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

[Alienman]

Yeah, but still... no canon murderer. Just having this knowledge ruins the game premise.

And, it's going to be the fastest speedrun ever - just accuse the first guy you come across.

 

[Strange Fellow]

I think both sides have a point. The premise can absolutely work without a fixed culprit, and many good stories start out as murder mysteries only to become something else. It just means that they'll have to give the player some other motivation besides figuring out who the murderer is. On the other hand, playing the game of deduction and grappling with the writer's clues and misdirections is half the fun of crime novels, and if they're going to sacrifice that whole aspect of it, they'd better have a good reason, better than "it's up to you to decide". Sawyer is upping the ante with that statement, whether he means to or not.

 

[KVVRR]

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.

It doesn't matter per se, but if you're writing a murder story even if you set it from the get go that the reader won't know who did it you should still have an idea about who it was. And if you have an idea of who it was, even if it's multiple choice, you're going to be biased towards one of the culprits.
Josh saying that they don't know themselves makes it sound like 1. It'll be very messy (even if that ends up not being the case) since they're doing the whole thing blindfolded and 2. There's not much of a point trying to figure out who the actual killer is.
Both of these can be circumvented with good writing and making the player care about the world. It's just harder to do so. There's a reason most mystery story writers start with the answer and then work their way into a story.

 

[Sannom]

To be fair, it's been stated multiple times that the protagonist's primary goal isn't to find out the murderer but to clear his friend. In that context, finding enough evidence to incriminate someone else might just do the trick.

Sawyer didn't just shoot himself in the foot; he used a 12 gauge.

I don't think Sawyer ever made a game written in C, they must have been using C++ from his very first project.

 

[Don Salieri]

I can't wait to send Joshua Sawyer, the piss Christ enthusiast, money so he can in turn spend it on e-girls. Who else but (((him))) could capture a Christian medieval society in a bing bing wahoo? Let's check his twitter feed.



He retweeted this, so he likely spent money on striking strippers or whatever the fuck. Can't make this shit up.



Another retweet, prayer in school is not allowed since it is exclusionary. Try asking Kikel Soyer about Islamic schools though or racially based religions like Judaism and suddenly he's all for it. Very relevant to Pentiment.



Childmolester fanboy.



Another rewteet. Had to sift through a lot of e-simping to dig that up. Why the fuck is anyone looking forward to this game?

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.

That's the idea, during the middle ages everyone was an evil White Male Christian retard in Europe who never got anything right. Unlike today when everyone is very smart and atheist turd-hued womyn and the kikes are in charge and all crimes are solved, except when the criminal is a nigger, since they dindu nuffin and it's racist to police them so those crimes shouldn't be solved. See Soyers tweets during the chimpout riots over some crackhead ODing. The idea that there could be justice in a non-progressive society is anathema to his worldview.

During the reveal the way he sold the """"game"""" was by saying there were huge social changes in history so that means it's the same as the current social change when you got big business telling you that women can have cocks now. So you're going to get to enjoy more of that if you're fucked in the head enough to actually play this piece of shit CYOA.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Fucking newfags.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

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?

There's multiple versions given that are all canon, they're just from unreliable narrators.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

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.

Blade Runner already did it better. There was no need to have a canon story when there are multiple stories that can be told.
Linear stories are for movies and books.

 

[luj1]

During the reveal the way he sold the """"game"""" was by saying there were huge social changes in history so that means it's the same as the current social change when you got big business telling you that women can have cocks now. So you're going to get to enjoy more of that if you're fucked in the head enough to actually play this piece of shit CYOA.

pretty much

Soyer is a hipster who went insane

all projects he leads are shit. this one looks like some CYOA turd made in java thats masquerading as an RPG

Only guy who likes Soyer lives under his balls and is called Infinitron

 

[jackofshadows]

After looking at some twitter excerpts from another thread and realizing just what surprisingly degenerate and narrow views on art Sawyer holds, it's impossible to expect anything worthy out of this. Sawyer and his lot accuse people of dismissing anything post-modern while at the same time apparantely they want to create not just post-modern but ideologically-fueled post-modern products and to make other people consume it (calling anyone who dares to question as fascist/nazi). That's insanity. How about just fucking make games?

Infinitron lets just wait and see their depiction of 16th century Germany, I would be glad to be proven wrong but that seems unlikely.

 

[Brancaleone]

It's going to end up being like

minus most of the game.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[luj1]

At no point in Morrowind was it important to conclusively determine what happened to Nerevar.

of course

an interesting world tells it's own story, unlike this trash

Infini is just trying to defend Soyer with really bad analogies, since he has been his bitch for the last 10 years

never, and I mean never, will Soyer produce lore that even comes close to the breadth of Morrowind and MK's work

We saw his attempts at worldbuilding, fampyr = vampire and ghul = ghoul

I am enjoying this man's self-disassembly

 

[Alex]

If there's no way for your in-game character to be absolutely certain who the real murderer was (snip...)

Then the game designers should get off their asses and put enough clues in. Doing this kind of crap is Thinbleweed all over again, except that Thinbleweed at least had good puzzles, whereas I doubt this will have good gameplay.

 

[Lhynn]

It's gamepass fodder, it doesn't need to be profitable.

But it needs to be successful so that we can get Pentiment 2: Pirates!

Sawyer's claimed that if Pentiment is successful, a somewhat-higher-budget Josh Sawyer's Darklands is on.

Why is he threatening us?

 

[blessed king of longing]

this looks like the biggest indie shart i've ever seen. it's so bad looking, it's not even worth talking shit about

 

[Alex]

"you have to buy my game nobody is interested in to get an actual RPG! Pinky promise!"
imagine falling for that

Brings back memories of that Brotherhood of Steel game...

 

[FriendlyMerchant]

Why is this in the rpg forum?

It's a casual adventure game.

 

[Acrux]

"you have to buy my game nobody is interested in to get an actual RPG! Pinky promise!"
imagine falling for that

Brings back memories of that Brotherhood of Steel game...

Hey, no need to be cruel. Fallout Tactics: BOS is a very fine game.

 

[luj1]

Why is this in the rpg forum?

if Soyer but farts, its on the front page

 

[Pink Eye]

Why is this in the rpg forum?

It's a casual adventure game.

Infinitron

 

[vortex]

It's a casual adventure game.

I was hoping for CRPG, a CasualRPGame.

 

[†††]

It's a casual adventure game.

I was hoping for CRPG, a CasualRPGame.

I was hoping for a CRPG, a Casual Really Pretty Game, but it's kind of ugly and we still have to see if it's really a game.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Why is this in the rpg forum?

It's a casual adventure game.

At least they're honest about it, instead of slapping "RPG" on it and pretending it's true.

 

[Infinitron]

Huh, the game's Steam description was actually changed from "historical mystery role-playing game" to "historical mystery narrative-driven game" at some point during June. OK, I guess I'll move the thread.