Pentiment
GameBy Obsidian Entertainment · Released Nov 15, 2022
Documents about Pentiment
Of Course, Working at Obsidian Is Like a Real-World RPG
Obsidian Entertainment’s operational philosophy centers on long-term stability and iterative development, aiming to sustain the studio for a century.
- Obsidian Entertainment has released six games since its 2018 acquisition by Microsoft, including three titles in 2025 alone: Avowed, Grounded 2 (Early Access), and The Outer Worlds 2.
- The studio prioritizes long-term staff retention by encouraging employees to 'multi-class' across different roles and projects, aiming to build a deep institutional knowledge of the studio's development ethos.
- Obsidian maintains a conservative, iterative development strategy that focuses on refining existing tech stacks rather than chasing industry-wide AAA trends or massive scale.
September 2025's Top New Steam & Console Games
September 2025 was a highly dynamic month for the video game industry, characterized by significant new releases across PC and console platforms.
- Hollow Knight: Silksong sold 4.2 million paid units on Steam in September 2025, significantly exceeding performance expectations.
- Borderlands 4 became the top-grossing new Steam title, generating $135 million in revenue through its premium pricing strategy.
- The free-to-play title Skate. achieved high market penetration with over 18 million downloads across console and PC platforms.
Xbox Dominated PlayStation’s Top 10 Games in April
The gaming industry is witnessing a significant shift in platform dynamics, as evidenced by Xbox’s increasing success as a third-party publisher on PlayStation hardware.
- Xbox-published games dominated PlayStation's top 10 best-selling games in April 2025, accounting for 48% of copies sold with only three titles, and 69% of copies sold in the top 5.
- Forza Horizon 5, an Xbox title, was the #2 best-selling game on PlayStation in April 2025 with 837.3K copies sold, despite only being officially available for two days (seven with early access); it has sold 1.4 million copies on PlayStation within eight days, selling 2.1 times faster than Sea of Thieves.
- Minecraft, another Xbox-owned game, was the #1 best-selling game on PlayStation in April 2025, selling 978K copies, nearly doubling its March sales of 527.1K, likely due to hype from "A Minecraft Movie."
How Well Have Xbox Games on PlayStation Been Selling So Far? It Differs
Xbox has transitioned into a third-party publisher, strategically porting its software to PlayStation to mitigate stagnating console and Game Pass growth.
- Xbox's multi-platform strategy has generated significant sales on PlayStation, led by Sea of Thieves with 1.8 million copies and Grounded with 432.2 thousand copies sold since April 2024.
- Xbox is successfully reaching a new audience on PlayStation, as evidenced by 29% of Grounded players on the platform also playing Sea of Thieves, suggesting a cohort of 'Xbox-curious' users.
- Niche Xbox titles have seen lower adoption on PlayStation compared to larger hits, with Hi-Fi Rush selling 137.2 thousand copies, Age of Mythology Retold selling 41 thousand, and Pentiment selling 14 thousand.
Game as History: How Does Pentiment Recreate a Vivid Sixteenth-Century Central European Everyday Life?
Pentiment, Obsidian Entertainment's 2022 narrative adventure, is examined here as a legitimate form of historical representation, one capable of recreating the texture of everyday life in sixteenth-century Central Europe.
- The report argues that Obsidian Entertainment's 2022 game Pentiment can function as legitimate historical representation, drawing on microhistory and the concept of "procedural heritage" to claim interactive works can evoke engagement with the past comparable to academic monographs.
- Its case study centres on Act II and the fictional Bavarian town of Tassing, examining how the protagonist's interactions with residents, food, and the built environment convey sixteenth-century everyday conditions.
- Stylized dialogue fonts, writing effects, and character designs are interpreted as reflecting each figure's education and social standing, while depictions of meals and clergy privileges versus peasant hardship are read as deliberate tools for showing social tensions.
Ask George: September 2024
The September 2024 edition of the Video Games Industry Memo serves as a Q&A-style commentary, providing personal insights into the gaming habits of industry analyst George Osborn while touching upon broader sector trends.
- The esports sector is currently undergoing a critical evaluation to determine if the industry has moved past its peak growth phase.
- Regulatory scrutiny is intensifying regarding the intersection of loot box monetization mechanics and legal definitions of gambling.
- Player engagement trends favor titles that prioritize meaningful agency and world-building, exemplified by RPGs like Pentiment and Fallout: New Vegas.
GMTK Reading List: April 2024
The April 2024 edition of the Game Maker’s Toolkit reading list serves as a curated digest of industry insights, focusing on the intersection of game design philosophy and technical development practices.
- The development of Super Mario Bros. Wonder required a rigorous filtering process that narrowed down 2,000 distinct environmental effect ideas into the final game.
- Modern game design discourse increasingly emphasizes the value of mechanical friction and imperfection, as highlighted by the design inefficiencies found in Dragon’s Dogma 2.
- Game developers are facing challenges where gameplay economics can inadvertently undermine or conflict with the core narrative themes of a title, as observed in SOMA.
Companies behind it
As the documents state it.