A Plague Tale: Innocence is a Harrowing Tale of Melancholy
Few developers readily made you feel quite as sad as Asobo Studio. Not to say that’s a bad thing, but it’s hard to feel cheery after seeing A Plague Tale: Innocence. How could The Black Plague have been any worse? What if the disease was accompanied by monstrous swarms of rats? Rats that eat the flesh straight off the bones of living humans. Rats that exist in such numbers they burst right from stomach of animals they’ve eaten from the inside out.
Teenage Wasteland
It’s a desolate world, and making matters even worse (somehow that is possible), is that our protagonist is a 14-year-old girl looking after her five-year-old brother. Amicia and Hugo have only each other to survive this world on the brink of collapse. Though they meet other orphans along the way, it’s this sibling bond that proves the focal point of A Plague Tale: Innocence.
The demo we were shown was very puzzle-oriented. The rats thrive in the darkness and fear light. Braziers and torches become instruments of survival for our young duo. Puzzles mostly revolved around this manipulation of light, needing the pair to work together in order to put alight new sources of safety. Be careful not to leave Hugo for too long, however. The young boy frightens in this cruel world if left alone.
There are some enemies to confront, and the manner in which you do so is vicious. The Inquisition seems hellbent on clearing out the local populations, so Amicia must fight for survival. To achieve this, she uses those monstrous rats against her foes. Using the trusty sling she keeps on her at all time, she can knock the torches out of the hand of these dangerous men. And with no light left to protect them, the rats begins their feast. Crawling on top of the men as they stand, being eaten alive. It’s a gruesome deed to be sure, but it’s a gruesome world.
A Plague Tale: Innocence comes across as an incredibly artful game. The way the rats stare at you with hunger as you’re out of the reach, the way they move almost like water. It’s incredibly unsettling. Something that really stood out to me was the physical contact between characters. Amicia holds Hugo’s hand as they walk across the bodies of a recent battle. They and their guide huddle together around the only torch in another segment. Physical contact is so rare in video games outside of cutscenes, and the touching way it’s presented here really stood out.
This game was one of the bigger surprises of the show for me. I look forward to its 2019 release with great interest. It might be the most depressing game of E3 2018, but I want to see the story of these siblings all the same. You can hear me talk more about it in our E3 2018 Day 3 Recap, starting at 46:34.
