Repentance is not a game like the others. Obsidian’s new game (The Outer Worlds, Fallout: New Vegas) launched Tuesday on Xbox Game Pass is a bit as if Umberto Eco had written the rose namebut in the form of a Book of which you are the hero.
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This unique historical game is a kind of detective story, with monks, peasants, craftsmen and barons. It is a game that is above all textual. Yes, paintings drawn like an old book are superb, but Repentance is above all a long succession of texts and choices.
After playing it around a bit over the past few days, it’s clear that Obsidian’s latest title isn’t a game for everyone. You have to have a certain interest in history to appreciate it (especially this period at the beginning of the Renaissance where the Middle Ages are still recent). And you have to like slow games, without any action.
Pentiment’s pace won’t be for everyone. Video capture: Maxime Johnson.
I liked to play Repentance over the past few days. However, I won’t give it a full review, since I haven’t finished it (yet). It wasn’t for lack of interest that I moved slowly through the story, but rather because I still felt like it wasn’t the right time to continue the adventure. At 10 p.m. in front of my Xbox in the living room, it just wasn’t the kind of game I wanted to play.
I would actually like to play Repentance at the same times and in the same places that I like to read. In the bus, in a waiting room, on a terrace when it’s hot, in my bed.
The solution, however, is simple: with its simple controls and minimal system requirements (on a PC, a mid-range computer launched 10 years ago is able to run Repentance), the game would be perfect for phones. Yes, technically it can be played with Xbox Game Pass in the cloud, but playing on a mobile network requires a lot of data, and not all subscribers of the service have Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which is necessary for game play in the cloud.
And yet, even todayin a long interview with The VergeXbox executive Phil Spencer has acknowledged how far behind the brand is in mobile, and how critical mobile is for a gaming business.
Pending the acquisition of Activision (largely for Candy Crush, Call of Duty : Mobile et Diablo mobile), Microsoft might already begin to impose itself on Android and iOS by offering original and high-end titles which are already part of its catalog and which would have their place on a telephone screen.
Et Repentance would be the perfect game to do it big.
