Repentance is one of the biggest surprises of the past year. The big company launched a seemingly small title and did not count on commercial success. Game Director Josh Sawyer tells us more about the Obsidian Gem.
Pentiment has proven to be not only one of the best premium indie games of 2022 and the most original adventure in a long time, but also a veritable treasure trove of knowledge. Knowledge of the end of the Middle Ages, of the art of the time, of the culture of this life, of the relations between the Church and the peasant class. A complete niche, but if someone likes it, they will be delighted.
So, I’m even happier that Obsidian Entertainment gave us the opportunity to ask questions of the father of the whole project, Josh Sawyer. He is a true industry veteran, active in the profession for over 24 years; a titan of the RPG genre. He designed the Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights 2 series, directed Fallout: New Vegas (but he’s long been tired of questions about that game) and both Pillars of Eternity installments, and recently decided to take a break,… step aside and get to work with slightly lower productions. This is how Pentiment was made: a marriage of passion, high ambitions and limited efforts (more than a dozen developers worked in all).
Josh Sawyer, game director at Pentiment. The photo is from Obsidian Entertainment’s The Road to Eternity.
Gamperness: penance was voted the best Xbox game in our editorial poll for game of the year. That’s a great result, given that it’s usually the main titles that lead the way, and penanceLet’s face it, it hits a very particular niche. Weren’t you afraid that the realistic medieval theme would be too tight and alienating for the players?
Josh Sawyer: I wasn’t worried because I always thought the audience would be small! The team that created Pentiment is much smaller than the teams of The Outer Worlds or Pillars of Eternity. We were never concerned that the game had mass appeal.
Interesting huh? Because it seems that the niche nature of the theme has not occupied the minds of the developers. We live in a time where it seems the measure of success is how popular the game is and how much money you make from it. In the case of Pentiment, it was different. What mattered was the idea itself, the desire to create something unique, and after all, it all happened within the structures of a serious studio, Obsidian, and a giant publisher. , Microsoft. Sawyer himself, however, has admitted in previous interviews that the project wouldn’t have been allowed to exist if it weren’t for the Xbox Game Pass. The platform gave space to authors of slightly more specific products.
Well, there were opportunities, money, and a target platform. But where did the idea come from to create a game so steeped in history? How did a group of Americans become so interested in the subject of medieval Central and Eastern Europe, marginalized in modern pop culture?
JS: I have been interested in medieval and modern Europe since high school. This interest deepened in college when I graduated with a degree in history. This coincided with my interest in genealogy, since my family came from Germany, Austria and Hungary.
I think trying to gain a fuller understanding of modern history has helped to elevate the importance of Poland, Bohemia and Hungary in my mind. They were very powerful kingdoms from the 14th to the 16th century and I thought their influence should be represented in Pentiment.
GP: Why are there so few realistic historical games? Is it medieval reality that’s hard to translate into gameplay, or maybe it’s game developers who lack the imagination or knowledge to show it in interesting ways?
JS: I think a lot of people shy away from history because they assume that everything is dry and inherently less interesting than fiction. Part of it comes from the way people have taught them history and it leaves a bad impression on them. I also believe that medieval fantasy has become so intertwined with the public perception of medieval history that it can be difficult to separate what pop culture is from our actual historical record. It’s also easier to recreate things we’ve seen before in medieval fantasy in terms of gameplay and representation than it is to dig deep and create something that looks new, even if it’s just because it’s is more historical.
Repentance, Xbox Game Studios, 2022
It’s partly a matter of the education system, partly a matter of all kinds of media, but we’ve grown accustomed to equating history with boring lessons filled with dates and facts, and the trauma of world wars. There’s a lot of value, lore, as well as pop culture and genre potential here, which Sawyer and company have smartly tapped into. It may not sound very interesting on paper, but if it turns out that the origin influences the mode of conversation with the characters and the choice of dialogue options, then it already turns out that it is possible to combine national or ethnic trifles with game mechanics. . And that’s already cool. Either way, this isn’t the only attempt to reach into the past (and its lesser-known parts) and implement it into an RPG adventure game:
GP: In addition to depicting the daily life of peasants or the relationship of ordinary people with the church, you were not afraid to tackle less exploited themes related to the Middle Ages in the pages of history. We can find feminist motifs in the role of nuns in the church hierarchy, or love themes such as a same-sex relationship within the order, or a relationship that leads to breaking the rules of celibacy and then leaving. the church completely. How important was it for you to show this less obvious, but still very important side of the moral life of the past?
JS: It was very important, because I think it’s too easy to lose nuance in the representation of another time and another place. You can look at centuries of European history and assume that because the Catholic Church was in power, because society was generally patriarchal, its power was absolute and things like same-sex relationships or feminist voices didn’t exist at all just not. We know that’s not true, but we also know that more effort is needed to portray how these people would have lived and survived in communities that were seemingly quite hostile to them.
GP: In the game, we notice a reference to the Martin Guerre affair of the 16th century. What other similar details are there in the game that you are particularly pleased with?
JS: Martin Guerre is the most obvious reference, but we also refer to the miller heresiarch Domenico Scandella (“Menocchio”) at the Roma tinsmith Vácslav. Many of the details of the Act I executions are taken from documents such as those associated with Frantz Schmidt in The Faithful Executioner. The heretical book Illuminata Wants You Back is The Mirror of Simple Souls by the mystical beguine Marguerite Porete. The necromancy text Guy plays with in Act II is the Munich Handbook of Demonic Magic, a historical text explored by Richard Kieckhefer in his book Forbidden Rites. There are many other lesser historical references, as well as references to works of fiction such as The Name of the Rose, Brother Cadfael, and Andrei Rublev.
Repentance, Xbox Game Studios, 2022
This painful chain of dependencies in the form of peasants oppressed by the abbey (later peasants retaliating with a bloody uprising), the abbey under the whipping of the state and nobility, foreigners trying to adapt to the hermetic community, or liberal members of various right-wingers. The structures of the wings make Pentiment a very unusual, but also very faithful reproduction of the realities of the time. And the truth of this world is proven by all the formal messages or literary works quoted by Sawyer. Here’s what that world was like, and despite the mostly fictional story, there’s a lot you can learn about the story. And we would love to see more games like this. Is there an opportunity for them?
Family doctor: penance It came out a few months ago; Surely you have heard many comments about the game. Looking back, is there anything you would change about it?
JS: I think it would be nice to rebalance some of the more confusing dialogue checks or expand the ending, but overall I’m very happy with how things turned out.
GP: Is there any chance of having another historical Obsidian game? Or can we wait longer? penanceresembling games, but set in different historical periods?
JS: I certainly wouldn’t mind making another historical game, but luckily I have some time before I have to come up with a new project to work on. I would only work on another historical game where I really felt like I had a good understanding and deep passion for the time period and the people who star in it.
Therefore, I am happy that the discussions within our editorial team about Pentiment were not in vain, and many thoughts on the depth of the game and the amount of theme preparations made by the developers for the medieval theme found their confirmation in the words of the main author of the whole project. So if you’re still unconvinced by the reviews from critics or player feedback, maybe this conversation will finally give you a chance to give it a try. Because Pentiment isn’t just the best game of a gloomy year for Xbox. It is a work that will forever be the source of a host of historical and cultural tropes, and a contribution to expert analysis. A demonstration of creative power and hard work.