Many times while playing Asobo Studios' interesting medieval action adventure horror "A Plague Tale: Requiem," you do everything right gameplaywise, but you lose in the cutscene or the overall arcing storyline. And while this happens with most stories that have bad or bittersweet endings, this game in particular makes it feel like a writer is heavily forcing their will into the narrative when all of your own instincts and understanding of the world they created would, and should, have resulted in a completely different result. This is why the story of "A Plague Tale: Requiem" felt unsatisfying.
The sequel to the underground hit, "A Plague Tale: Innocence," which introduces us to Amicia, our player character, and Hugo, the player's little brother. Set in a beautiful but terrifying interpretation of the 14th Century medieval period of France, where some forms of alchemy have started to emerge and the player uses them towards her goals. The game itself is gorgeous when it wants to be, and gorgeously terrifying if so. The same goes for the sequel, which is our topic for today.
Click here to reveal spoiler for Plague Tale: Innocense
In "Innocence", you (Amicia) accompanied your little brother Hugo, who is infected by an unknown disease called the Macula, have survived being chased by the Inquisition, through stealth and some necessary kills, sometimes by a supernatural power brought forth by the Macula, which is brought to a terrifying reality with rats that carry the Bubonic Plague. Ultimately, Hugo begins to have some control over the rats, and you fight a fanatic that uses the same power and defeat them - leaving the player to believe they are to try and find peace or look for a cure.
In "Requiem," we find Amicia and Hugo have survived the previous game, after dodging, fighting, and ultimately defeating a huge portion of their human enemies. As well as avoid being torn apart by the series' staple - a massive horde of rats that have powers ranging from being passive and scared of light, to overwhelming whole cities, able to destroy huge buildings, and create massive land fissures where no light is ultimately going to survive and be safe.
The quest now, is to find a secret sect of Alchemists that may know the cure to the Macula.
Now, when I told you this game has a lot of "win the fight, lose the cutscene" problems, it is essentially the whole game. You will experience some heavy losses at the hands of the writers in this game, and those moments felt completely unsatisfying.
We've all played something that ends in a terrible ending, but this felt like the plot just forces you to have such lack of satisfaction in going towards it. Midway through the game, the heavy-handed foreshadowing has already revealed the likely ending to the player, and every single moment afterwards feels like the game is just spinning its wheels towards that ending and forcing interactions that just didn't feel true to the characters you've either spent two games with by now, or even just met.
Putting us through this struggle to "defeat" this freight train that is barreling towards the ending is perfectly fine. We've seen many games and stories that end up that way, but our main issue with the game is when it forces your hand. A game that literally took your cards away, and put in a new set or way worse cards in just when you're about to play them.
Our opinion: that's not how you're supposed to make a game like this. You shouldn't take away the players' cards and say "this is your new hand of cards, now make do with it." What a satisfying game in this vein would be is when you play all your cards right - with the best possible cards in your hand, but still end up with the ending the writers intended.
That's when the ending feels right.
A Plague Tale: Requiem - is a gorgeous game, even better than most AAA titles today, though the way it forces plot onto the player feels a bit heavyhanded. We give it:
4/5 Stars, available in Consoles and PC