Pentiment, the 16th-century murder mystery that looks like a playable tapestry

Director Josh Sawyer explains why developer Obsidian decided to make a narrative adventure about a painter-detective

You are Andreas Moller, an artist working in an abbey in 16th-century Bavaria. Over the course of 25 years, you must investigate a murder in a local town convulsed by the social changes of the era. Pentiment doesn't sound like a typical video game, and it doesn't look like one either, inspired as it is by late medieval art: the whole thing looks like a cross between a tapestry and an early-modern illustrated manuscript. The word pentiment means an earlier painting covered up by a later one, and the plot sees Moller scraping away lies to uncover the truth.

The game's director Josh Sawyer at developer Obsidian has a degree in history, and studied the Holy Roman Empire in particular. I'd always wanted to make a historical game," he says. And around the time that Microsoft acquired us [in 2018], I thought it would be cool to try to pitch a very small-scale game." He chose the 16th century because it was an era of great social upheaval, not unlike the period we're living through today.

Pentiment is out on Xbox and PC in November.