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Spoilers kept under Spoiler tag below. All images taken from Asobo Studio’s official website

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A Plague Tale: Innocence Write-Up

Making a sequel to a game that didn’t necessarily need one is always a huge risk. Not every story or concept needs to be made into a franchise. Not only does it run the risk of diminishing returns, but it also comes with a chance of over-indulging in what made the original game good. While some games carry a set-up that leaves the world open for more stories, some simply stand on their own. I’d put the original A Plague Tale: Innocence firmly into the “didn’t need” catagory. The story ended with a definitive cap to everything it presented, even if the gameplay left a lot of room for refinement.

Thankfully, A Plague Tale: Requiem not only continues the story of Amicia and Hugo in a sensical way, but expands on the lore and emotional connection of the previous adventure in equal measure. It also manages to take all the established foundational gameplay elements and perfectly fixes them up in just about every way I’d hoped for.

The core game is still very much in tact: stealth your way through a bleaker than bleak world as you try to find a way to save Hugo from the Macula that curses his blood. While it does add in some new elements in the form of Uncharted-esque chase sequences and more upfront action, it doesn’t try to go too far away from what made the original work. And what’s more, it took almost every minor gripe I had with the original and fixed it in ways that genuinely showed awareness and desire to improve. Instead of going through the game in full, I’m going to take a closer look at some of the points I made in my review of the first game and how Asobo Studio built off of and constructed better systems around them.

One of my biggest problems with the first game was it’s scare resources and how you used them. Everything you picked up served a dual purpose as crafting tools and expanding your skillset with upgrades. With how little there was to find, you basically had to choose between using the items given to you, or improving your own capabilities. Thankfully, this game split the resources into two different types. Ones used for ammo and tools, and ones used for the building up. This made it so I never felt like I had to limit myself and what I could use to get out of a situation. While this does take away some of the resource management, it cuts down on the fear of missing out on everything the game had to offer. Some may like this, some may not.

It’s good too, because the stealth sequences are far better than in the original. Instead of feeling like a fairly straight-foward linear walk with little need to actually plan how to get through, the stealth sections are far more open ended and lengthy this time around. The environments are larger, more complex, with increased guards, and more intricate paths and tactics you can take to get around them. This allows you to spend more time scoping out your surroundings and plotting your way through. Adding a in-universe vision system which allows you to see where nearby enemies are also lends itself to a more methodical approach. No longer are you trying to figure out what the game expects you to do, replaced by actually getting to build the gameplay around your style of play.

Building off the back of that is a new skill-tree system which tracks your approach and gives you new abilities based on how often you do certain actions. If you spend more time braining fools with your sling or feeding them to rat hordes, you get some more battle abilities. If you pick through the environments and sneak through most encouncters, leaving everyone to die another day, you get a set of stealth skills which make you even sneakier. These are balanced just enough that you never feel like you’re missing out, even if you lean more heavily in one direction than another.

One of my other major hangups from Innocence was the brisk pacing causing some of the elements of the game to feel half-baked and under developed. With the run time being nearly double that of the original, that becomes far less of a problem. Things are given more time to breath, both in terms of gameplay and story. You spend far more of the game’s run time with Hugo, as well as the various side characters, which means those emotional payoffs later in the game hit that much harder. Everything feels more important this time around thanks to the added minutes spent hanging around the environments, taking in details and talking to your friends and family.

There was definitely more focus on the storytelling in Requiem, with more walking sessions allowing you to embrace the communities you become apart of, and subsequently watch fall to the Bite. Every character is given time to shine through far more conversational dialogue and cutscenes focusing on the backstories and conflicts within everyone you meet. This makes the old characters feel closer, and the new characters feel like perfect additions. Particually Sophia, she’s a straight boss and one of my favorite characters in the series.

Overall, the game constructs a more lived-in world and fleshed out characters to subject to the horrors of the Bite and the antagonistic forces pushing back against our young protagonists feel more menacing and complicated than the Inquisition in the original. While there are a couple parts of the game that feel like padding, with the Slavers and Beekeepers in particular feeling kinda just there to show you how much people suck, the main villainous groups are given time to really shine. By the game’s end, you have nothing but deep hate for the main threat and cannot wait to take them down. Now, you feel more motivated than ever for make Amicia wade through the viscera and gore, the violence and trauma, because she has a real reason to push on. And that brings us to the game’s final act…

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SPOILERS FOR END GAME

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Throughout the narrative, we watch as Amicia becomes increasingly desperate, losing herself to the violence of the world around her. Early on, she goes on a rampage that scares her friends and family and puts her down a self-destructive path that threatens to destroy her from within. Watching her flip from loving sister to brutal warrior is jarring and upsetting. She makes terrible decisions out of rage at her own powerlessness to the grander scale of what is going on around her. Her growing love and compassion for her brother’s plight drives her to the brink of madness. All of this is deliberate to make the ending hit that much harder.

As Hugo slowly loses himself to the Macula within, he begins to question if him living is even the right thing. Every beautiful thing he gets to see, every kind person he gets to meet, ends up being inadvertantly destroyed by Hugo himself, which weighs incredibly heavy on his heart. Watching this child succumb to the fear that he himself is an unstoppable monster, a blight on the world, only drives Amicia that much more to try and find a cure. It’s heartbreaking to watch both of these characters we have watched forced into early maturity suffer with their own inner turmoil and the impact their strength has on everyone around them.

The end game finds Hugo’s powers fully out of control, leaving Amicia to have to make the ultimate decision: continue to allow Hugo to overwhelm the world with his power, or give in to his desires to die so he doesn’t have to watch the world he loves continue to fall apart at his own hands. It’s horrendous watching a 5 year old child come to the decision that he cannot be allowed to live. It was such a bold and daring direction to take a story. Most games would give us a happy ending, having them find a cure and save Hugo and the world equally.

This is not that game.

The final chunk of the game, after you’ve dealt with the Pagan society that worships the idea of the Macula bloodline, and the evil Count hellbent on revenge for destroying said cult, you are left with one final antagonist: Hugo himself. Having completely lost control of his power and levelling an entire city (well, technically multiple cities and an entire island…), Amicia makes one final bid to save her brother.

Arriving at the very heart of Hugo’s power, Amicia battles unspeakable horrors to reach him. Only to have him beg and plead with her to realize what needs to be done, for herself as well as Hugo. He makes her realize that sometimes, you can’t win the fight, that she is going to be consumed by her desire to always battle her way through. Amicia comes to terms with the fact she isn’t invincible and is allowed to grieve, to rely on others, to fail. The final decision she has to make is to give in to Hugo’s wish: to die.

Walking through memories of all the happiness and wonder that Hugo has sadly destroyed, Amicia finally arrives at her brother, now fully overcome with the Macula curse. And is forced to kill him. The entire section is visually spectacular, equally beautiful and nightmarish. With some of the best art direction I’ve ever seen in a video game. And it’s told in such a masterful way that the final moments really hit hard. Amicia’s painstacking cries of love as she finally ends the destruction and sadness hurt for the player just as much as they hurt the character. You’ve spent so much time trying to find an answer, only to have to make the worst decision possible.

It’s not a happy ending. But it’s one that is earned nonetheless. This only works because of how much time is spent absorbing this world and living with it’s characters. The emotional impact is built up and torn down around you. It’s impactful, sad, and an important lesson. And because of all this, it’s a game I’ll never be able to fully shake.

While it still has some issues here or there, it’s far from perfect, it’s still a wonderfully designed narrative game that leaves a lasting impression. It has now made it’s way into my Top 100 favorite games due to how strong of a final act it contains. A must-play game for anyone that isn’t afraid to feel a bit of loss and pain in their life. Even if it’s hard to come to terms with that part of life, it’s important that we do. That inevitability is part of existence, and this game is an important lesson in humility, and love.