A Plague Tale: Innocence Review

For younger children, much of the plot consists of Amicia and Hugo sneaking around the base. Human enemies are only a small part of the Plague Tale, but in the next generation version of the game the rats are terrifying and the real star of the series. Not only do they add more than just a healthy dose of horror, they also have an intense aversion to light, and this aversion acts as an important piece of the puzzle in the game.

The dynamic between the two orphans, Amicia and Hugo, shines through against a gloomy backdrop of the corpses of Inquisition soldiers and the blood of thousands of bubonic plague-carrying rats. Once the rats are introduced, both must avoid them at all costs and start fires as they make their way away from them. In A Plague Tale, Amicia learns some useful alchemical skills related to fire and rats, such as ignition locks that can be hurled or thrown into a lantern or fireplace to create a safe zone in the distance, as opposed to the ability to extinguish the flames of SICC rat soldiers chasing you.

These themes drive the story in an interesting direction that is reflected in the gameplay. A Pest Tale does an admirable job of making its young protagonist vulnerable and surrounded by danger, and while moving him in stealth gameplay from the perspective of a third person, the puzzles seem imaginative.

The best thing about Pest Tale is the way it weaves gameplay into the plot. Cutscenes are strong narrative moments, like the one that happens at the beginning of the game, where you watch Amicia and Hugo as helpful friends deal with a terrible situation. They talk and strategize, and they never stop shaking hands throughout the whole thing.

The game, set in a victorian time in 14th-century Aquitaine during the Hundred Years War, focuses on the plight of Amicia de Rune and her terminally ill brother Hugo, who flee the French Inquisition Soldiers and a Horde of Rats that spread the Black Plague. As the rats invade France, they target parts of the emotional beings and souls of the Amicias and Hugos, creating a sense of unease that shatters their innocence while forcing them to perform actions that begin to drown the purity of their childhood. Through them, the players not only sense the horrors of the threat posed by the rodents through the eponymous eyes of Innocence, but also those of the Inquisition, which Hugo seems to abduct for unknown reasons.

The player controls Amicia de Rune, which uses a combination of invisibility cloaks and limited tools to hide, distract and eliminate soldiers, to escape from the rat hoard and solve puzzles that contain elements of survival horror games. It is equipped with slingshots to throw stones, break chains to create distractions, stun guards with rats and ambush them, and it can kill enemies with head shots if unprotected. French Inquisition troops, led by Black Knight Lord Nicholas, arrive in the estate of de Rune to search for Hugo, who was executed, and Robert, who has been slaughtered by a family servant.

Pest Tale plays Amicia, a young girl who lives with her family on a large estate in medieval France. Although she is close to her father, the early scenes show the two together hunting and she sees her mother who spent her time looking for a cure for Amicia's brother Hugo, who suffers from a mysterious illness. Their home is destroyed, for the first time since Faye Atreus (Kratos, God of War) died in the Santa Monica Studios game, but the story goes on with a gentle beat despite their growing intimacy.

Due to illness, little Hugo leads a sheltered life among strangers, but when his sister is about to die, it is up to her to protect him at all costs. A Pest Tale opens with a heartbreaking intro, a linear stealth action adventure in which the siblings sneak through the family estate while Inquisition soldiers short-circuit their loved ones.

Hugo's disobedience is a real source of frustration in the game and a lot of Amicia's character growth depends on how she handles it. The best way to climb is with smaller Hugos, who go with you and help you open new passages and squeeze through openings his sister doesn't fit through.

At the end of the game is a fantastic, rough-hewn set of additional skills, puzzles and considerations that reveal a side of the rodent plague that I will not spoil here, but it is there, and suffice it to say that it is worth the journey. The obvious comparisons to The Last of Us, the poignant apocalyptic escapades of old characters led by innocent souls whose blood is touched by fate, and the practice (in the absence of chainsaws) of plague fairy tales as an epic game come to mind. The biggest shock is that Plague Tale is designed on its level as a war game.

Although there are a few problems with the handling of the minor characters of the stories, the bottom line of the story of the game is well written and no less fantastic. Innocence is a new and inspired title set during the spread of the Black Plague in the midst of a century-long war in France and at its heart a story about two brothers called Hugo and Amicia who cling together to survive the dangers of 1349 in France, including an invading English army, swarms of rats carrying the plague, and above all, a sinister and mysterious cult called the Inquisition, which has separated from the rest of the Christian.