Pentiment director confirms there never was a correct suspect for the game's murders

Some minor spoilers for Pentiment here, but in the game you don't just go about your days scrawling some lovely artwork for a local church, as before long you suddenly find yourself at the centre of a murder conspiracy. For plot reasons, you're also the only person with the wit and will to pin the blame on someone, but no matter how hard you work to dig up the truth, you'll never know for sure if you got the right guy.

According to Pentiment's director Josh Sawyer, that's by design. Speaking with PC Gamer, Sawyer said that the team never really had a "real murderer" in mind. "From the very beginning I said, 'I think that for this to be compelling in the way that I want it to be, there cannot be a right answer,'" Sawyer said. "People on the team would ask me [who the culprit is], then people at Xbox would ask me, and I'm like, 'No! There isn't!' And I will say that there are people who, in retrospect... seem more likely to have done it, but that doesn't mean they did it."

"You're not a detective, you're a fucking artist. You're not good at this," Sawyer continued, referencing Pentiment's protagonist Andreas Maler. "You're doing the best you can to prevent a good friend who—very obviously—is not the person who did it, from dying."

In part, Pentiment works so well because there isn't a right answer. It doesn't weave its story like a Telltale game of yore, where there are clearly good and bad roads to take. You just forge your path, and no internet guide or Reddit mod can make you feel bad about it because behind the curtain no one knew who the real culprit was or if there ever was one. That might make you feel better or worse about sending someone to death, but that's kind of the point.