Forget knights, princesses, castles or troubadours: Repentance Although it borrows its aesthetics from manuscripts from the Middle Ages, the new game from the Californians of Obsidian Entertainment, which is scheduled for release on PC and Xbox on November 15, propels us slightly further in time. The action, which we were able to catch a glimpse of during Gamescom in Cologne at the end of August, takes place at the beginning of the XVIe century in Bavaria, in the midst of the Renaissance.
Its protagonist, named Andreas Maler, wears neither armor nor a helmet. He wears breeches and a hat. He does not excel in the handling of the sword either, rather in that of the pen. His job ? Manuscript artist. His superpower? His ability to reason and argue with individuals from all walks of life. He stands out deeply from the medieval warriors who abound in video game productions.
Half artist, half detective
By slowing down the action in favor of abundant dialogue, Repentance constitutes a significant risk-taking for its director, Josh Sawyer, thinking head of Fallout : New Vegas (2010), one of the most beloved installments of the post-apocalyptic franchise, and co-creator of Pillars of Eternity (2015).
The director does not lose sight of the fundamentals of role-playing which he has made his specialty, and the introduction does not escape the traditional hero personalization phase. Except that, contrary to our habits, there is no question here of defining the aspect of Andreas, whose appearance recalls Albrecht Dürer, one of the most famous German designers of this time. It is rather necessary to fill in a kind of CV which familiarizes us with the profile of the intellectuals of the time. Would you rather Andreas be good at Latin or occultism? Whether he studied medicine or theology? Whether he traveled to Italy or Flanders to train? The paths chosen will guide our game and open (or close) the field of possibilities in the dialogues.
Their progress is similar to that of an interactive comic strip: the words written with a pen are displayed in bubbles. During each discussion, questions or reactions are suggested to us. It is up to us to choose the most suitable.
The dialogues are motivated by an investigation after a murder. Our Bavarian artist seeks to identify the suspects and unmask the culprit by questioning the inhabitants of a village and a monastery, as in an Agatha Christie novel. In the manner of the novel The name of the rose, by Umberto Eco, a detective novel transposed to the Middle Ages, the anachronism allows the player to apprehend an era with customs very different from ours. It is up to us to adapt to this very exotic socio-cultural context, the authenticity of which is one of the major concerns of the team of Repentancewhich enlisted the services of three historians.
The neighborhood survey goes wrong
Our game is punctuated by a meeting of about twenty minutes with the widow Kemperyn, a woman with an execrable character who spends her time rebuffing us and blaspheming. Faced with her lack of cooperation, we try to appease her by collecting wood for her, which offers the opportunity to relax with a mini-game phase.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t work. Impossible to pull the worms out of the widow’s nose, who nevertheless exposes us to the tragic circumstances at the origin of her bitterness. We realize a posteriori that, during the exchange, our haste to press the poor woman to obtain her testimony only hurt her feelings. Worse, our clumsiness was served by a notification that our actions will have consequences for the rest of the adventure.
Beside us, one of our colleagues who has chosen another path is copiously roughed up by a blacksmith. Putting our will to the test, making us feel disappointed in the face of interlocutors who do not care about us, paradoxically increases the realism of this world of paper.
In Repentance, non-player characters (NPCs) don’t just seem to be there to reward us with useful information or items regularly granted to keep our attention. The villagers encountered may well be ordinary people, but they are worthy beings with a worked psychology. Everyone is a small puzzle that must be deciphered by taking into account their social status and their motivations. This is what represents the video game role-playing game (generally designated by the acronym RPG, for role playing game) in its most mature and fascinating form.
The demonstration organized by Microsoft having been strictly limited to thirty minutes, it is impossible to know whether Repentance maintains such density throughout the story, which spans twenty-five years. Still, its mix of cerebral and humor makes it one of the most unique works interviewed at Gamescom 2022… and certainly one of the most promising of the year.