The series A Plague Tale: Requiem keeps reminding me of is Uncharted, and I didn’t expect that. But not since Uncharted have I been so dazzled by a production, by an adventure, that I’ve lingered longer in places simply so they don’t end. And not since an Uncharted game have I been treated to so many spectacular sights in so many spectacular places I have never even imagined before. Requiem, it turns out, is every bit a game about uncovering lost legends and their secrets. It’s a treasure hunt. Only here, the treasure you’re hunting for is a cure.
A Plague Tale: Requiem reviewDeveloper: AsoboPublisher: Focus EntertainmentPlatform: Played on PS5Availability: Releases 18th October on PC, PS5, Xbox S/X (Game Pass), and Switch via cloud play
A Plague Tale is a series inextricably tied to the Plague, the Black Death, which ravaged Europe in the 14th Century and apparently killed as many 200 million people. It was the plague carried, infamously, by rats. And so it is that A Plague Tale is also a series about rats – wonderfully and gruesomely so.
More specifically, it’s a series about a young boy called Hugo who has something called the Macula inside of him, a supernatural bond with the rats. And it’s a bond that people are trying to exploit and control – powerful people in powerful, shady orders – and a bond that will also kill him if you, his teenage sister Amicia, don’t find that cure.
This is how Requiem – much like A Plague Tale: Innocence from 2019 – begins. For a while, things are peaceful, and you, Hugo, your mother and her apothecary apprentice Lucas travel to a new life in a new city. But it isn’t long until before you run into trouble and find yourself chased by murderous adults again. And then come rats and the Plague. And suddenly there’s death and repugnant gore all around you and you’re literally knee-deep in it.
And as before, the nuts and bolts of the game are stealth. This is not a game about reckless gunplay, like Uncharted, but about carefully picking your way through areas while taking down one or two – sometimes more – enemies who stand in your way. But you don’t take them down as you would in another stealth game – there is one stealth takedown but it’s very situational and loud and so, not often used.