A Plague Tale: Innocence (2019) came as a total surprise: nobody knew that Asobo Studio had the talent for such a particularly gripping story about two children in times of illness and war, a strong historical youth novel in game form. Teenager Amicia de Rune’s quiet life is disrupted in 1348 when her young brother, Hugo, is born with a supernatural power that is swallowing him from within. During the oppressive Innocence the De Runes learn that this power is linked to the devastating plague that grips the French region of Guyenne – rats that move as one creature, poisoning everything they don’t eat.
Innocence dies in this second part, and the agony is long. Requiem grabs you by the heart, tearing bits off along the way, just like it cuts Amicia and Hugo to shreds. The urge to protect her brother at all costs destroys Amicia: she becomes traumatized, her anger becomes increasingly difficult to control. Where a deadly attack in Innocence was still an act of desperation, Amicia here increasingly loses her grip on her own desire for revenge, and Hugo with her. The further you progress, the more often the game asks you: how many people can you sacrifice for the life of one child?
Bigger and nicer than part one
Time and again brother and sister land in beautiful towns and villages, where the color and zest for life of the medieval man – often forgotten in fiction – is smeared on your screen in detail. And time and again there is the fear: you know that sooner or later these lives will be overrun by tens of thousands of rats, in impressive scenes that make full use of the technical power of the new generation of game computers. Still, you keep hoping that things will go well now.
But the answer is inexorable. Soon Amicia is again walking through the war zone with sling in hand. With a stone you open a lock, with a bundle of chemicals you light the fires that keep the rats at a distance, with a crossbow you kill a human. Sometimes you try to sneak past soldiers, then again you try to maneuver through a room full of rats. The areas are bigger and more beautiful than part one, but the core remains the same: they are puzzles that require brainpower and reflexes, strung together throughout the story. Depending on the time, things get a bit monotonous for the player – especially towards the end, where one climactic battle follows another.
However, it is quite difficult to A Plague Tale: Requiem to put down. Amicia de Rune is a dogged heroine who doesn’t like to let go – she drags Hugo and us into the depths.