Geekscape Games Reviews: ‘A Plague Tale: Innocence’

It may be a cliche that’s far older than I am, but playing A Plague Tale: Innocence is incredibly similar to one of those horrific car accidents that you simply can’t look away from.

That’s a weird way to start things off, but in this case I need to be clear that this is not a bad thing at all. In fact, A Plague Tale: Innocence is by and large the most memorable title that I’ve been able to experience so far in 2019.

Like the aforementioned car accident, A Plague Tale: Innocence is a journey far more gruesome than you’d imagine, and will continue to haunt you for far longer than you could possibly anticipate.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The game, developed by Asobo Studios and published by Focus Home Interactive, tells the tale of teenage Amicia and her five-year-old brother Hugo, recent orphans running through a plague-ridden, Hundred Year’s War ravaged France in a desperate attempt to escape from ever-present Inquisition soldiers. Sounds heavy, doesn’t it? I assure you that it’s even heavier.

The game opens with Amicia De Rune, her father Robert, and her dog Lion, sauntering through the forest on what appears to be a fairly casual hunting excursion. The trio quickly spot a wild boar and decide that it would make an excellent feast for that evening — this segment acts as the game’s general tutorial, and takes you through mechanics like movement, stealth, and Amicia’s sling, a basic stone-hurling tool that quickly becomes invaluable as it saves Hugo and Amicia from certain death over, and over, and over again. The hunting trip quickly turns sour (that’s an understatement), and Amicia hurriedly heads home before, well, her entire world goes to hell. Amicia and young (and ill) Hugo will spend much of the rest of the game simply trying to survive in a world where almost no-one will help them, and where almost everyone (or everything) seems to want them dead.

Many of A Plague Tale‘s mechanics are pretty standard fare, and the title’s myriad of stealth encounters feel especially simple — tall grass will render Amicia and Hugo completely invisible, even from soldiers just a few feet away. You’re also essentially silent when crouched, meaning that, though you can hear your characters sneaking just steps behind an enemy guard, unless that guard happens to turn around at an inopportune time, they’ll have absolutely no idea that you’re there. You’ll throw stones at loud objects (racks of armor, for instance) or toss breakable pots, and nearby soldiers will amble towards the sound to investigate. Avoiding encounters is almost always a better idea than tackling them head on, as Amicia and her sling aren’t an even match for even a singular Inquisition soldier; one swing of their sword and you’re dead, only to be sent back to the last checkpoint to try out a different strategy. As the game progresses, Amicia learns some basic alchemy that offers additional methods of tackling certain obstacles, and will gather materials to craft items and improve her gear, but in A Plague Tale: Innocence, it’s rare that you’ll ever feel truly safe, and ever rarer that you’ll actually feel powerful.

The Inquisition soldiers are tough, but may actually be the least of your worries. During your time with A Plague Tale, you’ll also encounter thousands and thousands and thousands of plague-infected rats, which, as if that wasn’t bad enough, are not simply regular plague-infected rats, but are plague-infected rats that have the ability to burst out of the ground in droves at seemingly any moment. The rats, jet black with glowing red eyes, move almost as a singular unit, and shriek relentlessly every second that they’re present — it’s an incredibly uncomfortable sound that you’ll continue to hear long after the credits roll. Thankfully, the rats have a weakness; they’ll avoid light from the sun, a lantern, a fire, or seemingly any source, and you’ll spend much of the game figuring out how to get Amicia and Hugo (and a few of the friends you’ll meet along the way) to the next point of light, just narrowly avoiding the instant decimation you’ll face if your light source is extinguished.

Whether standing in a brightly lit forest, wandering through incredible French architecture, carrying a torch through a swarm of rats, or trudging slowly over rotting corpses in a giant, blood soaked battlefield, it’s tough not to stop and simply gaze at how gorgeous the visuals in A Plague Tale: Innocence really are (especially when playing on Xbox One X). The game is extremely cinematic in its presentation, cutting smoothly between tense gameplay and plenty of well choreographed cutscenes, and the game also lacks a persistent HUD, only showing you information when needed, and simply letting you bask in the beauty (or terror) of the the environment the vast majority of the time. The title’s soundtrack — both in its score, its voice work, and its environmental sounds, are equally stunning. A Plague Tale: Innocence is not a game being sold with a full price tag, yet somehow its presentation is able to surpass many pricier games with far higher budgets. I took dozens of screenshots during my time with the title, as nearly each one of the game’s seventeen chapters was somehow more enchanting than the last.

A 2018 Variety interview with lead designer Kevin Choteau detailed some of the team’s inspirations for the title, noting Asobo’s intent of crafting “an emotional character-focused game” akin to The Last of Us and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Just as with The Last of Us, at a surface level A Plague Tale‘s campaign could almost be described as one long escort quest, but as with Ellie, Hugo’s small stature allows him to progress through cracks and openings that stop Amicia in her tracks, and his juvenile naivety leads to some incredibly human moments that will both break your heart and make you reflect on your own childhood innocence. A Plague Tale’s nauseating setting is beyond fascinating, and its distressing plot is beyond memorable, but watching the relationship between Amicia and Hugo grow (and falter) and evolve over the course of the title’s ~eleven hour story is something that I’ll never forget. The last few years in video games have offered some amazing stories and some unforgettable relationships — from The Last of Us’ Joel and Ellie, to Life is Strange‘ Max and Chloe, to The Walking Dead’s Lee and Clementine. Amicia and Hugo fit right up with the best of them, their harrowing journey is one that I’m thankful to have experienced, and that experience is one that I’ll cherish forever.

A Plague Tale: Innocence is a very plot heavy single player adventure game, complete with wonderful presentation and an incredibly unique setting. In its main heroes Amicia and Hugo, I found two of the very best characters I’ve encountered recently in a video game.

This is the type of game that I live for, and I truly loved every second of it. A Plague Tale: Innocence scores 4.5/5.