Originally, I wasn’t going to check A Plague Tale: Innocence, hence why I have not played it for most of the year since release. It looked like a mid-budget attempt at a stealth adventure and those tend to be simply mediocre. The hordes of rats seemingly simulated the way games usually simulate liquids was a cute touch, but I was still not interested enough. It wasn’t until the game started picking up praise for its storytelling that I got curious.
Yeah, I don’t know what that praise was for.
To start off, I wasn’t exactly wrong in my original impression – mechanically this game is incredibly mediocre at best. Great thing, however, is that the developers were also aware of this and because of that, decided to design most of the scenes and situations in a way, where the mechanics, as clunky and primitive as they are for stealth or puzzle solving, simply don’t get in the way. The game is designed to just keep going, rarely presenting any sort of challenge, knowing full well that with the systems it has it won’t be challenge as much as just frustration. A fact that the game actually confirms as it starts adding more complex combat sequences and even boss fights closer to the end of the game and none of them are ever fun in any capacity.
What I did not expect was that the first 10 chapters of the game or so were genuinely engaging and exciting. The story, as simple as it was, kept going in interesting places, the things that were happening had very interesting implications, characters kept evolving. The setting was great, the mood was spot on. For those first 5-6 hours I was completely into the game. Could easily ignore the crappy primitive mechanics, lots of silly budget elements. I was ready to finish it and join in with the people praising the game.
And then the final third of the game happened. And somehow all of the potential interesting ideas the game could’ve evolved were thrown out of the window. And instead the most basic, trope filled comic book supervillain plot was put in. It completely kicked me out of the game and together with the increased jank of the gameplay itself, simply made the last few hours of gameplay a constant “are you serious right now?” Characters went completely two dimensional, plot twists were tasteless, all the potential implications turned out to be absolutely nothing. Go fight some rat tornadoes. That was it, really. The game simply went from exciting to wank and I stopped caring about anything that was happening.
I wish I could be excited about this game the same way as I was midway through. And I don’t regret playing it. But from being ready to go and recommend playing it to all of my friends I went into thinking – yeah, it was pretty dumb, wasn’t it? A Plague Tale: Innocence has huge potential. Unfortunately, that potential got misused in its closing act, but it didn’t make the first two thirds disappear. And even though I cannot really wholeheartedly recommend this game anymore, if you are curious about it – sure, give it a go. It can be good. It has amazing moments. It just didn’t stick the landing. At all.