A decade after The Last of Us, there is now a microgenre of imitators to pick from if that game spoke to some sort of game design you had been pining for. Imitators is perhaps not the correct diction to go with, but it is the impression you are likely to feel first whenever you pick any of these games up. The one exception may be God of War (2018), which, being a part of a series and being closer to the action/brawler genre, can somewhat obscure its true lineage. The Last of Us did a lot of things right to overcome some of the few things it did, if not wrong, less than stellar. The Last of Us certainly deserves its status, but it also cemented the Naughty Dog way of design that puts story and character over player agency. It's more of a small talking point than it is a criticism, but it is a talking point not likely to go away as the discussion on games as an art and how they should or can proceed continues on.
A Plague Tale: Innocence doesn't follow in the path laid ahead by The Last of Us, so much as it follows directly in that game's shadow. And this isn't entirely a bad thing, as games like this should probably still be made, if at the very least as a sort of baptism for those not used to games who can feel overwhelmed by all the mechanics and expectation suddenly directed at them when they still have to look down at the controller to tell what button they are pressing. In Plague Tale, you play as Amecia in the late 1300s France, where you live with your father, a local Lord, just as the black plague is starting to ravage France. The Inquisition, come over from England, has ravaged your home looking for your five-year-old brother whose illness is somehow tied with their interest in the plague. You escape your home and have to survive with your brother as the country is torn and burned, and plagued rats swarm the countryside.
The setting of A Plague Tale may strike you as more immediately interesting, as it did me. While The Last of Us had to convince me that the apocalypse - particularly one spurred by zombies, of all things - could still be interesting, Plague Tale had me in its world pretty much from the very beginning. Item descriptions will contextualize their significance or symbolism within the time frame, and taking from what would eventually lead to the Hundreds Year War is a great time and place for a video game. The historical side of things falls away as you progress, but it was an enticing set up, nonetheless.
A Plague Tale is a stealth game, with some puzzle elements. One side of this coin is far superior to the other, unfortunately, and stealthing through the game quickly becomes a slog. Your weapon of choice is a sling, which can utilize rocks or alchemical mixtures to do various things such as lighting fires, causing a caustic reaction with iron forcing soldiers to take their helmets off, or attract the hordes of rats to a location or person. The mechanics are sound enough, but rarely go past a heavily guided path where there is one or two solutions to any fight until you reach the latter part of the game, when you become so overpowered it is rather easy to simply kill almost everyone you meet. The game attempts to make up for this lack of mechanical depth by giving you multiple ways through stealth sections, but they usually amount to hiding in one patch of tall grass rather than another. The puzzle elements are far more fun and interesting, forcing you to use light to get through the rats that seem to hate the stuff. Sometimes this means lighting fires to make a path, other times quickly traversing over an area with a stick that will burn out quickly. The most inventive parts of the game have you directing beams of light and moving machines with fires on them, but they almost always have a single solution rather than giving you the mechanics and allowing yourself to make your own way.
This lack of mechanical depth is only a minor criticism, as these sorts of games certainly have their place. A Plague Tale: Innocence is also less preoccupied with gameplay as it is with environment and story. The environments in Plague Tale aren't just some of the most gorgeous environments I've ever seen in a game, they also do an extraordinary job at completing the story being told. Walking through mounds of dead bodies, or running through towns that have been aggressively quarantined fully justifies this being a game over a movie, and has so many tiny details it can be hard to take it all in on just one playthrough. The story itself is almost great, with touches here and there that may justify the more inconsistent points if you are a forgiving player. Watching as Amecia and her younger brother Hugo not only survive in such a harsh reality, but also join up with likewise displaced youths from different backgrounds is engaging to a point, and has you rooting not just for the protagonists, but for the group of misfits that make up this unconventional family of those left behind.
There are multiple themes running through Plague Tale, which makes it all the more disappointing that the game fails at several points in its story. The most obvious one is of innocence, of a generation being torn from their youth too early and forced to reckon with the havoc bestowed upon them, notably from an older generation, and mostly for religious reasoning. The plague itself has multiple sides to it, showing an intention that mimics those in power. Amecia and Hugo come from the family of a Lord, striking a harsh line between them and the rest of the group. Arthur and his sister Emelia are runaways and thieves, used to living on the streets. Roderic is a blacksmith's apprentice, under his father. Lucas is an alchemist's apprentice, pivotal to helping Hugo through his illness. The class lines drawn between them are made early on and obviously, which makes it striking when some people later in the story, of the lower class, die for the betterment of these upperclassmen. I don't think this was an intentional bit of symbolism, but it is one I couldn't help but read in the proceeds, especially when at least one of these deaths was frustratingly avoidable.
That death, in particular, was the death nail when it came to the dreaded "ludonarrative dissonance" in this game. In my last mentioning of The Last of Us, it was one of the things that game got particularly right, roping in the proposed ludonarrative dissonance into a defining character flaw, something to consider once the ending closed the story. A Plague Tale has heaps, to the point of no longer being ignorable in service of the game getting on with itself. Leaving torches behind, not grabbing torches available, or otherwise narrowing your choices in an obviously false way chip away at the believability of this world, and provoking more and more labor from you to make excuses for it all. It becomes cumbersome by the end of it all, frustrating yourself trying to go with the linearity of the game when the linear path is so contrived. There's even a moment like Atrius' turn in God of War here that is somehow less believable. The game is a minor headache, wrapped in what could have been a truly great game.
None of this is to outright vilify A Plague Tale: Innocence, a generally good game with a good story and nice characters (even if all of the side characters, save for Lucas, are rather thin). The game has been pretty wildly praised, albeit with caveats similar to mine. Your mileage will vary as to what you are willing to put up with, but A Plague Tale has enough going for it to recommend it soundly to anyone for at least a try. There are several incredible accomplishments here, most notably in its environmental design, but there is enough here to drop it down from the greatness it could have been. My last piece of advice is to play it in french, which I felt better let the world thrive. The game could use a little more help, anyway.
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