A Plague Tale Innocence is a depressive game, that doesn’t want you to experience much goodness in a world that is hostile towards you and your little brother. The story, which is set in 1300 France, tells nothing particularly new and feels like something you might have seen or played already, but it’s elevated by a superb atmosphere due to great natural lighting, (especially towards the end) great sequences and set pieces and some clever tricks throughout the game, to connect you to the characters emotionally. The strings based soundtrack adds a lot to that atmosphere, it’s minimalistic when it has to be and helps get your heart rate up in other situations.
I love the fact that you are playing through the game while holding the hand of your little brother most of the time, only sometimes telling him to stay put or give him a task. It’s weird that something so little has such a huge impact on how I felt. Having him hold your hand and moving around with him at all times makes it a lot scarier to leave him behind or have him do something on his own. Sometimes you carry him and sometimes other npcs hold you and you move all together - it gives you a strong sense of responsibility.
The rats in this game are impressive from a technical standpoint and also a great way to introduce the most fun parts of the game. Especially towards the end, when you start controlling them, it’s extremely satisfying to have them on your side after they wrecked havoc for most of the game.
Sadly A Plague Tale also brought up my issues with stealth sequences in games again. The problem is, this game relies almost entirely on it and it just breaks immersion almost on every corner, because guards are as stupid as it gets. It’s not rare, that a fellow guard gets eaten alive and screams only a couple of feet away from another one and they just don’t react, keep staring at a wall or some other direction. There is basically no skill needed because you can just pick em off one by one and continue to the next area. I’ve seen this terrible AI in so many games lately and I wonder why we need those stealth elements or even entire games based on it, if nothing of that concept has changed, since maybe splinter cell. It’s just boring and uninspired and it kills all the immersion for me, if I destroy and entire camp because they just don’t care.
I want to play stealth games, but they need to be challenging and with a great AI. Until then just stop doing the same thing over and over again PLEASE.
It’s unfair to rant about it in a review for this game solely, because basically all games with stealth elements are guilty. But yeah, I had to let it out.
Otherwise the game has a lot going for it and I’m pretty sure it’s enjoyable for fans of dark story driven games.
I’m glad I finally got to playing it and I’m excited to see where the next game will take us.
I love the fact that you are playing through the game while holding the hand of your little brother most of the time, only sometimes telling him to stay put or give him a task. It’s weird that something so little has such a huge impact on how I felt. Having him hold your hand and moving around with him at all times makes it a lot scarier to leave him behind or have him do something on his own. Sometimes you carry him and sometimes other npcs hold you and you move all together - it gives you a strong sense of responsibility.
The rats in this game are impressive from a technical standpoint and also a great way to introduce the most fun parts of the game. Especially towards the end, when you start controlling them, it’s extremely satisfying to have them on your side after they wrecked havoc for most of the game.
Sadly A Plague Tale also brought up my issues with stealth sequences in games again. The problem is, this game relies almost entirely on it and it just breaks immersion almost on every corner, because guards are as stupid as it gets. It’s not rare, that a fellow guard gets eaten alive and screams only a couple of feet away from another one and they just don’t react, keep staring at a wall or some other direction. There is basically no skill needed because you can just pick em off one by one and continue to the next area. I’ve seen this terrible AI in so many games lately and I wonder why we need those stealth elements or even entire games based on it, if nothing of that concept has changed, since maybe splinter cell. It’s just boring and uninspired and it kills all the immersion for me, if I destroy and entire camp because they just don’t care.
I want to play stealth games, but they need to be challenging and with a great AI. Until then just stop doing the same thing over and over again PLEASE.
It’s unfair to rant about it in a review for this game solely, because basically all games with stealth elements are guilty. But yeah, I had to let it out.
Otherwise the game has a lot going for it and I’m pretty sure it’s enjoyable for fans of dark story driven games.
I’m glad I finally got to playing it and I’m excited to see where the next game will take us.