PENTIMENT
Developer Obsidian Entertainment
Publisher Xbox Game Studios
Format PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series
There’s one big story in Pentiment, and it isn’t the one you think it is. Or at least it’s not the first big puzzle you’re presented with. That would be the need to find an alternative suspect for the murder of a visiting nobleman within a limited span of time; otherwise your mentor, an elderly monk who couldn’t have committed the deed, will be found guilty. It’s not long into your investigation that it dawns: this is, in fact, a game of many smaller stories. It’s no spoiler to say that the big one ends the same way each time. Rather, it’s these other tales in which you play a pivotal role – and, since the game takes place within the pages of a16th-century chronicle, themark you leave carries the gravity of permanence.