Review: A Plague Tale: Requiem
destructoid.comAsked about “horror games”, a genre that has come into its own over the past two decades, many players will distinctly think of the visceral, the grotesque, and the physically unfathomable. These terrors can arrive in the form of mushroom-headed mutants, giant, overhead spiders, or hideous, skinless, black-eyed zombies, ready to pop up directly into your PoV with a ghastly scream in what we have coined the “jump scare”.
Boo.
But, even within scenarios set outside of our own sphere of time or reality, horror can strike much closer to home. It can be presented in its purest form, via themes of grief, regret, responsibility, and, scariest of all, the loss of one’s own capabilities, focus, and mind. I’ve never encountered a mushroom-headed mutant, but I’ve been completely terrified at the thought of a loved one in peril, or concerned that I won’t deliver in a desperate hour of need. More candidly, I frequently feel abject fear about my own ability to be who I want to be, or even the person that I need to be.
A Plague Tale: Requiem is a horror game, no doubt. But its teeming, skin-crawling swarm of black rats only represents its horror in a physical and fantastical form. Who we are, our inescapable fates, the fragility of our lives, the untold damage we can do to ourselves and others, and the irreversibility of said damage — this is also horror. And it is the horror that faces Amicia and Hugo de Rune. A horror so relatable, so tangible, so real, that it can reach out through the screen and grab hold of us, cutting deeper than any sackcloth-wearing, chainsaw-wielding madman.
A Plague Tale: Requiem (PS5 [reviewed], PC, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox Game Pass)Developer: Asobo StudioPublisher: Focus EntertainmentReleased: October
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