Obsidian Entertainment's Pentiment was one of the developer's most unorthodox role-playing games, a 2D detective story in an illustrated book set in 16th-century Bavaria. While Pentiment didn't have the massive scope of the dev's other titles like Fallout: New Vegas or the most recent Avowed, the game's director did have one particular vision for the game's storytelling that required a significant amount of convincing to get the team on boardand that was with how the fonts would look in-game.During GDC 2025, game director Joshua Sawyer (previously helming Fallout: New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity) spoke about his work conceptualizing and building Pentiment's approach to text-based storytelling and how the game's fonts needed more than static characters in speech bubbles to authentically depict an evolving game world with different cultures via a "typographic voice."Rats, horse testicles, and fontsOR: How to go the extra mile with your gameAt Sawyer's panel, titled "Justifying Absurd Expenditures on Fonts and Other Silly Features," he broke down some common struggles developers tend to fall into when trying to deliver a product. In many cases, developers tend to provide a game that is seen as a "minimum viable product," especially at first. which is a game with baseline features and nothing particularly noteworthy. Another approach is to elevate the concept go for the "maximum viable product."Related:Some examples he included were A Plague Tale's dynamic, fully animated rat swarms, which appear like a living mass to players. In another example, Sawyer brought up Red Dead Redemption 2's infamous horse testicles, which shrink when riding in cold climates. As Sawyer put it, adding these featureswhich aren't always vital for a gamedo a lot to elevate the experience into something more."What about the maximum viable product? It's way more than what's needed, you got every bell and whistleyou're inventing bells and whistles, and you're trying to elevate the experience through a type of unique maximalism that hasn't been seen [in a game]," said Sawyer.Following the above, Sawyer explained his vision for Pentiment, a 16th-century European detective game where players must read and analyze intent and meaning from character interactions to make critical choices. Inspired by games like 80 Days and Night in the Woods, Pentiment's unique approach to storytelling highlights its dynamic text presentation, featuring animated medieval-era typography that's unique for each interaction and NPC. This gives Pentiment a feeling that you're looking into a living medieval-era painting or illustrated tome that's being created as you gowhich Sawyer stated was to depict the "physicality of writing in books."Related:Depending on your choices and the protagonist Andreas's growth, the game's approach to text will evolve and shift over the course of the game. As the game director described it, being passionate about a feature is the first step of getting your concept off the ground, but the following steps include getting your team on board with the idea and then bringing it to life in a compelling waywhich present unique challenges all their own."One of many problems is that there were [letter] character set issues, so these might have supported the languages they originally came from," said Sawyer. "For example, many of the [characters] came from German or Swiss sources; while they might have been clear, they didn't have the characters that might be needed in Polish or Spanish or French or anything else. So that was tricky. Also, if they looked authentic [to the era], they were often quite difficult to read. Yes, we wanted them to look authentic, but the difficult-to-read part is not good for a game full of text."What's in a font?Related:Sawyer described Pentiment as "not a small game, but not an 'indie' game"given that it had support from Microsoft Game Studios. With over three years in development and a team of 13 by the end of production, it was a modestly sized game, but Sawyer's ideas for using dynamic typography for its storytelling presented a wrinkle that took time to work out.What sets Pentiment apart from other reading-dense RPGs like Disco Elysium or Pillars of the Earth is how it makes the act of readingand viewing the texta part of the experience. You essentially become a medieval-era detective. This was a part of the core vision of Pentiment, in that 16th century Bavaria was a melting pot of different cultures and social classes, and protagonist Andreas must be able to navigate a diverse society with unique characters who have different philosophies and worldviews, all reflected in the font-style.To build out the whole suite of custom typography, the developers contacted Lettermatic founder Riley Cran. Working with Cran's company, they designed the game's six custom fontsPeasant, Cursive, Humanist, Printed, Textura, and Thread Puller. Creating each fontaiming for authenticity rather than total accuracy allowed the developers greater control over the text, at the cost of being time-consuming. Sawyer recommended that devs try to create their fonts to own it, but only if they have the resources and means to do so."The control you have with the fonts is unparalleled, it's fantastic," he said. "You can get exactly what you need; you can get support for any localization you want, and it's your font. You don't have to worry about ongoing licensing issues and all that sort of nonsense. We eventually released our fonts for basically free to the public, and they use it for making shit posts and memes, which is the highest point of it."Another vital resource that Obsidian Entertainment relied on was the accessibility teams at Microsoft, who helped hone the visual presentation of the text for readers of all kinds and text related to specific cultures. Sawyer cited some instances where the game touched on specific topics, and Microsoft sensitivity readers offered feedback to help refine it further.One method that Sawyer suggested to elevate the look of the text and give it a dynamic feel was the stroke-by-stroke illustration of letters in real-time, which he noted wasn't exactly met with enthusiasm from the team. "So when I brought up stroke-by-stroke rendering to the team, it wasn't that people hated the idea, but there was skepticism about it," said Sawyer. Eventually, the engineering teamopting out of his initial pitch of using different alpha channels to similar motionused his concept and built it with Adobe Illustrator, applying gradients and animation to recreate real-time illustrative pen strokes on parchment.Sell your visionSawyer concluded the talk by giving attendees tips on how to best present their concepts to their teams. For Pentiment, the dynamic text and fonts showcased a level of authenticity for the game's setting and concept of playing within a living booksomething that Sawyer admitted took effort to get right."It is not enough for you alone to believe in this missionthe team does have to believe in this vision as well," said Sawyer. "The vision also has to include a plan, which will make people feel somewhat more confident in the idea that you are giving them. If you succeed with the core features, people will be more confident and happier about the idea of doing other things related to it."The decision to go the extra mile was worth it as Pentiment is widely regarded as one of Obsidian Entertainment's best games. All it took to help the game reach its success and elevate its concept was coming up with an idea that seemed far-fetched, but ultimately worth the effort.