A Plague Tale: Requiem review – an essential Game Pass encore, in sickness and in health
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During the Dutch revolt from 1566 to 1648, there was a cruel Geuzen general named Diederik Sonoy who allegedly used rats as a method of torture on captured troops. He would take a hungry rat, a ceramic bowl, and charcoal embers from a nearby fire and show them to the accused. The rat, intentionally starved and kept separate from other creatures, would be placed on the naked body of a prisoner. The bowl was placed on the rat and the coals were added on top. The rat nibbled at the victim’s entrails as he desperately tried to escape. Most of the time, the rat and the prisoner died. The destruction of the rat in an attempt at self-preservation was in vain.
that is what A Plague Tale: Requiem it feels like; your leading duo, Amicia and Hugo, are the rats. They traverse a path of almost unbelievable destruction through 14th-century France as they flee, terrified, from death and disease they cannot shake. They wreak havoc on the frail body of a country torn apart by war, pestilence, famine and death. Cruelty and inhumanity push them forward as the world crumbles behind them, and in trying to be kind, they cause some of the most horrific damage you’re likely to see in a video game this year.
A Plague Tale: Requiem isn’t for the faint-hearted, and not just because of the 300,000 rats the developers can summon on screen at once. The central story is a bleak reflection of a human race that is inherently cruel. It’s a story about how even the brightest and most caring of us can be pushed to their limits and become unhinged; violent, discontented and barbaric. It’s a game that is aware of what it makes you do, how it makes you kill, even if you don’t want to, and pulls on that guilt to make you and your characters suffer. In A Plague Tale: Requiem, you are the rat forced through the body of a France that knows only pain, and you will find that you cannot stop eating, no matter how much she hurts you.
This painfully desperate story is brought to life by the exemplary acting skills of Charlotte McBurney, who plays the player character, Amicia, supported by big-name actors like Kit Connor (whom you may know from Netflix’s Heartstopper) and others. Developer Asobo Studio, who you’ll know from Microsoft Flight Sim, has also done top-notch work with the animation and rigging; there are times when the facial expressions are so good that you forget you’re playing a game and might be convinced it’s a specialized CGI movie, or something. One moment in particular, where Amicia recalls a violent outburst that will have dire consequences in the days to come, she really showed how cunning Asobo is with his technology. Amicia’s eyes glaze over as she dissociates, before refocusing and refocusing on the present.
Between a moving script and emphatic cinematic moments like this, you’re tempted to put Requiem on par with even Sony’s monoliths: God of War, The Last of Us, A Plague Tale: Requiem. It’s an unlikely trilogy, but somehow this double-A gem’s punches land just as hard as its genre-defining peers. But all that focus on storytelling, historical detail, and visual fidelity means there are little blind spots elsewhere.
This is a bigger undertaking than its prequel, A Plague Tale: Innocence, and by quite a bit. Some chapters are more open-ended than anything the series has done before (and to great effect; messing around with a windmill puzzle before sneaking up on a forbidden shrine, all of which can be seen from some open, cloud-filled fields). flowers is a remarkable feat), but in doing so, the tightness of Innocence’s well-curated stealth conundrum crumbles, like a viaduct collapsing under the weight of some 300,000 rats.
Requiem makes you kill. And he kills you too. But Asobo never does it with a sadistic eye: this is not Edios’ mean-spirited Tomb Raider. In death, he is learned. Maybe it was a pack of rats that got you when you misjudged how long your fickle torch would last. Or maybe it was a guard who saw you a second too late and impaled you on his spear. But next time, he knows how to approach this part of the world: maybe he’ll find some grass to hold his breath when a patrol passes by, or maybe he’ll use his meager resources to fire up a bunch of rats to allow him safe passage.
The sheer stealth, forced on you often, is readable, engaging, and lives up to the fantasy of being a despondent teenager who will do anything to save her troubled brother. But as the world continues to hurt Amicia, she becomes determined to hurt him back; knives, crossbows and lethal takedowns are now part of her repertoire. For better and for worse. Narratively, killing countless thugs for hire by feeding them to rats or throwing rocks at their heads really works; it is not a narrative dissonance of Lara Croft (2013). Your allies dimly understand your rage, your perverse desire to kill, your enjoyment of it. You even print it on them, sometimes. The rat must be fed, after all.
It just doesn’t always make sense in the game. Some parts of Requiem are more open world; there is a goal at the end, and you need to get there. Will you use the rats to open a path? Will you kill everyone on the way? Or will you sneak all the way? The choice is often yours, and often, like all good stealth games, your impromptu strategy will burn down in a flurry of torches, raised voices, and blood. But trying to force stealth mechanics, combat, guest character abilities, ‘the floor is lava’ systems, and light/dark physical challenges into a single matchup, the game sometimes feels like a goose bump. , tied and force-fed, the results come out more like offal than foie gras.
However, apart from the cumbersome and overloaded choose-your-own-adventure sections, the game knows the pace. Easily doable in 18 hours (at a fast pace), Requiem is never far behind and cleverly uses Uncharted-like downtime to present you with a beautiful, richly detailed world that always feels on the brink of annihilation. The most human of what is at stake, the life of your dear brother, is continually compared with the lives of other humans, other living beings, yours… and the fear with which you watch as Amicia walks through it all. , becoming more and more. independent and unhinged, it’s as compelling as any piece of cinema you’d see in Cannes or Tribeca.
Rats often incarnate in their despair; like creatures that would wear down their own claws scratching desperately to survive, or eat the warm, moist flesh of a living person in the blind hope of seeing freedom once more. Requiem feels like a game that’s not just based on rats, but based on them. Question: ‘what would it be like if the rat under the bowl had consciousness’? And his commentary on the nature of humanity, and how similar we may or may not be to mindless, chattering vermin, will stay with me for years to come. Asobo should be proud of what he accomplished in this game, as depressing and exciting as it is.
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