...whatever knows who the true killer or whatever the central mystery is, its ok if you won't tell the audience but its not cool telling them: "I don't even know". There should be that canonical killer in your head for your story to be believable. Now I'm thinking they just put mysteriously mysterious mysteries everywhere for the sake of mysteriousness itself. Good job sawya

Did Bethesda have a canon version of what happened to Nerevar?

 

[Roguey]

Josh "nothing matters" Sawyer writing another story where nothing matters.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Yeah that sounds like a complete dumbfukery. Although this basically being a text game, they could pull off having a randomized killer, but I"m probably being fabulously optimistic.

 

[KVVRR]

btw

You just have to deal with not knowing for sure, and some people will question your decisions. There's always gonna be someone who will always believe a person accused of a crime is innocent, so I hope that creates some uncertainty. On our side there's no canonical true killer, so we won't be telling the player they got it wrong. That's not really the point. It's more like: here's what you found out, this is the choice you made, and here are the consequences."

I'd rather like to think the author of a game/book/movie...whatever knows who the true killer or whatever the central mystery is, its ok if you won't tell the audience but its not cool telling them: "I don't even know". There should be that canonical killer in your head for your story to be believable. Now I'm thinking they just put mysteriously mysterious mysteries everywhere for the sake of mysteriousness itself. Good job sawya

This sounds like Josh took that whole "I don't want to say who I believe should win the battle for Hoover Dam, players should come up with their own conclusions", which is reasonable, and ran with it to an stupid extreme.
I could see them pulling off something where you have two or three potential subjects and there's no way you can actually know which one did it because all of them fit. But if they themselves don't know, well...

 

[LudensCogitet]

So is this supposed to be elevated and subtle somehow? Making a decision to condemn someone for a crime when not only do you not know, you _can't_ know if they committed the crime?

It's not subtle or deep, it's juvenile. If you think it is impossible to determine guilt, then you literally do not believe in the possibility of a functioning justice system.

Only a teenage mentality that sits back and plays with "ideas" all day and let's the grown ups do the real work would produce such a thing.

 

[Alienman]

no canonical true killer

This makes me not want to play it, and before reading this, I was ready to give it a chance.

Like getting cockblocked at the end of a detective novel.

 

[Butter]

It's the Clue movie all over again.

 

[Roguey]

It's the Clue movie all over again.

Clue movie had a definitive ending though.

 

[Quillon]

Did Bethesda have a canon version of what happened to Nerevar?

I'm not familiar with Nerevar, I didn't play Morrowind(-boooo). I don't know how similar that is to this but I doubt they went out of their way to tell their audience they don't have a clue themselves. I'm ok with not knowing, I'm not ok with knowing the author's not knowing, you knowing?

 

[luj1]

btw

You just have to deal with not knowing for sure, and some people will question your decisions. There's always gonna be someone who will always believe a person accused of a crime is innocent, so I hope that creates some uncertainty. On our side there's no canonical true killer, so we won't be telling the player they got it wrong. That's not really the point. It's more like: here's what you found out, this is the choice you made, and here are the consequences."

I'd rather like to think the author of a game/book/movie...whatever knows who the true killer or whatever the central mystery is, its ok if you won't tell the audience but its not cool telling them: "I don't even know". There should be that canonical killer in your head for your story to be believable. Now I'm thinking they just put mysteriously mysterious mysteries everywhere for the sake of mysteriousness itself. Good job sawya

Did Bethesda have a canon version of what happened to Nerevar?

Disappeared into Akavir

 

[Infinitron]

The original Nerevar, not the Nerevarine.

Did Bethesda have a canon version of what happened to Nerevar?

I'm not familiar with Nerevar, I didn't play Morrowind(-boooo). I don't know how similar that is to this but I doubt they went out of their way to tell their audience they don't have a clue themselves. I'm ok with not knowing, I'm not ok with knowing the author's not knowing, you knowing?

A central (and highly praised) aspect of Morrowind's backstory is that nobody knows. For that matter, I'm not sure Bethesda have a canon explanation for what happened to the Dwemer either.

Now what people might say is that those things are just background lore while this entire game's point is that it's a whodunnit murder mystery, so there has to be a true killer. But if you read/listen to the interviews with Sawyer, he seems to downplay that aspect of it. Maybe in the end the murder isn't that much more important to the plot of Pentiment than Benny shooting you in the head is to the plot of New Vegas.

 

[Reever]

How does he know how good the writing is?

 

[luj1]

It's the Clue movie all over again.

shameful lack of originality

 

[luj1]

The original Nerevar, not the Nerevarine.

Did Bethesda have a canon version of what happened to Nerevar?

I'm not familiar with Nerevar, I didn't play Morrowind(-boooo). I don't know how similar that is to this but I doubt they went out of their way to tell their audience they don't have a clue themselves. I'm ok with not knowing, I'm not ok with knowing the author's not knowing, you knowing?

A central (and highly praised) aspect of Morrowind's backstory is that nobody knows. For that matter, I'm not sure Bethesda have a canon explanation for what happened to the Dwemer either.

Now what people might say is that those things are just background lore while this game is a whodunnit mystery story, so there has to be a true killer. But if you read/listen to the interviews with Sawyer, he seems to downplay that aspect of it. Maybe in the end the murder isn't that much more important to the plot of Pentiment than Benny shooting you in the head is to the plot of New Vegas.

MK is light years ahead of hack Soyer

 

[Quillon]

Now what people might say is that those things are just background lore while this game is a whodunnit mystery story, so there has to be a true killer. But if you read/listen to the interviews with Sawyer, he seems to downplay that aspect of it. Maybe in the end the murder isn't that much more important to the plot of Pentiment than Benny shooting you in the head is to the plot of New Vegas.

Yeah we don't know what per cent of the game will be about what but atm about this particular issue it doesn't sound like they cleverly placed clues that will potentially lead you there and you could be 70 to 100 per cent sure; you might be in between 2 suspects whatever; it doesn't matter whether they spell it or not but instead from the sounds of it they spread random clues around so that you can blame a whole buncha people easily just cos you think suck.

Also Sawya isn't downplaying it he's just repeating himself as KVVRR pointed out. Yeah it was actually good of him not to tell his opinion about NV's plot decisions which he exclaimed several times over the years and now he

ran with it to an stupid extreme.

 

[Butter]

Part of the game is about solving a murder mystery. Presumably you as the player are supposed to care about solving it. The developer is telling you that there's no correct answer, therefore it's pointless to try. It's like being given a riddle and then being told there's no answer. You might as well just implicate the person you like the least. At no point in Morrowind was it important to conclusively determine what happened to Nerevar. Sawyer didn't just shoot himself in the foot; he used a 12 gauge.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Part of the game is about solving a murder mystery. Presumably you as the player are supposed to care about solving it. The developer is telling you that there's no correct answer, therefore it's pointless to try. It's like being given a riddle and then being told there's no answer. You might as well just implicate the person you like the least. At no point in Morrowind was it important to conclusively determine what happened to Nerevar. Sawyer didn't just shoot himself in the foot; he used a 12 gauge.

If there's actually no answer to discover, what's the point of playing at all?
Did he actually say that, btw? I really haven't been following this one.

 

[Infinitron]

Part of the game is about solving a murder mystery. Presumably you as the player are supposed to care about solving it. The developer is telling you that there's no correct answer, therefore it's pointless to try. It's like being given a riddle and then being told there's no answer. You might as well just implicate the person you like the least. At no point in Morrowind was it important to conclusively determine what happened to Nerevar. Sawyer didn't just shoot himself in the foot; he used a 12 gauge.

If there's no way for your in-game character to be absolutely certain who the real murderer was because the sufficient evidence just isn't there, does it actually matter whether the developers have a "canon murderer" in mind? That's what headcanon is for. I'm sure there will be some character who most players will agree makes the most sense as the culprit.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Part of the game is about solving a murder mystery. Presumably you as the player are supposed to care about solving it. The developer is telling you that there's no correct answer, therefore it's pointless to try. It's like being given a riddle and then being told there's no answer. You might as well just implicate the person you like the least. At no point in Morrowind was it important to conclusively determine what happened to Nerevar. Sawyer didn't just shoot himself in the foot; he used a 12 gauge.

If there's no way for your in-game character to be absolutely certain who the real murderer was because the sufficient evidence just isn't there, does it actually matter whether the developers have a "canon murderer" in mind? That's what headcanon is for. I'm sure there will be somebody who most players agree makes the most sense as the culprit.

Actually, that's a good point. If there's insufficient evidence to have a slam dunk against any one character, that would probably make for a better game. Most of the games or minigames that involve this sort of thing (e.g. KOTOR trial), you can get so much evidence that the entire sequence becomes mind numbing. Actually having to assemble things into a compelling case that's still at least somewhat indeterminate could be pretty interesting.