A Plague Tale | Console Games

Today, there are many remakes of great games from the past being released but that doesn’t mean the only good games worth playing are remakes. A year ago, there was a game released for PS4 and XBox One called A Plague Tale: Innocence. This was a game that had a story I never experienced before in video games but the gameplay was familiar and fun.

The story takes place in France in the year 1348. You play as a girl named Amicia who has a brother named Hugo that has been sick since the day he was born. The mother spends all her time taking care of her son. The mother ignores you when you tell her about the rumbling that you and your father experienced in the woods. Right after that, soldiers from the English Army invade Amicia’s home with orders to take the boy away and kill everyone else when the family won’t give up their son willingly. The rest of the chapter is Amicia trying to sneak off the property with her brother Hugo without alerting the soldiers searching the house and property.

One big part of the gameplay is stealth. In some parts of the game, if you are seen by a soldier, you will be pursued then killed. There are some parts of the game where you must sneak from point A to point B without being seen. Sometimes, there will be something metallic in the background that you could throw a rock at, and if the soldier hears this noise, he’ll walk away from his normal patrol route to investigate the noise.

It would be a lie to claim that there is no combat in the game. The end of the second chapter will have you in an enclosed area with one enemy and you have to hit him in the head by flinging rocks with your sling. You can craft different items to attack if you have the right ingredients. Some examples are an item that when it hits a soldier wearing the helmet, the helmet will become too hot to continue wearing and the soldier will have to remove his helmet as quickly as possible which will make him someone you can knock out with one rock to the head. You can also craft a sleeping powder that will put any enemy to sleep that is hit in the face with it.

The soldiers are not the only enemies you have to worry about. Through the entire game, there will be rats in the darkest parts of the level that you can only hold back with light and fire. There will be another item you can craft which will lure rats out of your way if you don’t have a light source to fend them off. You also will be able to craft something that will extinguish enemy fires if you want to use the rats to take out your enemies.

While you couldn’t let enemies see you for most of the game, there were chase scenes at the beginning of the game. When you get off your property, soldiers know you are in the woods nearby so you have to run through the woods trying to reach the doctor’s place where your mother told you to go for help. As you run through the woods, you hear soldiers shouting while they are trying to find you. There is another scene in the second chapter where a town is afraid of your brother and you hear shouting from citizens as you run by while people are scared of your younger brother.

During the game, you also see a relationship grow between Amicia and her younger brother Hugo. They barely know each other at the beginning of the game but throughout the game, Hugo learns to trust his older sister and that relationship comes into play near the beginning of the final chapter. I don’t want to spoil what happens that far into the game for people reading this who haven’t played the game yet.

I have played a lot of video games in my life. All that it took to hook me was the first chapter which I got to play for free when I downloaded the trial version of the game. By the time I completed the trial, I had no doubts about wanting to experience the full game. It is a rare occasion when a game hooks me like that as fast as it did. I recommend anyone who has a PS4, XBox One, or PC to try out this game because this is one game that doesn’t get as much attention as it deserves.