"A Plague Tale: Innocence" Review - La vie en Rats

Available for: Playstation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows

Reviewed for: Playstation 4

Because most of my google searches deal with games and the game industry, I tend to get a lot of random advertisements for games I'd never heard of while I'm browsing Facebook. These games are usually bottom-of-the-barrel PS4 RPGs with a 60-70 on Metacritic and a budget allowing only for promotion via Facebook ads, so I never tend to pay them any mind. Enter A Plague Tale: Innocence one day in my Facebook feed. It was one of those games I'd only seen promoted via Facebook, I'd never seen any sort of marketing material beforehand, and what's more, it was published by Focus Home Interactive. A Plague Tale had all the building blocks of a forgettable game that I'd see advertised then never think of again. However, within the subsequent weeks, critics that I follow were starting the give the game attention, so I thought I'd give it a shot. I tell you what, dear reader, we must be living in some twisted alternate reality. Why? Because I never would've dreamed there'd come a time when a game by Bioware would be one of the year's worst games, while a game published by Focus Home Interactive (of all companies) would be one of the year's best!
Welcome back to the broken leg review saga, the review saga that likely has been called many things due to the fact that I've been under the influence of hydrocodone for the vast majority of its runtime. The leg is no longer busted, but I'm not quite through physical therapy yet and I still can't walk unassisted, so the saga continues despite not having an entirely accurate name anymore! Before I go on and start going into detail about this game, I'd like to give the following disclaimers:
1) I won't be discussing story spoilers per-se, but I will be discussing some relatively late-game situations. Also, I will be discussing slight story spoilers for some other stories, namely that of a show that has been airing this year (though probably not the one you just thought of).
2) I have this thing where if a "realistically rendered" property (be it game, show, film, etc) takes place in a location where the characters would speak another language, I prefer the dialogue to be in that language. So, though the two minutes of english voice acting I heard came with bearable french accents, I played all but the first minute or two of this game in french, so it's possible my experience was slightly different from yours. It's possible that the english voice acting is terrible and would cause me to take off a point, but I wouldn't know, in other words.
Now that those are out of the way, let's get this show on the road! So sit back, break out your wine and cheese, and allow me to break down what makes A Plague Tale: Innocence so great.

A Plague Tale: Innocence takes place in 14th Century France, through the eyes of Amicia de Rune, the first-born daughter of a minor nobleman and a brilliant alchemist. One day, the Inquisition arrives on the de Rune doorstep in search of Amicia's younger brother, Hugo, and the siblings flee from the life they knew in search of those who might have the answers as to what makes Hugo worth searching for. Because this game is mostly story-based, that's about all the plot details I can give, but rest assured, this story is quite good. It isn't going to bring you to tears, but neither does it try to. Rather than use cheap emotional tactics to make you weep, this game instead focuses on telling a story that's believable yet consistently surprising in its scope and events. This is a game that made me go, "whoa, didn't expect that!" a number of times. I'd like to harp on the idea that this game doesn't try to make you cry for just a little longer. Usually when a game has you caring for a child you're meant to be invested in, it does everything in its power to wrench the tears out of you, but not A Plague Tale. Even in the moments when it would've been both easy and believable to go for the gut punch, the game chooses to go a different route. What do I mean? Well, this is a game that exposes both its leads (both of whom are quite young, with Amicia being 15 at the oldest, though I'd suspect younger) to traumatic subject matter, and it does so both tastefully and effectively. The situation that comes to mind is a level that sees Hugo navigating the halls of a torture chamber. Any other game with a tone this grim would have an easy path forward to provoke a negative emotional reaction from the player. In this level, Hugo is attempting to help someone he cares about escape, so the obvious dark path would be to have him watch this person being hurt, eventually get them out, and leave the dungeon as a hollow shell of his former self that makes us weep for the loss of innocence. If not that, then the other obvious dark path would be just to have him witnessing some stranger being hurt, then putting two and two together that it'll happen to the person he's there to rescue. But A Plague Tale chooses neither of these paths and instead decides to subject Hugo to this subject matter with context, not demonstration. What ends up happening is that Hugo finds his target, then slips into the torture chamber to find cell keys. While in the chamber, the arm of the Inquisition tells the guards to get ready to put the hurt to the character in question. As Hugo sneaks around the guards, he overhears them talking. He knows that they're talking about hurting this character, but they don't actually give details. Rather, he hears things like "Let's see...saw, hammer, firebrand...am I forgetting anything?" without details as to how those instruments would be used. When the guards finally leave the room, Hugo is left to look upon the dead bodies who passed away during torment. As he passes by bodies sawed in half and otherwise mutilated, he just chants to himself "don't look, don't look" with fear in his voice. In this way, the game exposes Hugo, at the oldest a 5 year old boy, to truly terrifying content in such a way that he fully gets the picture, but it does so in a way that isn't cheap, and it's all the more effective as a result.
To further drive this point home (because I think one example from one story isn't enough), I'd like to go off the beaten path to discuss how one of this year's best shows, an anime called Dororo, handles one of its reveals in a similar fashion. Feel free to skip ahead if you don't care or want to avoid spoilers, but I think some degree of comparison always helps with points like this. At the story arc in question, titular hero Dororo (a young boy) ends up staying with a group of orphan children being taken care of by a young woman who sings a soothing song as she tends to the children's wounds. This story taking place during Japan's warring states period, war is rampant, but it provides opportunity, so she earns the money to care for the children by, as she puts it, helping the soldiers in a nearby camp. You or I would hear that and perhaps guess what it means, but the way the situation is framed for Dororo, one could be forgiven for assuming that this young woman, Mio, tends to the soldiers' wounds as she does for the children. One night, Dororo follows Mio to the soldiers' camp with the good intention of helping her out so that she isn't so tired the next day. When he arrives, he witnesses the actual nature of the work (prostitution, in case you didn't pick up on that) at its most utterly basic, but as it happens, Mio sings the same soothing song she sings to the children, this time with tears in her voice. In the same way that Hugo is exposed to the realities that are going to befall his target, Dororo is exposed to the realities of his new semi-big sister's work in a way that gets the point across without being cheap or overly brutal. He sees the reality of what's going on, and through the tonal change of Mio's song, he sees how much it hurts her to have to resort to this work. It's possibly a bit odd to discuss a television program to emphasize a point about a video game, but as I made my way through that torture chamber level, I couldn't help but mentally draw the similarities in execution. What's more, this segment of the game I've been discussing is but one example. Just about every chapter of this game exposes these children to some fresh new ugly side of wartime humanity, and it's consistently handled just as effectively.
Another note on the story I'd like to touch on is its historical accuracy. Though it is kind of an "alternate history" story concerning a plague that didn't happen and an Inquisition that was never formed, it maintains enough historical accuracy to be believable. It may seem like an odd thing to praise, but that matters to me. For instance, after killing a man, we see Amicia retreat into a church, make the sign of the cross, and start praying. For whatever reason, game developers love to remove historical protagonists from their social context (see the smirking atheist Ezio Auditore in Catholic-controlled Italy, for example), but in the case of A Plague Tale, Amicia is demonstrated as being a devout Catholic not once, but twice. I'm not a Catholic myself, so it isn't like I have some dog in the Catholic representation fight, but it's just an objective fact that a high-born girl of the time would've been raised Catholic, and it's just nice to see that kind of attention to detail in a game. Furthermore, there comes a point where a representative of the Catholic church comes to condemn the head of the Inquisition and excommunicate him. Normally this kind of thing is done to appease the kinds of butthurt morons who stamped their feet and cried about Joseph Seed in Far Cry 5, but in this case, the reason for it is historically accurate. They aren't there condemning the Inquisition for torturing people and purchasing human beings from the English army or anything reasonably humanistic like that. Rather, they're upset with the Inquisition because the research they're doing is too occult and close to witchcraft. Hell, this is historically before the birth of Martin Luther, so the church was probably doing a bit of torture on the side while they were running the continent-wide Indulgence scam, so it only stands to reason that occultism would be the line in the sand for them. If this game took place today it would be a different story, but for what it is, I've gotta hand it to the story team: they really went above and beyond to make this game as historically accurate as possible within their plot constraints.

But A Plague Tale isn't 100% story, so there's more gameplay to it than the kinds of 100% story games that David Cage would put out. If the game were to describe itself, it would likely wear the label of "stealth," and that's about as close as we can get to narrowing it down. However, while most stealth games are super open-ended, A Plague Tale is more or less a linear railroad with the illusion of openness. That isn't a bad thing, in fact, this is a good example of how to do linear, semi-railroaded gameplay well. There are a couple situations you'll find yourself in:
1) stealth segments with Inquisition guards
In these segments, your goal is to get to a certain point without being spotted by guards (and if you do get spotted, you'll have to take them out quickly to avoid being spotted by the whole garrison on the level). You'll use rocks in your sling and pots scattered throughout the level to distract your enemies while you sneak by, and that's about the long and short of it. The game has very specific ideas about how you'll get past the guards, and thankfully, it isn't like an adventure game. What the game has in mind is usually quite obvious, and even when it isn't, the ambiguity makes it just challenging enough to make you think a little bit, but not so challenging that you ever get stuck. The same goes for the rest of these segments.
2) combat segments with Inquisition guards
These are few and far between, however, it's worth noting that it's in these segments where the game's biggest flaw comes in. When you enter into combat, you'll either be trying to hit enemies in the head with your sling, hit enemies in the head with a crafted chemical that makes them take off their helmets then hit them in the head with the sling, or extinguish fires around them to get them eaten by rats. The feedback from the sling is always satisfying, and the enemy numbers/types are varied in such a way that they can always be dealt with, but the issue is that every death you face is cheap. You're always killed in one hit, and when an enemy gets too close to you, you get locked in the death animation, so even if you loose the sling at the last minute, you'll end up dying. It's not an incredibly prevalent issue (you won't die very often), but the few deaths you face will always feel cheap.
3) environmental puzzle segments with rats
These segments have you crafting materials to either light fires, extinguish fires, or draw the attention of the rats. Like the stealth segments, these segments are laid out with a clear vision of success in mind, and that vision is almost always obvious.
4) segments combining all the previous three.
These are typically the most challenging of the levels, but as I've said, it's never so challenging that you'll be stuck.
So if you're looking for a real headscratcher of a puzzle game, A Plague Tale isn't it, but if you want engaging-if-linear gameplay that fills the gap between story moments nicely, you'll have a field day.

But lest we forget, this is a game published by Focus Home Interactive, the go-to for all the jankiest technical packages in the game industry. So, how does A Plague Tale fare by that standard? Well, I have to say, this is definitely the strongest technical game ever published by this company. Not only are the graphics, textures, and character models absolutely stunning, but the framerate is also consistent and the animations are smooth! This is made all the more stunning by the fact that it all remains true during the rat segments. If you've ever seen video of the rat segments, you'll know what I'm talking about. There are thousands upon thousands of individual rats all moving at different speeds in different areas and in different directions at any given time, and they occasionally band together to start moving in the same direction. The fact that this game manages to keep a stable framerate with that kind of technical load is nothing short of phenomenal. Furthermore, while the soundtrack isn't particularly memorable, it's the kind of fitting period-accurate string affair that makes the atmosphere work even if I won't be putting it on in the car anytime soon. Now, it isn't all good. Sometimes the controls can feel just the slightest bit stiff, and the checkpoints can be a little annoying when they start before a cutscene that precedes a combat segment, but these are the only technical issues in a game published by a company known for their technically janky products...or, let me put it this way: A Plague Tale: Innocence is stronger technically than Days Gone was, and with presumably a couple million fewer dollars in budget.

Nearly everybody whose opinion I've sought out has said that A Plague Tale: Innocence is worth the money and time it takes, and I'm here today to echo that sentiment. Obviously, isn't going to be for everyone. If you're the kind that can only play fast-paced action games or that'll be bored to tears by a slower gameplay speed and more focus on story, you'll probably want to pass this one by. But if you're the type who can appreciate some linear gameplay that works in service of a great story, then you owe it to yourself to play A Plague Tale. For your money you're getting a story that handles its content well and keeps its historical realities straight and a gameplay model that strikes a satisfying balance between hand holding and challenging. A Plague Tale: Innocence is simply one of the best games to come out this year, and I'm glad that, unlike every other game that passes through my Facebook feed, I didn't blow this one off.

Let us review:
Cheap deaths, infrequently - 0.5
Technical issues - 0.3

The final score for A Plague Tale: Innocence is...




9.2/10 - Fantastic
Excellent work, Asobo Studio, excellent work!