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Throughout Pentiment’s three acts, players must uncover the truth behind a series of murders that have unsettled the small Bavarian village of Tussing. The entire game takes place over a 25-year period, during which players have the opportunity to watch their characters grow and change depending on how they solve each crime. Obsidian Entertainment shows off its storytelling talents in Pentiment, keeping players on the edge of their seats as to the true identity of the Thread-Puller, a mysterious figure who appears to be orchestrating the events of the game and whose ultimate goal remains hidden until the game’s thrilling finale.
In each chapter, players take on the role of master artist Andreas Mahler, who receives a series of eerie notes written in a different script than the one written in the manuscript room of the Kielsau Abbey. The contents of these notes seem to indicate that someone is encouraging Pentiment’s potential murderer to act, and Andreas realizes that these notes are in the possession of several suspects and their victims. In the third act of Pentiment, players take control of Magdalene Drakkelin, the village printer’s daughter, who keeps finding notes warning her to stop studying the history of Tussing and Kielsau Abbey. As players follow the trail left by these eerie notes, they will discover the identity of the mastermind and the motive behind the murders of the past 25 years.
The Identity of the Thread-Puller is Revealed in the Game’s Finale
In the third act, Magdala investigates the history of the village and the nearby monastery in order to paint a mural depicting its history. As part of this investigation, Magdala must penetrate the ruins of the Roman structure on which the city was built to find the truth of Tussing’s story. Together with Andreas, who by his decision has been living as a hermit in the ruins of the burnt monastery for almost twenty years, she sets off into these dangerous ruins to find the Mithraeum, a structure not shown on any map. The ruins were known to the townsfolk and were only mentioned in Latin letters written on the ruins’ walls.
In the Mithraeum, Andreas and Magdala discover Sister Amalie. She lives in a walled cell next to the city’s church, a mystic and hermit who worships God and the visions he reveals to her. She explains that she was not the mastermind herself, but was simply doing what she believed to be God’s will, having written the note at the center of the conspiracy. The real mastermind behind Pettyment’s choice-based narrative is Father Thomas, the town priest and caretaker of Sister Amalie, who instructed her to write these notes under the guise of divine visions.
Why the Thread-Puller Manipulated the Villagers of Tassing
Andreas and Magdalene are shocked to learn that Father Thomas is involved in the murders of Baron Rothvogel, Otto Zimmermann and even the former abbot Father Matthias, and question the motive for this violence. Thomas reveals a secret: that the local saints of Tussing, St. Maurice and St. Satya (whose relics are kept in the monastery of St. Satya), are not Catholic saints but the Roman gods Mars and Diana. As their legends were passed down through the generations, they came to be reinterpreted as saints.
If this truth were to come to light, the city’s reputation and its status as a destination for pilgrims wishing to see the relics of St. Maurice would be destroyed. To prevent it from being revealed that the city’s saints are in fact descendants of Roman gods, Father Thomas has the man who discovered the truth killed. He then destroyed the Mithraeum so that no one would ever know the truth again, and committed suicide beneath the rubble of a collapsed cave. After Andreas, Magdala and Amalie escape, the player is faced with one of Pentimento’s most difficult decisions: should he keep this a secret for himself or reveal the truth to the villagers?
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