A Plague Tale: Innocence (2019)

This is the first of two games in the serie. Developed by French studio Asobo Studio.

First of all, I LOVED this game! A Plague Tale tells a really powerful story. I was hooked from first scene until the end. The story follows Amicia and her younger brother Hugo, as they try to survive during a dark and dangerous time in medieval France. The world is filled with death, disease and swarms of rats that bring fear and destruction.

The story is without doubt the best part of the game. It’s emotional and you care about Amicia, Hugo and all the characters you meet along the way. You get invested in their story and feel with them.

Gameplay is mostly about sneaking around and solving puzzles. You use your slingshot and different objects to pass through enemies and environments. Nothing complex but it works great.

The graphics are stunning. Really like the world and settings they have build up. The music and sound effects really sets the mood and make it feel intense all the way.

I can’t find much to complain over. Gameplay can feel a little repetitive but for me it’s not a problem. I enjoyed it a lot, so much that I wanted more! I have the sequel A Plague Tale: Requiem, in my PS library. Thought of playing it instantly after finish this but I’m gonna hold on and save it for later this year.

Rating: 🌲🌲🌲🌲+

Having had my first experience with this game last year, and since it’s now leaving Game Pass, I decided to give it another go in preparation for the sequel. And my thoughts on it haven’t changed much this second time around, except I have perhaps gotten a newfound appreciation for how much of an achievement this was coming from such a small studio.

Right off the bat, what immediately strikes you is that Innocence looks better than a lot of AAA games, boasting a fantastic presentation and a very compelling depiction of a Middle Ages world plagued by disease, famine, misery and superstition. The story in this game delivers in two very different ways: there’s the esoteric, mystery portion of it, which uses timely reveals and a couple of twists to keep you interested throughout most of the game, and then there are the character arcs, especially Amicia’s. Off the top of my head, it’s hard to come up with a game that is able to show a ‘breaking bad’ type of turn marred by painful struggles in such a short amount of time as effectively as Innocence does it. And this works even better the more you, as a player, actively lean into it. Amicia is the conduit of a very believable emotional progression, one that is superbly anchored in her in-game experiences at a realistic pace. This is both a testament to how well the devs were able to incorporate the story beats and a compliment to the voice acting, a level of quality which can, by the way, be seen in most of the performances. Add to this a fantastic soundtrack, an ending that is tone-perfect, a pretty decent stealth implementation, a great use of original mechanics and creative ways to play with light and fire effects, and a crafting system that is logical and with just the right amount of depth (giving you several different ways to tackle a situation), and it’s easy to look at this game as a truly enjoyable experience.

There are issues here, however. Movement and gameplay can have a clunky, AA energy to them, some characters can feel REALLY annoying at times (looking at you, Hugo), there’s a fairly quick recycling of skills/ammo (meaning they quickly lose their purpose due to how upgrade progression is handled), and perhaps the game outstays its welcome a bit (the exact same story could’ve been told in less time). But when you weigh these against everything mentioned above, Innocence becomes a no-brainer recommendation for anyone into third person action-adventure games with a medieval flair and a penchant for engaging stories. Excited to see what Asobo will be pulling off next. 8.5/10

I did not enjoy this game. The stealth-based gameplay isn't fun at all. I find stealth games to be pretty boring in general, though. Now, if you're the type of person that enjoys patiently waiting behind cover until the coast is clear and throwing rocks to make morons follow a random noise, then please disregard that. This might be the game for you!

The fake accents were unnecessary. I understand that this takes place in France, but surrender monkeys don't speak English at home anyway, and I don't need this persistent hint that these characters really love snails and Jerry Lewis. It adds nothing to the experience. Please just have them use the American vernacular so I can work my brain a little less after I'm done with work. Thanks.

It looks nice. I didn't finish the game. I don't remember most of the story, and I wasn't even drinking. Not for me.

In preparation for the sequel, I finally sat down and played a Plague Tale: Innocence. Morbidly appropriate considering the world is still suffering from a pandemic, the storyline is centric on a rat-infested plague while following the De Rune family as they struggle to survive the strife inflicted upon them.

The gameplay focuses on stealth, collectibles, and a linear plot moving you along through each chapter to continue the storyline. Achievement hunters will be relieved to hear that there is a chapter selection option unlocked after beating the game, allowing players to go back and collect anything they missed.

There are a few minor complaints to make. AI-controlled party members are apt to bumping you into objects and the on-screen prompt to climb may suddenly disappear when approaching, causing your character to push off the threshold instead of climbing it, both of which can alert enemies.

I enjoyed the characters, story, and gameplay, and am looking forward to how the sequel will polish itself further. This title could've easily ended as a standalone so I'm quite curious what adventures await in the next.

I recommend this game to those who enjoy stories, stealth mechanics, collectibles or need an easy game to mark off their backlog.

I had no expectations with this game, but I was told positive things and had to check it out. It turns out to be a wholesome tale of siblings in a very dark world. The setting for this game was a memorable one, I didn't expect to traverse medieval France while avoiding the black plague in the form of carnivorous rats. The pretty good premise with amazing graphics and a well-written story made for an enjoyable time. The gameplay consisted of simple combat which wasn't that bad and environmental puzzles, which could have used some work. The puzzles weren't bad, but they were just extremely simple and made the biggest portion of the gameplay a tad dull. Not sure where the story could go from here, but there is a sequel on its way and I will check it out one day in the far future.

A Plague Tale: Innocence is one of those games that I actually wouldn´t play because of the stealth mechanic, they are not my kind of game. I played this game without searching something at all, so when I noticed this game was about stealth I didn´t feel so good about it, however, something happend, and without noticing it, I was having fun.

A Plague Tale: Innocence happens through the inquisition, let me tell you the recreation of the world at that moment of time it´s really great, you feel a part of its world, the graphical section is amazing, it looks so good, some places better than others, but even so, the graphic detail is insane, also the game looks smoothly without fps drops, which is cool when you take into account that in many scenes, too many things can be on the screen at the same time.

Talking about the gameplay, well, the sense of progress is fine, little by little, the game shows you new mechanics that makes you feel you are doing a lot of progress, you start from being someone uncapable of defending, to someone that can kill their enemies. However, I still have my issues with this game, like, for example, your enemies are too easy to fool, keep in mind that I´m terrible with stealth mechanics, even so, I was able to fool the machine a lot of times without effort, there are a lot of times that this game feels too way unrealistic, I don´t know if this was on purpose but it didn´t feel good, I think there are games with better AI out there.

The game tends to get too repetitive, even when you are learning new stuff and ways to defend yourself, it gets repetitive way too fast, thank god this game is like 10 hours long because it´d be a bigger problem if it was actually longer, I think the game tends to get boring because of deficiency of the AI, when you learn how to fool them, it gets really easy.

The whole rat mechanic was actually amazing and I loved said segments of the game, evading the rats was fun, puzzles where you have to use the light of the many scenaries of the game it´s actually pretty cool as well. Skills that you´ll learn in the game will be used to evade the rats as well, and when you practiced enough, you´ll have to face both rat and humans.

Story is OK, it´s good enough to make you feel intrigued by the situation, on the other hand, characters has a lazy writing, they just appear from nowhere and where they are gone you are supposed to feel sad or something when the game didn´t give you enough motives to feel something for them, the onlye good characters are the protagonists, the rest is kinda lame and boring, your brother (the little child) it´s annoying as hell at first, but he growns up and you end liking him, Amicia is cool and you can understand through her entire journey.

In summary, I know I have my issues with the game like the bad AI, the characters and the unrealistic moments of the game (gameplaywise) but I still think it´s great game and you should give it a try, the sequel is coming soon and they´ll probably fix the mistakes from the first game.

I liked Plague Tales. The characters were endearing and the story was good. The combat was like solving a puzzle due to the protagonist being a 14 year old girl who couldn't risk getting caught and going guns (or slings) blazing. Still, the power progression into a stealthy Arya Stark archetype was fun and satisfying. The game length was a bit short, but that felt OK because the plot moved along at a decent pace and never dragged.

So I liked it, but it had a few flaws that I couldn't ignore. Maybe I was being unfair to Plague Tales, but I couldn't help but constantly compare it to a similar game about babysitting a bratty cure for humanity: The Last of Us. But it was a natural comparison, as both were stealth-based linear story games, involving a permanent escort mission of a child, and even featured similar crafting systems. And quite often I couldn't help but think, "I've seen this done better in TLOU."

Like I said, the stealth was a puzzly experience, but not very challenging. Every enemy had a robotic looping movement that involved 2, maybe 3 positions. If I dawdled for only a minute to loot, one of the characters would give me a hint about a solution. The enemy AI was pretty basic and easy to work around, causing the game to lack narrative tension compared to TLOU.

Sometimes the script would break my immersion. Maybe I expected too much from the writing, but the dialogues (and sometimes monolgues) were often a bit too overdramatic for me. I wasn't a fan of how Amicia talked to herself all the time, describing every detail of her inner turmoil, even dropping game hints for the players at the same time.

I still enjoyed the game in the end, probably because I'm partial to story games like this. Also Amicia's voice actress Charlotte McBurney really made it work. I think her talent helped offset some of the flaws I mentioned. I'd recommend this game to gamers who enjoy linear narrative games, or anyone who wants a little bit of that "medieval TLOU" flavor.