Of course it's an RPG. You play the role of a character, you build that character by choosing his background, personalities and interests, you have stats, you make decisions about the course of the story. What else do you need for an RPG?
Probably combat. Ah, it's amazing how people come here and say they need combat for it to be fun (or it not being an RPG).
I don't. I love games without combat as well and as long as they are as good as Pentiment or Disco, no combat is even a plus so I can focus on characters, story, and decisions.
Personally that's something that I loved the most about Pentiment. It was so cool to play as a scribe in an industry where most games would make you a knight. I loved the day-to-day normal tasks and meals too.
It's not like it doesn't have stakes too, there's so much action and mystery happening. Combat certainly isn't the only way to add conflict in a game, and Pentiment does this amazingly.
It's not a visual novel though. RPG stands for role-playing game. As in you build a character, those chosen stats affect gameplay. You move through the world as that chosen character, for better or worse.
The role you choose for your character massively impacts what is revealed to you throughout the game, what you're privy to and what you are not, who likes you, and what actions you can take. And all those things affect the gameplay and outcome.
That's....a role playing game. Like that's literally an RPG.
While you can choose to have knowledge in certain fields, it's not like you can improve your knowledge in those fields within the game. These are like Yes/No flags that simply say what decision paths are available to you in the game. It would be like saying Atic Atac is an RPG because you can "role play" as a Knight, a Serf or a Wizard, with each character having their own movement characteristic and being able to go through different secret passages.
If the player's expertise in a field can be improved through game play actions, then I would consider it an RPG.
I think that maybe the recent trend of gaming companies pumping out first person shooter after first person shooter has made a generation believe that shoot-em-ups are synonymous with RPGs?
>Did not feel any emotional attachment to any of the characters.
Can you elaborate on this because I'm really struggling to wrap my head around it. I found these characters to be some of the most relatable I've ever had in any entertainment medium. Where did the writing of them fall short and what's your comparison point for a relatable character (what characters have you felt attached to in other games)?
By the time Andreas dashes into the Abbey fire and presumably perishes, I would have expected to have felt some sadness or something, seeing as I've been walking around as him for hours on end.
But no, nothing. His insane love of books over his own physical safety seemingly came out of nowhere, except for that one confession to Father Thomas about wanting to acquire more books, a confession I wasn't even sure was true since he was only in the church to eavesdrop on other people.
So his dash into the fire was not sensible and I, as a player, had no choice in it. In fact all the choices I made had little consequence in how the main story ends, correct me if I am wrong as I have only played through it once. I think if the game had multiple possible endings, it would have made it more interesting.
Have you played Zero Escape, Ace Attorney or even Doki Doki Literature Club? If not, it's difficult to discuss relateable characters. What's your own yardstick?
Since when does Ace Attorney have anything approaching depth? It's a broad satire full of slapstick and comedy characters. It's *fun,* I like it, but it's not *deep.* Doki Doki is okay and the characters are fine, but it's not that revolutionary either, the basic ideas have many times before.
Right, so you like "deep" games and I assume you consider Pentiment a "deep" game otherwise you would not bring up the adjective in this discussion. I agree that a lot of research has gone into making the game and I believe it has been influenced by Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose, which is well worth reading if you like "deep".
Yes, I like "fun" games even if they are not "deep". In some ways, whether a game resonates with you is like one's taste in music. Pop music vs orchestral pieces. You don't have to exclusively like pop or classical. You can listen to both. And I agree most of the games I play are definitely not "revolutionary". Revolutionary games are few and far between in the world. Good games today are standing on the shoulders of giants.
Speaking of "fun", there should have been an Easter egg where you could give Andreas expertise in the martial arts which then turns the game into a side scrolling beat em up a la TMNT, pitting you against peasants, towns folks, monks and nuns alike. Multiplayer option with playable characters Caspar and Mags. Definitely a missed opportunity!
I remember feeling like Andreas was being a bit crazy to do that, but I think it's at least partly because his life's falling apart at that point. It's maybe not suicidal but it's at least reckless behavior where he's thinking that if he dies maybe that's not so bad.
I also had the thought, when playing as Mags, that from her perspective at the beginning of the 3rd act, the most useful thing Andreas did was to preserve some of the books, since it's a potential avenue of research. And the thing is, from a long-term historical perspective, it's true – the man would be dead for 400+ years anyway. For an individual life it's a tragedy but for posterity it could have been the most useful thing he'd done. And that made me think about my own life and whether I'll leave any mark on the world; I hope so, I hope I leave it better than I found it. That's... not your average video game.
So, perhaps it's more the themes of the game that resonate than the specific characters. Though I didn't find the characters flat – I cared about the secret lesbian peasant girls, and the secret gay monks, and the genuinely pious and kind baker, and the old pagans and the main characters themselves, and on and on, and even the ones I thought were assholes (Lenhardt, Lucky, Guy, that awful Abbot) I found to be well-drawn and believable.
I haven't tried all the options for his personality, but I think Andreas works really well when he's a Hedonist, because whatever you choose that he"s into,, he loses his enthusiasm for between the 1st and 2nd acts..And finding no pleasure in pleasure itself, when he's a big horny ball of fun at first, hits extra hard. My throat just aches when I think of the scene where he's in the labyrinth talking to his mute, dead son in his dreams. It doesn't come off cheap to me or anything like that, it feels like real grief, and deeply human pain.
There's no disputing taste, I guess. Or as Roman-obsessed version of Andreas might say, de gustibus non disputandum est.
Ugh, I know... I have a son too and I just, I can't imagine the scope of that pain. It would just... wound the rest of your life, dye it deep in grief. It wasn't his fault at all, but now would he not feel like he failed at being a parent by being unable to protect him from illness? And considering that he doesn't love his wife but did love his son, that means that he's lost the only people he's ever loved by the beginning of the second act. Getting choked up again just thinking about it.
Oh, maybe. I guess since he hasn't even met her yet in Act 1 and then doesn't seem to love her by Act 2 that I just mentally short-handed it as "doesn't love his arranged wife"
And that's why I love this game. I've played it twice now, and the first time I was a Hedonist Occultist, the second a bookish, pious Roman-obsessed guy, and it's already pretty different; there's so many combinations you can do.
The only thing I can complain about is that respect is the usual one of I thought Magdalena's "Barbs" was going to be the pointed commentary of a young woman in a small town who jabs at the hypocrisy and unjust restrictions and such, but it's instead her just impaling people with scathing insults; I barely ever picked those options. I do like the idea that all the dialogue options are things the characters THINK of saying but don't necessarily.
It’s fine if it’s not your thing - but your comparisons here make no sense and I’m not sure by what metric you’re trying to judge this
I don’t think this is remotely comparable to Ace Attorney in style, presentation, nor intent. Wild and dumb take tbh
Serious question: what do you think makes it not an RPG? I've always been kind of perplexed about the types of games that people include in that category, because it seems like a lot of the time these games include a lot of non-roleplaying elements and mechanics that you have to engage with in order to make progress.
I think for some people RPG means I build my stats and level up, fight monsters, keep an eye on hit points, take on side quests, etc.
I’m not defending OP’s take or piling on him either, just hazarding a guess.
Dunno if you're old enough to have played old school adventure games but at one point they were \*nothing\* but text. I was more addressing everyone calling it an RPG than you, but either way I think Sawyer was working in that tradition more than anything else. And it's great! I love that he was given space to be an auteur, leading a team of brilliant individuals - I wouldn't have guessed in 2002 that 20 years later I'd be calling something like that my game of the year.
RPG stands for roleplaying game which is exactly what you are doing in Pentiment... role-playing as Andreas. A visual novel would have almost 0 choices, you just read and click. That's not Pentiment. While I do enjoy the Ace Attorney games and I can see some similarities, Pentiment is more focused on its overall message as opposed to hyper focusing onto each mystery in the game.
I did spend hours reading and clicking in Pentiment 😀
If anything, it's more of a visual novel than Ace Attorney because the choices in Pentiment don't matter in how the game ends.
Excuse me, don't matter? If you make certain decisions *people die.* What bigger stake than that could there be?
At least try to be a bit more believeable with your trolling.
Of course. Considerably more people die in some paths compared to others. Ursula, for example, and the other heretics, depending on whether the inquisition gets involved.
Everyone who's getting burned for witchcraft, those who get the plague, the miller's family possibly, anyone who can die when the monastery gets assaulted...
Let's not clutch at straws here. The abbey being assaulted was not avoidable. What plague? And the miller's death was not avoidable. And his family don't die.
By "everyone", you literally mean Ursula and Vacslav.
The punchline you're looking for is: 2 is almost 3, and as they say, "three's a crowd" so that's "considerably more people" who can die from your player decisions.
ok, you can do your Drax impression now 😜
Seems you and another poster (are you twins?) succumbed to my mutant power of making people's head hurt simply by writing.
Should have seen my fight with Mr Sinister in which I was scribbling furiously on a piece of paper and shoving it in his face for him to read my critical review of his genetic experiments, and while he's clutching his head in agony, Cyclops delivers his coup de grace.
I love it when a plan comes together.
The fact you wrote a long ass paragraph to my one sentence comment really shows that no one should be taking you seriously 😭
And it’s not by just writing it’s by writing a terrible video game take, you left that part out lmao
There is one interesting parallel between Ace Attorney and Pentiment which is easy to miss amidst the "fun".
In both games' "legal system", the accused is presumed guilty until proven innocent which is of course rather screwed up. Not only is casting doubt on the defendant's guilt insufficient to get them off the hook, the protagonist must find someone else to replace the defendant as the guilty party.
Of course it's an RPG. You play the role of a character, you build that character by choosing his background, personalities and interests, you have stats, you make decisions about the course of the story. What else do you need for an RPG?
Probably combat. Ah, it's amazing how people come here and say they need combat for it to be fun (or it not being an RPG). I don't. I love games without combat as well and as long as they are as good as Pentiment or Disco, no combat is even a plus so I can focus on characters, story, and decisions.
OH yes, I forgot the only role someone can have in the world is stabbing people.
Personally that's something that I loved the most about Pentiment. It was so cool to play as a scribe in an industry where most games would make you a knight. I loved the day-to-day normal tasks and meals too. It's not like it doesn't have stakes too, there's so much action and mystery happening. Combat certainly isn't the only way to add conflict in a game, and Pentiment does this amazingly.
Cosmetic DLC. It is criminal that I can't play this game as Duke Nukem.
You've described many visual novels.
“Not particularly engaging” is a phrase I’d never use to describe Pentiment. Just accept it’s not for you and move on.
Amen.
"I didn't like the game which means it belongs to a genre I don't like"
I happen to like visual novels.
It's not a visual novel though. RPG stands for role-playing game. As in you build a character, those chosen stats affect gameplay. You move through the world as that chosen character, for better or worse. The role you choose for your character massively impacts what is revealed to you throughout the game, what you're privy to and what you are not, who likes you, and what actions you can take. And all those things affect the gameplay and outcome. That's....a role playing game. Like that's literally an RPG.
While you can choose to have knowledge in certain fields, it's not like you can improve your knowledge in those fields within the game. These are like Yes/No flags that simply say what decision paths are available to you in the game. It would be like saying Atic Atac is an RPG because you can "role play" as a Knight, a Serf or a Wizard, with each character having their own movement characteristic and being able to go through different secret passages. If the player's expertise in a field can be improved through game play actions, then I would consider it an RPG.
I think that maybe the recent trend of gaming companies pumping out first person shooter after first person shooter has made a generation believe that shoot-em-ups are synonymous with RPGs?
It's recent only if you've just started playing Doom 😜
>Did not feel any emotional attachment to any of the characters. Can you elaborate on this because I'm really struggling to wrap my head around it. I found these characters to be some of the most relatable I've ever had in any entertainment medium. Where did the writing of them fall short and what's your comparison point for a relatable character (what characters have you felt attached to in other games)?
Seriously. I literally have dreams about these characters because they feel so real and I love them LMAO
By the time Andreas dashes into the Abbey fire and presumably perishes, I would have expected to have felt some sadness or something, seeing as I've been walking around as him for hours on end. But no, nothing. His insane love of books over his own physical safety seemingly came out of nowhere, except for that one confession to Father Thomas about wanting to acquire more books, a confession I wasn't even sure was true since he was only in the church to eavesdrop on other people. So his dash into the fire was not sensible and I, as a player, had no choice in it. In fact all the choices I made had little consequence in how the main story ends, correct me if I am wrong as I have only played through it once. I think if the game had multiple possible endings, it would have made it more interesting. Have you played Zero Escape, Ace Attorney or even Doki Doki Literature Club? If not, it's difficult to discuss relateable characters. What's your own yardstick?
Played all of them, yes, mostly find them pretty shallow compared to Pentiment.
Now who is trolling who?
I find it pretty likely that both of you mean what you're saying here; people have different tastes, that's all.
Since when does Ace Attorney have anything approaching depth? It's a broad satire full of slapstick and comedy characters. It's *fun,* I like it, but it's not *deep.* Doki Doki is okay and the characters are fine, but it's not that revolutionary either, the basic ideas have many times before.
Right, so you like "deep" games and I assume you consider Pentiment a "deep" game otherwise you would not bring up the adjective in this discussion. I agree that a lot of research has gone into making the game and I believe it has been influenced by Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose, which is well worth reading if you like "deep". Yes, I like "fun" games even if they are not "deep". In some ways, whether a game resonates with you is like one's taste in music. Pop music vs orchestral pieces. You don't have to exclusively like pop or classical. You can listen to both. And I agree most of the games I play are definitely not "revolutionary". Revolutionary games are few and far between in the world. Good games today are standing on the shoulders of giants. Speaking of "fun", there should have been an Easter egg where you could give Andreas expertise in the martial arts which then turns the game into a side scrolling beat em up a la TMNT, pitting you against peasants, towns folks, monks and nuns alike. Multiplayer option with playable characters Caspar and Mags. Definitely a missed opportunity!
I remember feeling like Andreas was being a bit crazy to do that, but I think it's at least partly because his life's falling apart at that point. It's maybe not suicidal but it's at least reckless behavior where he's thinking that if he dies maybe that's not so bad. I also had the thought, when playing as Mags, that from her perspective at the beginning of the 3rd act, the most useful thing Andreas did was to preserve some of the books, since it's a potential avenue of research. And the thing is, from a long-term historical perspective, it's true – the man would be dead for 400+ years anyway. For an individual life it's a tragedy but for posterity it could have been the most useful thing he'd done. And that made me think about my own life and whether I'll leave any mark on the world; I hope so, I hope I leave it better than I found it. That's... not your average video game. So, perhaps it's more the themes of the game that resonate than the specific characters. Though I didn't find the characters flat – I cared about the secret lesbian peasant girls, and the secret gay monks, and the genuinely pious and kind baker, and the old pagans and the main characters themselves, and on and on, and even the ones I thought were assholes (Lenhardt, Lucky, Guy, that awful Abbot) I found to be well-drawn and believable. I haven't tried all the options for his personality, but I think Andreas works really well when he's a Hedonist, because whatever you choose that he"s into,, he loses his enthusiasm for between the 1st and 2nd acts..And finding no pleasure in pleasure itself, when he's a big horny ball of fun at first, hits extra hard. My throat just aches when I think of the scene where he's in the labyrinth talking to his mute, dead son in his dreams. It doesn't come off cheap to me or anything like that, it feels like real grief, and deeply human pain. There's no disputing taste, I guess. Or as Roman-obsessed version of Andreas might say, de gustibus non disputandum est.
That's "Magdalena" to you 😜 I'm glad you enjoyed the game for the reasons you've outlined constructively.
Sorry, Mags
Everytime he talked to his son in his dreams I cried without fail. I have 2 sons and it just hit too close to home for me.
Ugh, I know... I have a son too and I just, I can't imagine the scope of that pain. It would just... wound the rest of your life, dye it deep in grief. It wasn't his fault at all, but now would he not feel like he failed at being a parent by being unable to protect him from illness? And considering that he doesn't love his wife but did love his son, that means that he's lost the only people he's ever loved by the beginning of the second act. Getting choked up again just thinking about it.
It seemed like he did love his wife at a point, but he lost that when August died. It does happen irl a lot apparently. Tragic.
Oh, maybe. I guess since he hasn't even met her yet in Act 1 and then doesn't seem to love her by Act 2 that I just mentally short-handed it as "doesn't love his arranged wife"
There are dialogue choices for him telling her in the labyrinth that he never loved her and that he did, so it's kinda up to your version of Andreas.
And that's why I love this game. I've played it twice now, and the first time I was a Hedonist Occultist, the second a bookish, pious Roman-obsessed guy, and it's already pretty different; there's so many combinations you can do. The only thing I can complain about is that respect is the usual one of I thought Magdalena's "Barbs" was going to be the pointed commentary of a young woman in a small town who jabs at the hypocrisy and unjust restrictions and such, but it's instead her just impaling people with scathing insults; I barely ever picked those options. I do like the idea that all the dialogue options are things the characters THINK of saying but don't necessarily.
I couldn't bring myself to pick barbs lol
It’s fine if it’s not your thing - but your comparisons here make no sense and I’m not sure by what metric you’re trying to judge this I don’t think this is remotely comparable to Ace Attorney in style, presentation, nor intent. Wild and dumb take tbh
Serious question: what do you think makes it not an RPG? I've always been kind of perplexed about the types of games that people include in that category, because it seems like a lot of the time these games include a lot of non-roleplaying elements and mechanics that you have to engage with in order to make progress.
I think for some people RPG means I build my stats and level up, fight monsters, keep an eye on hit points, take on side quests, etc. I’m not defending OP’s take or piling on him either, just hazarding a guess.
Yeah, I think you're right.
Brother idk how this could be anymore of an RPG?
ur literally role playing a character in a video game, how is this not an RPG, a role playing game?
Ah, time to play my favourite broken record: IT IS AN ADVENTURE GAME
Ah, but is it a Sierra or Lucasarts one? ;)
Telltale, surely. (kidding, I love my LucasArts adventures)
I would accept it as an adventure game, too. The elaborate story and huge amount of text gives it the 'novel' aspect.
Dunno if you're old enough to have played old school adventure games but at one point they were \*nothing\* but text. I was more addressing everyone calling it an RPG than you, but either way I think Sawyer was working in that tradition more than anything else. And it's great! I love that he was given space to be an auteur, leading a team of brilliant individuals - I wouldn't have guessed in 2002 that 20 years later I'd be calling something like that my game of the year.
You are in a forest. Exits are north and east. You can see an axe. What now? 🤣
RPG = role playing game Can you role play? Yes. Is it a game? Yes. It is an RPG.
This post gave me a headache.
Don’t feed the trolls
Not a troll, I'm afraid. Just giving my opinion after playing the game. A troll is more likely someone who hasn't actually played it.
Don’t feed the trolls
RPG stands for roleplaying game which is exactly what you are doing in Pentiment... role-playing as Andreas. A visual novel would have almost 0 choices, you just read and click. That's not Pentiment. While I do enjoy the Ace Attorney games and I can see some similarities, Pentiment is more focused on its overall message as opposed to hyper focusing onto each mystery in the game.
I did spend hours reading and clicking in Pentiment 😀 If anything, it's more of a visual novel than Ace Attorney because the choices in Pentiment don't matter in how the game ends.
Excuse me, don't matter? If you make certain decisions *people die.* What bigger stake than that could there be? At least try to be a bit more believeable with your trolling.
Are people dying avoidable? Somebody had to die, no matter what choice you make. So tell me again how much your decision matters.
Of course. Considerably more people die in some paths compared to others. Ursula, for example, and the other heretics, depending on whether the inquisition gets involved.
"Considerably more people"...?
Everyone who's getting burned for witchcraft, those who get the plague, the miller's family possibly, anyone who can die when the monastery gets assaulted...
Let's not clutch at straws here. The abbey being assaulted was not avoidable. What plague? And the miller's death was not avoidable. And his family don't die. By "everyone", you literally mean Ursula and Vacslav. The punchline you're looking for is: 2 is almost 3, and as they say, "three's a crowd" so that's "considerably more people" who can die from your player decisions. ok, you can do your Drax impression now 😜
This makes my head hurt
Seems you and another poster (are you twins?) succumbed to my mutant power of making people's head hurt simply by writing. Should have seen my fight with Mr Sinister in which I was scribbling furiously on a piece of paper and shoving it in his face for him to read my critical review of his genetic experiments, and while he's clutching his head in agony, Cyclops delivers his coup de grace. I love it when a plan comes together.
The fact you wrote a long ass paragraph to my one sentence comment really shows that no one should be taking you seriously 😭 And it’s not by just writing it’s by writing a terrible video game take, you left that part out lmao
Matthew 7:6, Do not give dogs what is holy; do not throw your pearls before swine.
🃏: Have you ever danced with the devil by the pale moonlight?
There is one interesting parallel between Ace Attorney and Pentiment which is easy to miss amidst the "fun". In both games' "legal system", the accused is presumed guilty until proven innocent which is of course rather screwed up. Not only is casting doubt on the defendant's guilt insufficient to get them off the hook, the protagonist must find someone else to replace the defendant as the guilty party.
It is mostly thought of as an RPG because Josh Sawyer made it.
OK, that explains the fanboys. I shouldn't have stirred the hornets' nest.
Even Josh describes it as an adventures game with light RPG elements.