Pentiment shows the true value of Game Pass

^ Stay tuned for our video essay with some beautiful 4K footage.

penance it is a beautiful piece of historical fiction. Set in a small Bavarian town during the Protestant Reformation, it harnesses a historically-inspired art style to tell a compelling story of loss, love, and everything in between.

It’s one of those games that makes having a Game Pass subscription feel like you’re cheating the system in some way. But it’s also the kind of game that really exemplifies the value of a subscription service itself, as a discovery engine for the user, but also as a wealth distribution mechanism which means it’s easier for things like Pentiment to be done on the first place.

It’s clear there’s a huge audience for historically-focused games – Assassin’s Creed’s unquenchable success as a franchise juggernaut is proof of that. Other titles like Ghost of Tsushima and A Plague Tale: Requiem put a lot of emphasis on the realism of their historical settings. The painstaking work that goes into balancing gameplay and aesthetics with real research into the past does not go unnoticed by fans of the games.

But Pentiment isn’t some ultra-cheap photorealistic action game with motion capture and combat: it’s a small, intimate study of how art can shape our perception of the past and be something of a conversation between us and our ancestors. And it has an eccentric visual style that can be a hard sell for some users. It doesn’t seem destined to appeal to the masses, so it’s a miracle that it becomes the mainstream RPG offering in the run-up to Christmas.

It was supposed to be Starfield. But history has a fun old fashioned way of working, and it’s a real blessing to all of us that Pentiment gets a chance to shine.

Check out our full review for a detailed look at this magnificent RPG and why we think it’s one of the best games of the year.