Pentiment – Complete One Playthrough Guide (Save Game and Get Every Background)

Pentiment is a wonderful game, but everybody doesn’t have time for multiple playthroughs.

Guide to Complete the Game in One Playthrough

All credit goes to archilock!

Foreword

So here’s a quick guide on how to:

1. Make multiple saves that you can go back to.
2. Give yourself every available trait.
3. Travel in time so that you can do every possible investigation and have every lunch in each act.

Saves

The savegame directory is in %USERPROFILE%\Saved Games\Pentiment . The game autosaves on 8 different slots at regular intervals. So everytime you want to keep one of your saves to go back to later, just copy/paste it in a directory named after that moment in the game, and then when you want to go back to it, just copy/paste it back in the main directory (don’t forget to backup your current saves as well).

Then in the main menu, click on “new game”, then on the blue arrow next to your save in order to access the autosave slots.

Backgrounds

In order to access every available trait in one playthrough, press ² in game to access the cheat console. Type AddBackground bg_ , and then use tab to cycle between all the possible backgrounds. I think they all have the same name as in-game, except heavens and earth, which is “naturalist” in the console.

Word of warning : don’t give yourself these backgrounds before the in-game moment when you choose them, otherwise the game will freeze. So chap 1 backgrounds chap 1 after talking to Lorenz, Chap 2 backgrounds after the intro with Guy, etc…

You won’t be able to access your character sheet by pressing C after adding too many traits, it will freeze the game. But every other menu (journal, map, glossary) will be accessible like before.

Time Travel

In order to do every single investigation/lunch in one playthrough, you can use the ² console to travel through time in the same day.

Open the console, then type Advancetimetohour (not byhours), then X (hour of the day you want to go to), then 1. So for example in order to travel to 1PM that day, you would type advancetimetohour 13 1, then press enter. You can use that trick to do every investigation and have every lunch in one playthrough.

Morning hours can vary depending on the day, but the usual time division after that is 11/13/18/20. When you teleport to a relevant hour Andreas will say something like “I should investigate” or “I should find someone to eat with”.

The cheat console has many other options that I haven’t tried, but this 3 tricks should be enough to make your playthrough much more comfortable and less time-consuming without breaking your saves.