Game #1287: A Plague Tale - Innocence

 Unlike the plague, do not avoid this one 

 Considering how much I despise stealth sections in games you'd assume I hate stealth games, and you'd be right. Thankfully, I decided to give A Plague Tale: Innocence a try despite how much I dislike stealth, and I found one of the most interesting tales I've played in a while.

 The game tells the story of Amicia and her brother, Hugo, whom she barely knows as he spends most of the time locked inside his room due to a mysterious illness. Set in the middle ages, a plague of millions of murderous rats invade the village they are living in, and at the same time, mysterious assailants come to Amicia's village and murder her parents and servants, so she escapes alongside the brother she must now protect. What really got me into the story was the characters, since Amicia and Hugo meet a loveable bunch of rogues who'll set out with them, and it's easy to get to love all of them. The story is very bleak, there's a lot of death and injustices going about, which sold me on this vicious crapsack world. It's a well told story, and very entertaining.

 So... yeah, it's a stealth game. You play as Amicia who must carry Hugo by the hand, avoiding soldiers and rats alike. You can separate from Hugo, or other companions in a few missions, but if you stay far away from Hugo for too long he will get scared and start making noise, which makes sense and makes for an interesting mechanic! Thankfully, Amicia is not helpless in the slightest, as she is armed with a deadly sling. There's no penalty for slaying every single helmetless soldier you come around, so why don't you? You can also hit metallic stuff or throw pots to distract guards.

 But what's really interesting is that you are encouraged to explore your environment for resources that you can use to upgrade Amicia's equipment and to craft valuable alternate ammos to aid you. There's an acidic bomb that will force a guard to remove his helmet, thus allowing you to kill him, one to set torches on fire, the only way to make a safe haven from rats, one to extinguish fire and one that makes rats quickly dash toward the source of impact. Having all this tools to play with when it comes to making it towards wherever you need to made the game feel very dynamic, which I loved. And there's so much stuff to do that it makes it feel as if there are multiple ways to go about each section.

 It's also very puzzle-like, particularly when rats are involved. You might need to turn off and turn on various light sources to guide them elsewhere and thus allow you to travel without getting eaten alive. About the only part I didn't like too much was Hugo's chapter, you get to play as him once, and his chapter drags on for a little too long, and since he doesn't have all the tools Amicia has... he wasn't much fun to play as.

 I didn't think I would, but I had a lot of fun with A Plague Tale. I was fully invested in the story and seeing the whole thing threw, but adding to this, I actually found the gameplay to be fun, as all the various tools at your disposal meant that I was doing more than simply waiting for guards to move around and clear the way. It's really good! 

 8.0