By: Luke Hernandez, 2023-24 DRC Fellow
In my experience there is not much critical engagement between Art History and Video Game Studies that pays attention to aspects of race and gender. I am also reticent to advocate for immediate gamification of every game (or games that I simply like). Rather, I seek to analyze a particular game, Pentiment, in a speculative exercise in the context of digital humanities pedagogy. Pentiment can only get more western coded, being a story-based game set in medieval Bavaria. But by equipping what critical scholars call a “games of color teaching philosophy” where the teaching of games “foregrounds is not just about diversity, inclusion, and equity but is intentionally anti-racist” (Chang, Gray, and Bird 2022). In my playthrough of the game there are particularly moments that were refreshing to see where issues of race, class, and gender were taken seriously that allowed discussion within an art history context. This sets a fascinating precedent in terms of game design and within classrooms whose subjects intersect with the humanities, arts, and games. As I analyze the Pentiment game with a Games of Color teaching philosophy, I hope for readers to apply this lens with games that may speak to them that may hold critical discussions in their own classrooms.
A game can never speak for itself; describing a game is important in incorporating it for pedagogy along with its access quality, which can be achieved through a written or visual playthrough. Pentiment is a mystery/thriller visual novel game (To be brief a visual novel game usually means experiencing the story is the focus while usually not being mechanic heavy) that takes place in medieval Europe during the onset of the Reformation. Specifically, the game is set in the Bavarian village of Tassing. From what I witnessed through my playthrough, I argue that the narrative of Pentiment engages directly with concepts of situated knowledge, systems of oppression, and power dynamics. Pentiment embraces these meta political discourses within its story and could benefit an art history class. The game’s writing and design choice sets an excellent precedence of just storytelling that is engaging. Though not perfect, it illustrates how attending to subjectivity and critical perspectives makes an engaging retelling of the simulated past that could be useful for classrooms.
I evoke prominent feminist science and technology studies scholar, Donna Haraway, to be in conversation with this visual novel game. The concept of situated knowledge is an approach that makes one aware of one’s position in the world related to the existing power relations at play in the processes of knowledge production and being (Haraway 1988). This relates not only to Pentiment but to most games that seek to tell a story, as the whole truth is impossible to capture. Personally, I am not caught up in the exact detail of historical accuracy in a game but various paintings of reality that show different perspectives as it may be, which Pentiment takes in stride. In a developer insight blog article, art director Hannah Kennedy writes that “While our game has RPG and mystery aspects to the gameplay, the core of the game’s identity has always been focused on the impact of the story experience and a setting/environment founded in history that incorporates the visual language of real art from this time into the style of the game itself” (Kennedy 2023). Founded in history is an important design philosophy to remember as the game is not strictly bound by history, as it is a simulated retelling of the past, as there are many fantastical and ambiguous elements to the game and its story.
The game and story begin with Act I with the player witnessing the narrative as the character Andreas Maler, who is an aspiring artist. Andreas is lodging in the outskirts of the Bavarian village of Tassing and is being commissioned by the theocratic administration of Kiersau Abbey. Through the eyes of Andreas, which is a source of greater critique, the player can witness and intervene in the politics of the village, abbey, and force outside. What threads Act I, Act II, and Act III together is a string of murders that Andreas must solve. Each Act represents a time skip and is only until Act III that the truth is revealed at the end. That is a brief synopsis of the game’s plot.
The game plays like a standard visual novel game with dialogue and branching storylines being vital to the game play of Pentiment. Players can investigate highlighted objects and converse with the various characters in the game. Many characters are affiliated with a certain group with the groups: Peasants, Townsfolk, and Monks/Nuns being the main groups the player can sympathize with throughout the story.
While the game play is point-and-click, a major aspect of the game’s experience lies with its history, art style and font. As art director Kennedy stated earlier, there was attention to detail regarding the historical print front of the time in addition to being inspired by Christian medieval art. The background art, characters, and scenes emulate the historical paintings and stained glasses commonly associated with European medieval art. It would be interesting to see how an art historian would engage with this game. What is also interesting is how type front is incorporated in the game. Each character has written dialogue and the style of front changes depending on the character’s affiliation and educational level. For example, Nobles and Monks in the game have more stylized fonts while the Townsfolk have less embellished type fonts. Color within the fonts is also important to express rage, deceit, and sorrow. For accessibility reasons, Players can turn off this function as it makes it difficult to read the story at times,
My analysis pays more attention to how the writing is deployed in the game, which I believe is the strongest aspect of the game. I focused less on the content of Andreas solving the murder conspiracy, but how the player engages with the game’s constructed world.
Pentiment does not shy away from topics of class, oppression, and religious persecution but also topics of sexism, racism, domestic violence, and sexuality that indeed were present in medieval history but are not retold in the medium of games. Andreas notes that he has the privilege to navigate between worlds as he is lodging at a farm and works for the Abbey. The debate between religious control, faith, and oppression immediately starts with the Peasants and Townsfolk becoming resentful, and eventually resistant, towards the harsh and cruel rule of the Abbey and the Duke. Andreas has the options in the story to placate both sides, the people’s struggle, or the Abbey theocracy. Pentiment resonates with Sicart’s idea of play where “… play is not just the ludic, harmless, encapsulated, and positive activity that philosophers have described. Like any other form of being, play can be dangerous; it can be hurting, damaging, antisocial, corrupting. Play is a manifestation of humanity, used for expressing and being in the world” (Sicart 2014, 2). This is true in game play as Andreas has the ability to accuse certain individuals of committing crime and, true to history, it is easier to accuse marginalized people than it is to expose corruption.
Class, religion, and state control does inform the larger ideological implications of Pentiment, I commend how the game systemic issues of oppression such as sexism, patriarchy, homophobia, and depression. There are three dynamic game moments that personally stuck with me. The first movement was when Andreas explored classical literature with Sister Illuminata. Mimicking scenes from classical stories such as the Iliad, Illuminata makes it clear to Andreas the station of women and nuns in their context. While Andreas can push back on this, Illuminata reminds him that he is a man and can only know so much. While we can critique that the Other has to spell it out for the Privileged, this dialogue was seamlessly incorporated into the scenes and explored the limits of the Hero’s Journey.
Obsidian Entertainment. Pentiment. Xbox Game Studios. PC. 2022. Figure 1: Illuminata exploring literature with Andreas.
Another impactful scene was when Brother Sebhat of Sadai, an Ethiopian Priest, delivers a sermon to some of the villagers. He retells the story of Lazarus whom Jesus resurrected. In the background there is a scene that shows this event but the people in the scene have dark skin which contrasts with the white people present. Seeing this prompt some of the villagers to ask why the people look different to which Sebhat simply responds that’s how people look back at his home. This is a small scene that contrasts the art and images we as a western audience regularly digest and what we subconsciously consume as truth. Sebhat remarks that it would make sense Jesus would appear darker, as opposed to Germanic white, as he was born in that area of the world and continues his sermon. It was a quick and well done telling of reality that dislodges a singular representation of truth.
Obsidian Entertainment. Pentiment. Xbox Game Studios Figure 2: Sebhat delivers a sermon to the people of Tassing.
Finally, in one salacious scene, Andreas hides in the library which is regularly restricted to outsiders and Monks. In his hiding he stumbled across two male monks having sex in the library. Andreas can escape the scene, but the Player is granted the option to blackmail the monks or leave it alone. A detail that is rather forgotten but many monasteries, brotherhoods, and nunneries have a long and complex history with Queerness. Pentiment thoroughly engaged with its context that allows Andreas (the player) to critically interact with the game’s constructed world that mirrors history. Pentiment sets an excellent precedence of just storytelling that I would incorporate in my own pedagogy. I use the word “just” in reference to Marcus Schulzke’s idea of games to think through justice. Schulzke states that “there is also a theoretical value in using games to explore the implications of abstract concepts. By taking a concept like distributive justice out of the realm of theoretical speculation and making it part of a simulation, games provide an excellent means of recontextualizing the problem by giving players firsthand, concrete experience of that problem” (Schulzke 2013). Pentiment takes care to critique systems of oppression in a rather artistic context that I personally resonate with.
To conclude this blog post, my analysis here was to demonstrate a genuine exercise of incorporating a game into a critical pedagogy beyond novel gamification. I implore scholars of all fields to critically engage with games that resonate with them but, importantly, incorporate that game within a Games of Color pedagogical framework. In the future I wonder what games fellow scholars in humanities and beyond would advocate for that works towards better futures in the classroom and beyond.
References
Chang, Edmond Y., Gray L, Kishonna, and Bird, Ashlee. “Playing Difference: Towards a Games of Colour Pedagogy.” In Critical Pedagogy, Race, and Media, 1:111–128. 1st ed. United Kingdom: Routledge, 2022.
Haraway, Donna. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (1988): 575–99. https://doi.org/10.2307/3178066.
Kennedy, Hannah. “Deep Dive: Behind the evocative medieval manuscript art of Pentiment.” GameDeveloper. January 25, 2023. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/art/deep-dive-the-art-of-pentiment
Obsidian Entertainment. Pentiment. Xbox Game Studios. PC. 2022. https://pentiment.obsidian.net/
Schulzke, Marcus. “Using Video Games to Think about Distributive Justice.” Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy 2: 1-19. 2013. http://jitp.commons.gc.cuny.edu/using-video-games-to-think-about-distributive-justice/.
Sicart Miguel. Play Matters. Cambridge Massachusetts: MIT Press. 2014.
