A Plague Tale: Requiem - Exclusive Hands-On Preview
While playing two full chapters of A Plague Tale: Requiem, I felt fully immersed in the harrowing world first established in developer Asobo Studio’s original game, A Plague Tale: Innocence. The emotive storytelling, engaging mix of puzzle and stealth gameplay, and yes, truckloads of rats, still remain. But what impressed me most were the steps forward that the sequel appears to be taking in all of the above areas. With much more involved combat systems and a smarter approach to stealth, there looks set to be a lot of fun to be had amongst all the blood, rats, and tears.
Requiem picks up six months after the events of Innocence, with siblings Amicia and Hugo looking to put the horrors of their first adventure in 14th century France behind them. Predictably though, where they go, trouble swiftly follows. And in this world, trouble equals rats. Despite claiming a victory at the end of the original, all is not well with Hugo. He’s clearly not fully overcome the illness that haunts his family, and so a journey to southeast France awaits in order to hunt for a cure.
If the original Plague Tale was centred on a loss of innocence for the de Rune children, then the sequel is about them wrestling with the guilt that comes with their actions. The demise of each enemy soldier (and there were quite a few in the short section I played) that comes between Amicia and her objective weighs heavily on her mind. She’s often seen stooped to the floor with her head in her hands, questioning why this nightmare is happening around them. This isn’t too dissimilar from her reaction to killing in the first game, but this time around there are more dimensions to Amicia with a greater range of emotions expressed — namely, anger.
Halfway through my
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