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Minor spoilers within. All images taken from Asobo Studio’s official website

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It’s a tale as old as time. Pick up some sticks and stones, tape them together to make a random thing, and then proceed to brutally murder some dude with said thing. At this point, it’s replaced “jump” as the go-to video game mechanic. And as tired as the craft-and-murder flow of gameplay can be, there are still games that can come along and make it work. And thankfully, A Plague Tale: Innocence makes it work. Sorta. Mostly. Kinda?

To understand what A Plague Tale is, one must first look at the current climate of cinematic action games that burst forth from the corpse of third person action games from generations past (this metaphor is more apt than it immediately seems) and now plagues, if you will, the gaming landscape. Thanks, in no small part, to the likes of Naughty Dog’s output, we are not suffering from a lack of games that punctuate skull-bashing and explosion-jumping action with long walks through the woods while contemplating the meaning of life or whatever. A Plague Tale falls squarely into that hole, but manages to keep itself just distinct enough to merit playing for this project.

The game is, at it’s core, a third-person stealth game with minor (Read: very minor) puzzles to break things up. See that place in the distance? We must get to said place without sparking conflicts with the big guys with swords or accidentally falling into a puddle of rats. That breaks down the bulk majority of what you’ll be doing in the game. Creep through the tall grass, hide behind the chest-high wall, throw a rock over there so the idiotic AI stares at a tree for 30 seconds while you tickle their ass cheeks with your hair as you wander past them entirely too close for a normal person not to spot you. It’s all very by the book.

And of course, what would a modern stealth survival game be without crafting? Oh yes, you’ll be picking up various straps of leather and chunks of rock and pounding them together to make one of a handful of tools to better avoid being un-alived by the things you’re trying to avoid. Your main weapon of choice is a sling, which can be used to fling various ammo’s at unsuspecting creeps. And even 8 hours in, it was still hilarious to whip a rock at top speed directly into some dude’s dome and watching him physics-collapse into a heap.

At this point, you’re bored. “Bob, another Tall Grass Sneakin’ Craft ’em Up?”. Yes yes, it’s all very of-it’s-kind genre fare. But would it pique your interest if I told you that’s only half the game, and the other half of the game you’re climbing through piles of corpses hiding from waves of rats?

No, that sounds disgusting? Yeah, it is. And that’s exactly what A Plague Tell does to set itself apart.

You see, we find ourselves in the shoes of 15 year old Amicia, daughter of royals in 14th century France. And the randoms you’re skull-cracking with stones? They’re French Inquistioners during the Hundred Years’ War. But that’s not enough. We also have to throw a good ol’ fashion plague into the mix. If you couldn’t tell that from the title. And, like all good plagues, it is blamed squarely on giant hordes of rats. And I mean GIANT hordes. Rats are treated more like a miasma that you have to make your way through. And when you’re not sneaking around doing stealth action, you’re fighting for survival in dark pits full of rats that want to devour your flesh.

It’s in these parts that the game truly finds it’s unique style. These waves of rats burst up from the ground and act as puddles you can’t step in. They are distinctly afraid of light, and so finding and manipulating light sources is the other half of the gameplay. Using your sling, you can fling fire-starters at torches and then light sticks on fire to walk from light source to light source, all the while completely surrounded by rat floods. Delightful stuff! It acts as more of a puzzle-style take on the stealth mechanics, and breaks things up in a way that most stealth games don’t.

For it’s relatively short run time (my playthrough was about 8 hours or so), the game manages to keep things interesting enough and add just enough variety to never feel like you’re bogged down by yet another samey stealth section. One chapter finds you climbing through thousands of dead bodies on a war battle field, next you’re chased by angry villagers through a plague-ridden village, while another has you investigating an abandoned castle, clearing it out of the rats to make a home base. No two chapters feel entirely alike, and it allows for the game to explore different uses for each part of it’s smallish toolset.

But at the end of the day, the gameplay is rather simple. You’re only given a handful of tools, and most of them are restricted to very few uses. And the crafting ingredients are sparse, meaning you often have to choose between making ammo, or saving rarer items for the few upgrades you can develop. Unfortunatly, things are so rare you more or less have to choose one or the other. I put more resources into items for stealth than my upgrades, personally. And since the game has no difficulty settings, it doesn’t seem to rewards or punish either method. Do whatever lends itself to the gameplay style you enjoy most.

So, what makes it worth playing above others of this style? That would be the story and atmosphere. It’s a genuinely touching story of a girl and her young brother, trying to survive a horrible situation. And while yes, that does mean you occasionally have to deal with “annoying child” dialogue, it’s done in a way that is understandable and ultimately lends itself to a well-executed narrative. Uncovering the secrets of why your younger brother is wanted by the Inquisition, and how it ties to the plague that has devestated the land, is the central hook, and the payoff is solid.

Over time, you’ll grow to care about Amicia and Hugo (and feel awful about how very much mentally destroyed they’ll be coming out of this), as well as the small sampling of side characters that join you on your journey. And while there is definitely room for improvement, the writing is good enough that I was invested until the very end. I do have minor gripes, however, in that the game doesn’t let things settle enough. A few side characters are around for such a short amount of time that the emotional payoffs later on in the story didn’t hit nearly as hard as they could have. This is more a fault of it’s brisk pacing and short runtime than it is of the actual storytelling. A fair trade for not spending too much time doing the same things ad nauseam to pad out the game’s length.

As far as a central antagonistic force, aside from the plague and legions of rats, the Inquisition is comically evil and it’s central villain feels ripped straight out of a Final Fantasy. The story stumbles headlong into the common post-apocalyptic trappings of “Maybe HUMANS were the real evil all along!” and it falls a bit flat at times. But, it at least gives you enough reason to very much dislike the random people you feed to rats and brain with rocks. And in the end, that’s all that it really needs to achieve since the main story is mostly about two siblings surviving a hellish nightmare landscape.

The story itself is told in a stunningly well-realized environment. Never has a plague looked so grotesque and horrifying. If you don’t want to see lovingly rendered eviscerated bodies and animals being torn to pieces on the regular, you should probably play something else. The developers did not shy away from pounding into your head that the plague sucked and was icky, and it makes the world stressful and uncomfortable to make your way through. As it should be, really.

So, did I like A Plague Tale? Absolutely. Enough that my “I’m gonna start this tonight and play for a couple hours” turned into me rolling credits at 4 in the morning. The main characters are well-acted and carry the story through abysmally disgusting and bleak environments, and the gameplay moves along without bogging you down with long, drawn out segments of samey stealth nonsense. While some aspects felt a little under-utilized, it never stops the game from being enjoyable and playable, despite occasional moments of screen-yelling when shit doesn’t work the way you want it to.

Kudos, Asobo Studio, you’ve made me sad and stomach-sick and I’m damn ready to fire up that sequel soon…

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Read My Write Up For The Sequel, A Plague Tale: Requiem, Here

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