A Plague Tale: Requiem

[earlymodernsteve]

Finished this last night and really enjoyed it for what it was. I am an unapologetic fan of narrative games and love the setting and character work here. That being said, the mechanical side of things is mostly the same as the first game and I think that Innocence feels more focused. The RPG-esque aspects mostly seem to muddy the waters here with the sneak, kill, alchemy branches feeling like arbitrary gamifications rather than organic approaches to the environment and enemies. 

 

In terms of character, I think it really does require experience of the first game to understand, as Amicia in particular is very much a product of that game's events. Hugo's sudden switches between playful and angry/depressed feel pretty genuine for a kid and the supporting characters are fine, although most of the time their fates are far too heavily signposted. I don't know whether it's the beautiful music, my time spent with the characters, or the fact that I am struggling with another dose of Covid at the moment, but I had some major eye leakage at several points through the story.

 

There is a special hard difficulty NG+ unlocked upon completion and I'm torn as to whether to play it or not. I want to go through the early parts again and pick up details I missed but am dreading some of the combat sections. So close to 1000gs that the completion is tempting me but I would hate to spoil my memories of the game by slogging through hours of grind to finish levelling my skills.

 

TL;DR It's a worthy sequel but succumbs a bit too much to the big budget bloat.

[Stanley]

How many chapters are there? I am probably half way through 5, hope to polish it off at the weekend. 

[earlymodernsteve]

43 minutes ago, Stanley said:

How many chapters are there? I am probably half way through 5, hope to polish it off at the weekend. 

15 but some are lengthier than others. Game took me about 13 hours but that was me being  pretty thorough.

36 minutes ago, DualSense said:

these are awful really. It’s gone a bit benny hill with me at times , very silly.  The ai is terrible.  

Yep, perhaps the AI will be better in the secret difficulty level but the combat is a necessary evil rather than a highlight of the game for me.

[Stanley]

I always avoid combat and just stealth it whenever possible, although it does mean that I know I’m probably missing out on some searchable areas just to get to the next safe point. 
 

It’s also dead stingy wife knives and I never have one when I come across one of those cabinets as I use them up when I get spotted. I’ve hardly had any though. 

[earlymodernsteve]

11 minutes ago, Stanley said:

I always avoid combat and just stealth it whenever possible, although it does mean that I know I’m probably missing out on some searchable areas just to get to the next safe point. 
 

It’s also dead stingy wife knives and I never have one when I come across one of those cabinets as I use them up when I get spotted. I’ve hardly had any though. 

Spoiler

Knives are more plentiful in lower difficulty levels. Even then, it's tough to have one when you need it for the chests. I'm cleaning up collectable trophies whilst I wait for a big review game to install and some require you to play whole chapters through to find the nearest knife

 

[Rudderless]

3 hours ago, DualSense said:

these are awful really. It’s gone a bit benny hill with me at times , very silly.  The ai is terrible.  

 

Yeah, there's a bit towards the end where there's several waves of them, but the only real challenge is staving off boredom as you run around waiting for specific resources to respawn so you can take the armoured ones down.

[Opinionated Ham Scarecrow]

Jeez. More rats in this game than there is in parliament.

[Benny]

I had all 44gb of this preloaded and ready to go on my PC, only to see it needed an update on the Xbox app. Lo and behold, it's just started downloading the whole bloody thing again. The Xbox PC app is absolute trash.

[Hewson]

I am really disappointed in this. I really enjoyed the first one, partly because any game with an unusual setting is a welcome. I was hoping that a sequel was a real chance to build up to something special but they just haven’t focused on the mechanics and it’s harder to give it the same leeway second time around. It’s also really bad at signposting - most of the time it’s over emphatic and then occasionally weirdly opaque. 

 

[Majora]

Perhaps they overstretched themselves a little. They're a pretty small studio and I have no idea how they're structured but they put out a sequel to A Plague Tale in 3 years in addition to making Microsoft Flight Simulator. 3 years is practically nothing for a sequel these days.

[Stanley]

29 minutes ago, Majora said:

Perhaps they overstretched themselves a little. They're a pretty small studio and I have no idea how they're structured but they put out a sequel to A Plague Tale in 3 years in addition to making Microsoft Flight Simulator. 3 years is practically nothing for a sequel these days.

They are two completely separate studios as I understand it. 

[Benny]

This game is making my 3060ti cry.

[Benny]

I really enjoyed the first game, and strictly comparing this sequel to that, after playing through the first few chapters I've come away a bit disappointed really.

 

It essentially retreads the exact same mechanics as last time so there's not much in the way of gameplay variety, especially not for those familiar with the first game. The AI is pretty dumb too: I managed to get a guard to leave me alone who had seen me hiding under a table, by leaving it as soon as he looks under, then going back under it when he gets up again. Quite funny though.

 

It does look rather nice indeed, though despite the great visuals it does feel a bit janky, and I feel like this game doesn't have anywhere near as many cool set pieces as the first game had had in the same amount of time playing.

 

And finally, not all that engaged narratively either:

 

Spoiler

Having the characters heading out to some random place on some errand, getting screwed by rats or soldiers, then coming home, then heading out again feels really weird. Like you've got all this crazy shit going down and then there's some "safe" bit of the town where no-one gives a shit or hasn't noticed there are killer swarms of rats about ten feet away.

 

In the first game it was a proper journey, and progression always felt like you were getting somewhere. In this I don't really get that feeling, it's more like it's wheel spinning for a bit on an errand, between cutscenes that then drive the story. As opposed to the first game where the journey *was* the story.

 

Could just be because I've only done a few chapters, but in the first game it had definitely done a lot of stuff by this point and cracked out a lot of set pieces.

 

[Stanley]

Don’t worry @Bennythere are some pretty spectacular set pieces to come, but I’m not sure they’re enough. I am enjoying it but it does feel underbaked at times. 

[Benny]

I can see why it's been locked at 30/40fps on consoles as well. It's clearly a very demanding game, but those demands can vary widely between when you're walking around normally and when there are fire effects or thousands of rats everywhere. I think it quite badly needed some sort of dynamic resolution: on PC especially even if you somehow manage to get 60fps on a decent machine, you'll get sudden lurches in performance and responsiveness. VRR displays probably help, but there's no brute forcing this one, unless you have paid the silly money for a 4090. And this is *with* DLSS and before they've added ray tracing.

[Stanley]

Yeah it’s pretty stable at 40fps on Series X, but like you say when there’s fire or whatever it can lurch a bit, and whilst VRR does smooth that over it’s still noticeable. For the most part it’s ok though.

[Benny]

I think one reason it seems to lurch more than it should is they've done something really weird with the camera: try spinning it round the characters in any scene and it will sort of "jump" about half way, as they've got the camera manually adjusting itself presumably so it doesn't clip through geometry. it has the effect of making it seem like the game is stuttering.

 

It's extremely noticeable when you're just trying to shift the camera to track enemies - this enforced jumping of it makes it feel like the game constantly has a bit performance hiccup whenever you look around, even if the frame rate is fine.

 

It has the effect of making actually playing it not especially a smooth experience and is quite baffling.

[Benny]

Something about the dialogue: there's a lot of it, but unlike Horizon it's actually characters who are talking to each other for the most part in a way that's progressing the story. It's no more "chatty" than when you're with a companion in, say, RDR2. It feels contextual in the way a lot of games with this kind of dialogue doesn't. Though obviously whispering when there is a guard two feet away is a bit odd.

 

Having said that, I did switch to French voice acting and it's immeasurably better. It sounded like they got a different voice actor to do Amecia for English which is a shame, as one of the reasons I never felt the need to play in French in the original was because it was the French actors speaking English. I can only assume they got loads of complaints from people accusing the actually French actors of putting on funny accents and decided to either go with someone else or asked them to "sound less French", which is a massive shame if so.

[Majora]

Was this guy at the start of chapter 7 from the first game? Cos I have no bloody clue who he is but the game seems to assume you should.

[Stanley]

3 hours ago, Benny said:

I think one reason it seems to lurch more than it should is they've done something really weird with the camera: try spinning it round the characters in any scene and it will sort of "jump" about half way, as they've got the camera manually adjusting itself presumably so it doesn't clip through geometry. it has the effect of making it seem like the game is stuttering.

 

It's extremely noticeable when you're just trying to shift the camera to track enemies - this enforced jumping of it makes it feel like the game constantly has a bit performance hiccup whenever you look around, even if the frame rate is fine.

 

It has the effect of making actually playing it not especially a smooth experience and is quite baffling.

Yea I have found that with the camera as well and it can be quite unsettling performance wise. 
 

Think it needed a bit longer as when I was watching a streamer play they encountered some bugs which meant they had to restart chapters, different to the one I found too. 

[earlymodernsteve]

45 minutes ago, Majora said:

Was this guy at the start of chapter 7 from the first game? Cos I have no bloody clue who he is but the game seems to assume you should.

He's the guy who chased you earlier and gave you the bump on the head. It's not the clearest explanation. I was left thinking the same. There are two big armoured characters- the Beast and the Wall. Arnaud is the latter.

[Benny]

Just had one of the worst sins of game design rear its head:

 

So there's a ledge out of reach: "oh probably needs another cart pushed under it" I groaned. So I find the cart that is literally behind it a few feet away, amazing gameplay everyone, I do love pointless busywork. But anyway, I digress...

 

So I grab the cart, and oh joy, it's one that requires Lucas to help me push it, so I don't even get the joy of player agency with this one. But what's this? I'm standing there for several seconds unable to pull it and wondering where my idiot companion is, I spin the camera behind me and... Oh look, there he is, running forward endlessly into a pillar he's gotten stuck behind. I let go, run near him, try crouching and uncrouching, but nope, there's no getting him out from that pillar he's latched himself to of his own volition. I had to restart the whole section.

 

I will post picture evidence of this later, it was so infuriating. When you put block moving sections in a game, a practice of dubious worth as it is these days, you should never EVER make the ability to push those blocks and progress the game be at the whims of an AI companion. At an absolute minimum you should be teleporting them in place if you want the visual effect of their help, like in many many other examples of this. And it's probably actually easier to teleport them than make them do pathfinding. Which if you can't make good enough, then don't do it!

 

Fuuuuuuu

[Benny]

Though I did just do a sequence which was one of the most visually impressive I think I've seen in a game in a long time at the end of

 

Spoiler

Chapter 4. Tens of thousands!

 

[Benny]

I think I've worked out where the real joy of this game lies: photo mode.

 

You can pause the game and enter photo mode at literally any time, including during cutscenes, and can then get full control of the camera.

 

I like that it lets you do this. They're not so precious about the story or immersion or whatever to stop you having a good look around and seeing all the spot lights in cutscenes etc.

 

And some of the visuals half way through the game are genuinely quite breathtaking. I've basically suffered through the chore of the actual game part so I can get to the next beautiful place and then spend much happy time zooming about taking snaps.

 

It's transformed the game for me somewhat, but probably unintentionally.

[BadgerFarmer]

Lucas was a bit glitchy for me as well. Don't know what's got into him.

[earlymodernsteve]

6 hours ago, Benny said:

I think I've worked out where the real joy of this game lies: photo mode.

 

You can pause the game and enter photo mode at literally any time, including during cutscenes, and can then get full control of the camera.

 

I like that it lets you do this. They're not so precious about the story or immersion or whatever to stop you having a good look around and seeing all the spot lights in cutscenes etc.

 

And some of the visuals half way through the game are genuinely quite breathtaking. I've basically suffered through the chore of the actual game part so I can get to the next beautiful place and then spend much happy time zooming about taking snaps.

 

It's transformed the game for me somewhat, but probably unintentionally.

You can also abuse photo mode to check out enemy placements and play routes through the levels of you so wish.

[PikaStu]

Thought I’d give this a wee try, got as far as the boy chucking things in the water and you have to shoot them, except the game didn’t render whatever I was meant to shoot, so I spent 15 mins not having a clue wtf I was meant to be doing, eventually quitting the game! 
Can’t muster the enthusiasm to play it again…

[pledge]

This is definitely not for me. I've not played the original so when it had the hide and seek tutorial I expected that to be just a little part of the game - but up to chapter 4 and I'm just finding it all incredibly tedious. The rats look absolutely incredible but the gameplay involving them is so dull. The graphics look great, so I guess this is how people who don't like Uncharted's gameplay feel.

[Benny]

I feel like this does get much better later on

 

Spoiler

It becomes a proper journey, there are some great set pieces, and the tools at your disposal make actually playing it easier.

 

It does still feel lesser than the first game though, I think it just isn't as interesting and impactful as that game.

 

Still, for free on Game Pass? Nice to have.

 

[earlymodernsteve]

1 hour ago, Benny said:

I feel like this does get much better later on

 

  Hide contents

It becomes a proper journey, there are some great set pieces, and the tools at your disposal make actually playing it easier.

 

It does still feel lesser than the first game though, I think it just isn't as interesting and impactful as that game.

 

Still, for free on Game Pass? Nice to have.

 

I'm pretty much in agreement. However 

Spoiler

I think the sequel has more emotional impact because of the two journeys put together, and the ancient flashback stuff gets a clearer airing here leading to a more fleshed out idea of the Macula and its origins. I was more moved by the ending than I expected too. Mechanically it mostly just iterates on the first though, with the newer additions not always bring welcome ones - those Tomb Raider/Uncharted combat arenas can fuck right off, for example.

 

Ending discussion:

Spoiler

I'm intrigued to see if they continue with Amicia, and whether they make her a sympathetic Obi-Wan type or a pragmatic harbinger who knows the inevitability of the Macula. Heck, they could go for Ass Creed style jaunts through different periods as a new protector is called into action. I'd quite like to play the origin story that we follow in the Sanctuary tbh.