A Plague Tale: Innocence (2019)

Games
#47

I started playing this morning before work. I played through the first Chapter.

Initial impression:. What a great start. Not only setting the game in the time of the plague, but then starting with a family with a special needs child, a sister jealous of her mother’s attention towards the child, a mysterious and very dangerous looking antagonist, and a tragic opening chapter. I love it. And it’s so gorgeous too, and I love the camera work, the audio and the lighting choices in each scene which seem designed by a person with a great eye for setting a scene.

#48

There’s some seriously impressive level design in the second chapter, too. A very complex environment, but super readable and well-channeled.

#49

Quick question: From what I gather this is a narrative story on rails with some interactive elements in it (her slingshot, rats, light n dark mechanics…) So is it mechanically similar to Last of Us, where you have a narrow path that winds through various environments?

#50

For the most part yes. Some areas open up a bit but it’s all fairly constrained.

I did finish this on gamepass pc and really liked it. The story was good enough to keep me interested and the mechanics were simple but well done with just enough difficulty to keep me interested but not irritated.

#51

Just finished the game tonight on GamePass. I really really liked it. My comparison is to the Uncharted series. It’s a similar kind of scripted linear game with some stealth and some action bits, but leans heavily on character, tone, and narrative. I liked all of the characters, and their French accents are all awesome. I’m really impressed that they used an actual little kid to voice Hugo (and teenagers for the other roles), and all of those accents are acted (the actors are British.) Some truly impressive voice work here.

Anyway gorgeous, gorgeous environments, really good sound design, amazing voice acting, endearing characters, solid historical detail, a narrative that never lets up, gameplay that never gets boring, and a game length that is just long enough to be satisfying without overstaying its welcome. This isn’t the most original game to come along, but it’s a really good one.

#52
#53

That’s a strange article. It puts major spoilers before the spoiler warning and proceeds to just summarize the narrative from then on. It’s less criticism than it is a Wikipedia article.

#54

Yeah, I stopped reading pretty early, since it felt spoilery. Sad to hear it doesn’t have much commentary to add. Sorry for posting it everyone.

#55

I thought Plague Tale was pretty good, but it didn’t strike me as much of a horror game, certainly nothing like any of the Dead Space games. It’s way more in the style of stealth games except as compared to the Thief games, where going out of the dark can you get spotted, going into the dark can get you eaten. So I guess you could think of it as a modern update of the Zork games.

#56

Yeah, there’s certaily horrific stuff in Plague Tale - that exploding cow for instance is just chef kiss - but calling it the best horror game since Dead Space is ridiculous, or just betrays the author’s lack of reference. Dead Space isn’t even that good of a horror game. It has an opening ten minutes where it waves at tension, and then it’s full-on, pedal to the metal action schlock. (Albeit pretty good action schlock.)

#57

Well, looks like this has done well so far.

July 01, 2020 A Plague Tale: Innocence hits milestone of one million copies sold

Asobo Studio and Focus Home Interactive are delighted to announce that A Plague Tale: Innocence has sold over one million copies worldwide . The acclaimed dark adventure featured prominently in many critics’ ‘Best of 2019’ lists, and was nominated at The Game Awards for Best Narrative.

#58

This is on sale on Steam for $15 for the weekend. Beautiful game.

#59

Ive bought this. Will be a while before i install though.

#60

Been playing this one on xBox One X Game Pass and I am loving it. I suspect that if the voice actors weren’t so good, it would be a far lesser experience, but their performances are absolutely amazing in bringing everything to life here. They do a great job of getting the player to view the world in all of its beauty and horror through their eyes and it brings it all to life in ways that other games just have a really tough time managing.

#61

This would have been helpful back then!

#63

Finished the game over the weekend. The atmosphere and story are beautifully done. Some of the puzzles were extremely frustrating and I nearly gave up a few times. I don’t think I’ve ever died this much in a game before. In some cases I brute-forced my way through an area only to realize afterward that there was a simple, obvious solution.

So I have a love/hate relationship with this game lol. Overall I’m glad I played it, and it looks great on the PS5.

#64

I’ve been playing this recently too! On PC. It is frustrating at times, but I always seem to manage to make progress right before I get too frustrated. I have no idea how far from the end I am, but it keeps giving you new tools, which is great.

Also, man, they really put these kids through the wringer in this game.

#65

I have a love/like relationship with the game that seems to keep me from completing it. I get going on it, really into it, then quickly fade away to something else. Part of the problem, despite loving the atmosphere, story, characters, & setting, is that I’ve gotten motion sick a couple times during running sequences, and I also find the tense sneaking situations a bit overwhelming when I’m not quite sure what I’m supposed to be doing, and the dying frustrates me (I really don’t like repeating stuff over and over when I’m mostly engaged by the story, not the difficulty of puzzling out the next moves).

It’s a very well done game, and I’d love to see more like it, but it can’t keep me glued to it. Same thing happened with The Last of Us on the PS4 and now PS5, in almost the identical manner. It’s a weird problem.

#66
#67

10/18/22. Noice.