The Inquisition, as I understand it, is something no one expects. Or at least they didn’t in the France of A Plague Tale: Innocence. This game looks incredible. You play as Amicia de Runes who is a young woman tasked with keeping herself and her young brother, Hugo, alive. The siblings are orphans, presumably made so by the inquisition. And as the name would suggest, there are rats everywhere.
Just to clarify, I mean everywhere. I don’t mean like when you chose the chaotic path in Dishonoured and you have packets of the man eating little creatures that you have to watch out for. I mean like in Uncharted: Drake’s Deception when you have to run and puzzle your way through a moving floor of spiders. There are thousands of the little buggers. And the plague virus has definitely made them constantly ravenous.
The only thing that keeps them at bay is fire. Meaning that once you get to a safe spot you are going to have to stay there until you can figure something out. Thankfully the ways to do that seem varied. You might be able to sneak around some guards and a steal a torch or light a stick on fire. Amicia has a sling shot that she uses to do a whole mess of things. She can use stones to distract guards or cause them to drop their lanterns so the rats swarm them. If your aim is good enough, you can also hit them in the head and cause them to fall over and be devoured.
For those history buffs out there, I have two points. I have been careful so far in just calling it “The Inquisition” not “The Spanish Inquisition”. This is because the word Spanish was never once used on the game’s site. So if you were expecting to see people with stakes going up their bums and coming out through their shoulders, you might be disappointed. But then again, you might not. The game is pretty brutal.
The other little point I have to make is on Amicia’s slingshot. This game is set in France in the 14th century, so Charles Goodyear hadn’t even been born yet. Meaning there was no rubber. Fear not, a play on a David’s Slingshot is used. So she swings it over her head or at her side and then releases at the right moment. Just like David did to kill Goliath. I’m not saying this game is even remotely historically accurate, but at least nothing is done to pull you out of the immersion.
Sadly, there is no final release date on the game, just the year 2019. Which is quite depressing since this is one game I am really, really looking forward to. But better a long wait than an unfinished, glitchy piece of junk, so I shall endure. A Plague Tale: Innocence will be released in PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.