{"id":549,"date":"2021-04-04T19:35:09","date_gmt":"2021-04-04T19:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/?p=549"},"modified":"2021-04-04T19:35:09","modified_gmt":"2021-04-04T19:35:09","slug":"a-plague-tale-innocence-savior-or-false-shepherd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/2021\/04\/04\/a-plague-tale-innocence-savior-or-false-shepherd\/","title":{"rendered":"A Plague Tale: Innocence: Savior or False Shepherd"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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This article originally ran under a different banner\/website in June of 2019 and is now being here re-uploaded for purposes of convenience and consolidation. Please enjoy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HEAR YE!!!  HEAR YE!!!  My loyal followers, have you ever had that feeling?  The feeling of laying in bed, thinking your safe and sound, and then a small tingle runs down your legs.  You snap to an upright position to gaze down at the small monstrosity perched upon your leg.  Your eyes meet with the beady eyes of a small hairy spider crawling around your legs.  You try to brush it off, but it scurries up and down your leg avoiding your swipes.  Soon, more spiders appear running along your body like people on a busy street.  Their hairy legs in constant motion along your body.  You scream and awaken from your skin crawling nightmare.  Not many games have fully captured that eerie feeling from having something small scurry up and down your skin.  Well, my loyal followers, I have found one: A Plague Tale: Innocence.<\/em>  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A Plague Tale: Innocence <\/em>is a stealth action-adventure starring 14th-century French teenage noblewoman Amicia de Rune.  Well on a boar hunt with her father, they discover a dark evil has awoken.  They race back to their home to discover the Inquisition has arrived looking for Amicia\u2019s younger ill brother Hugo.  As the Inquisition slaughters their parents and servants, Amicia and Hugo sneak out of their home to go on the run.  Along their way, Amicia must learn to cope with Hugo who has spent most of his life isolated from her.  Both are forced to grow up quickly in a harsh unforgiving world.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Along the way, they discover the evil that Amicia initially found in the forest, is a swarm of rats numbering in the millions.  The rats are so numerous that they often form a tidal wave that I was hoping the zombies in Days Gone would create.  So the rats swarm anything they get in contact with.  Survivors of the rat attacks walk away with the \u201cBite\u201d disease; while some other people not so lucky to have rats crawl all over them consuming their flesh while they scream in horror.  Much like the nightmare I initially described, watching these rats eat someone alive made my skin crawl.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Now, as I have said many times upon my soapbox, a game must have a marriage of story and gameplay.  Thus the question becomes what kind of game are we playing?  Well, A Plague Tale: Innocence <\/em>is basically the Mary-Jane stealth sections from Marvel\u2019s Spider-Man<\/em> stretched into a full game.  While some might remember I found the Mary-Jane sections dreadful, I think it works here because the slower pace matches the story\u2019s tone.  A teenage girl is not going to be able to go toe to toe with an Inquisition soldier.  It also doesn\u2019t slam the metaphorical brakes on the exhilarating web-swing as the famed wall-crawler could not be found in 14th century France.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The two de Runes are forced to sneak past Inquisition guards during the day and the tidal wave of rats during the night.  Amicia and Hugo must avoid the Inquisition guard\u2019s gaze by sneaking behind hedges, throwing objects to distract guards, making timely moves, and knocking out guards with Amicia\u2019s trusty slingshot.  Amicia and Hugo avoid getting eaten by rats by exploiting the rat\u2019s fear of fire and light.  This often leads to tense nerve-wrenching scenes of the pair slowly walking in a sea of rats with a torch that is slowly burning out.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So the gameplay and story complement each other, so this surely must mean I recommend the game?  Unfortunately, I am not sure.  Halfway through the game, my drive to finish evaporated before me.  As I procrastinated completing this title, I contemplated what had happened to cause my feeling for this game to turn on its heels.  Overall, I would say some nitpicks cause me to be turned off in the later chapters.    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

First starters, I found the starting levels to be simple yet perfectly designed.  The developers clearly knew they couldn\u2019t make seventeen levels of the same difficulty level.  They knew the game would have to get more challenging as it went along.  Unfortunately, how they increase the challenge though only frustrated me.  Halfway through the story, Amicia and Hugo are captured by English soldiers, Amicia escapes and must stealth through the camp.  Unfortunately, the camp is much more open compared to the previous levels, leading down paths that would get me caught and instantly killed.  Another level had me in a field swarming with guards, I assumed I was supposed to channel Solid Snake and quietly dispose of all the guards.  I quickly found that everyone was instantly alerted the second I took out one guard.  I eventually figured out the game wanted me stealth around all the guards, which made me start to question the signposting.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While did game does highlight paths Amicia can climb, you often just dropped into an area with guards and have to guess the action require to process forward.  Another chapter locked me in a section of town with four guards patrolling.  Again, I thought I had to take them out one by one, only to eventually learned putting out fire spawned enough rats to kill three of the guards.  These sections left me putting my head in my hands frustrating questioning how the game wanted me to know that.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other way the game tries to ramp up the challenge is presenting different problems and immediately presents a new tool.  Almost like the game is one long tutorial.  The game presents guards that you can\u2019t knock out because they have metal helmets.  You are soon given an item that you can craft that will melt the guard\u2019s armor.  Upon hitting the guards with this chemical, you can then pull up the ammo wheel to switch ammo to the basic rock to knock out the guard.  It is all so needlessly fiddly.  I found the simplicity of throwing a pot to distract guard much more rewarding than crafting an item that would cause the rats to be drawn to one specific location.         <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A Plague Tale: Innocence<\/em> does have one of the common mechanics found in many big-budget titles: crafting.\u00a0 You have the ability to craft items for your slingshot such as ammo that ignites fires, ones that put out fires, sleeping powder, and one that will set all the rats on fire.\u00a0 You can also craft upgrades to your sling and equipment.\u00a0 While I initially rolled my eyes at this system for how token it seemed.\u00a0 My rage began to boil as I found my tenth bottle of alcohol that I couldn\u2019t pick up cuz I reached maximum capacity for bottles of alcohol.\u00a0 Surely, I thought, 14th century France can\u2019t have this many bags of rocks and spare chemicals like Sulphur and Saltpeter laying around.\u00a0 On top of this overabundance of these materials, materials that you need for upgrades, like rope and leather, were nowhere to be found.\u00a0 Every bench would lead me to sign in contempt as I learned I did not possess.\u00a0 Maybe the game wanted me to explore for these items, but with the rats swarming anywhere without light, I couldn\u2019t summon the will to find a way to explore without being eaten.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Now while it seems like I am pretty down on the game, I don\u2019t think it is truly unworthy of merit.\u00a0 In a world of open-world sandboxes and live services, a linear story-driven game is very admirable.\u00a0 While companies like Electronic Arts are trying to convince us that FIFA 20 <\/em>doesn\u2019t have loot boxes but surprise mechanics, it is nice to see a studio actually work to create some actual art.\u00a0 I would say that if you miss the days of PS2 era mid-tier games, then you might enjoy A Plague Tale: Innocence <\/em>as it does feel like a game from that era.\u00a0 Not one to lull you into a mind-numbing state in the hope you will part with your wallet, but one that wants to take you on an adventure.\u00a0 Even if it is one that makes your skin crawl.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article originally ran under a different banner\/website in June of 2019 and is now being here re-uploaded for purposes of convenience and consolidation. Please enjoy. HEAR YE!!!  HEAR YE!!!  My loyal followers, have you ever had that feeling?  The feeling of laying in bed, thinking your safe and sound, and then a small tingle… Continue reading A Plague Tale: Innocence: Savior or False Shepherd<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":550,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-reviews","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":559,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549\/revisions\/559"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}