Pentiment is less a narrative of investigation and more a narrative about investigation. The game follows the perspective of an artist, Andreas Maler, who frequently visits a Bavarian town while apprenticing as an illuminator at the nearby Abbey. In order to defend his friend who is falsely accused of murder, Andreas conducts an independent investigation into the incident. The player can use Andreas’ limited time to pursue different threads, and after the time is up, can accuse one of several suspects of having committed the murder. When Andreas returns seven years later, he is tasked with investigating yet another murder, and can once again utilize his time to pursue evidence and suspects, ultimately choosing one to blame for the crime.
In the game itself, however, there is no confirmation that the player has chosen correctly (or incorrectly) during these initial two investigations. After playing the game, I was uncertain of my choices, and did not know if I had found the true culprits. Because it is impossible to pursue every lead with the limited time you have, I knew I had missed evidence, and wondered if I had neglected to interview the correct suspect. I was curious, and googled to find out if I was correct—only to find that there were no correct answers. While some suspects are more or less suspicious, there is no in-game clarification as to who ultimately committed the murder. This is a striking choice, particularly considering the analytical writing surrounding the investigation genre. A lot of sources, from Haycraft to Rodell, are focused on the fairness of a murder mystery. They attempt to codify guidelines to keep the narrative comprehensible and solvable, even for the reader. These rules, however, belie a deeper assumption: that the murder is solvable—that there is a single, definitive answer. This is something Pentiment intentionally eschews.
Thus, Pentiment is not truly a classic murder mystery or a detective story. While the central narrative and ludic loop is engaging in investigation (interviewing suspects, examining evidence, etc.), the investigation itself is not the central focus—it is ultimately pointless, because the player cannot find the true culprit in the first and second murders (inasmuch as there is a “true culprit”). Investigation into the murder is not the only narrative in Pentiment, however—and indeed, it is not the only investigation the player can conduct, either. Pentiment’s murder mysteries are presented against the backdrop of sociopolitical strife. The locals experience conflict between their pagan cultural traditions and the instruction of the monastery, class conflict against heavy taxation, and even broader conflict as wars between larger kingdoms are mentioned. Andreas can speak to the citizens and gain insight into these broader thematic conflicts, such as tradition versus innovation.
These overarching themes are ultimately what the murder mysteries serve to contextualize and affect. They are not so simple as a selection from a pool of neutral suspects—they involve potentially deepening the rift between the local populace and the abbey (by blaming one or the other for the strife after the murder), or between political sects arguing about taxation, or between individual citizens who may have a grudge against one another. What is explored in Pentiment is thus less the murder mystery itself, but the effect a murder mystery (and ensuing investigation) can have on a community. Andreas progresses from a nuisance in the first murder mystery to a trusted public figure in the second, creating his own Holmes-like detective mythos.
This has a meta-effect on the player, who, in playing the game, is creating a narrative of their own. Because there are so many leads and choices of what to do with their time, no two playthroughs of Pentiment are exactly the same. This means that each player’s choices of which leads to follow creates their own individualized narrative, even though they ultimately played the same game. In this way, because players will necessarily see evidence of guilt from the people they pursue, they will end up convincing themselves of that person’s culpability. They have crafted their own explanatory narrative, similarly to how a detective will ultimately explain the mystery at the end of a novel or movie.
The player will almost always find themselves feeling as though they are choosing someone to hold accountable, rather than correctly identifying a killer. With the limited time, players may either complete a shallow investigation of each suspect, or deeply consider one or two. This means that either they will lack evidence to make a compelling decision, or “waste” their time on people who most likely did not commit the murder. Even if they are unconvinced of a certain character’s guilt, the player may continue to pursue the lead—in my own playthrough, I fell victim to sunk-cost fallacy a few times, and reasoned that I did not have enough time to pursue other leads, and would simply have to find someone to blame even if the evidence was circumstantial.
This is the crux of Pentiment’s unique structure. Rather than solving a seemingly unsolvable case and coming up with unquestionable truth, Andreas has a far more difficult task at hand—he (and by extension, the player) must sift through unreliable and inconclusive evidence and decide who to blame. Will he point the finger at the most likely murderer? Blame whoever will minimize strife? Seek to advance the goals of a particular organization or party by eliminating their opposition? When finding the truth is literally impossible, what priorities should an investigator have? In this way, Pentiment responds to the assumptions and genre conventions of the murder mystery, utilizing interactivity to de-stabilize the certainty of the detective and the mythos of the murder mystery as a solvable puzzle.
By Nicole
Intermittent Mechanism 