When it comes to crime-solving games of the last several years, it’s hard to come up with many titles that hold a candle to Disco Elysium. Developer ZA/UM’s story of an amnesiac detective solving a murder in a futuristic world still reeling from a long-ended war has earned lots of praise and quite a few awards. Disco Elysium is still a fairly young game, having first released in 2019, but its impact on the industry is already being felt as apprently Obsidian Entertainment is using Disco Elysium as a source of inspiration for Pentiment.
While speaking on Grubbsnax, Obsidian Entertainment’s Josh Sawyer - of Fallout: New Vegas fame - first mentioned that Obsidian was working on a murder mystery RPG taking place in the 16th century. It has since come out that that game’s name is Pentiment, which is the name of an image in a painting that’s been painted over, but could be revealed again as the painting ages. According to Sawyer, Pentiment will takes cues from Disco Elysium in its design, which should get fans of ZA/UM’s title excited.
Pentiment’s Similarities to Disco Elysium
Pentiment has a lot of core features that will almost certainly speak to anyone who enjoyed Disco Elysium. For instance, Sawyer has indicated that Pentiment won’t feature any combat, in spite of its place in the RPG genre. Instead, players will presumably resolve everything through dialogue, investigation, and puzzle solving. Disco Elysium did exactly the same thing, relying on skill checks and dialogue trees to manage its conflict rather than introducing traditional combat. That means Pentiment is on track to serve the same type of meditative, personal crime-solving experience.
Disco Elysium is also memorable for its dialogue. Disco Elysium’s head writer Robert Kurvitz has said that the studio aimed to create clever, addictive dialogue, both through writing and mechanics, that compels players to keep talking to NPCs. There’s hope that Pentiment can achieve the same feeling. Obsidian Entertainment is often lauded for its dialogue and knack for creating memorable characters. If Pentiment relies on dialogue as much as Disco Elysium, then Obsidian will probably do everything in its power to perfect Pentiment’s conversations.
The RPG side of Pentiment could be promising, too. Sawyer teases that the game features a lot of experimental RPG mechanics without explaining them, but even that rings faintly of Disco Elysium where skill trees don’t just provide perks, but also adjust the protagonist’s behavior through personality quirks. Obsidian’s The Outer Worlds had its own system of character flaws, so it wouldn’t be surprising to see Pentiment combine Disco Elysium’s ideas with Obsidian’s experience from Outer Worlds, resulting in a complicated but compelling system of intertwined skills and personality traits.
The Mystery of Pentiment
Obsidian’s Pentiment will certainly distinguish itself from Disco Elysium in some ways. For instance, the game will apparently be played in either first or third-person, rather than borrowing Disco Elysium’s isometric perspective. Pentiment’s setting in the Renaissance promises to produce a wholly unique cast of characters, far different from Disco Elysium’s fictional futuristic setting. Even so, there’s no doubt that Pentiment shares a lot of DNA with Disco Elysium on paper, and that’s a great thing. If murder mystery games are to rise in the next few years, Disco Elysium is a fantastic blueprint for the genre’s next generation.
Disco Elysium is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
