Hi all. Several days have passed since I finished playing A Plague Tale: Innocence, during which I carefully considered all my complaints about this creation of the French gaming industry. During this time, I tried to understand and correctly formulate why I didn’t like the game so much, which was literally inundated with love from both ordinary players and the gaming press. Well, let’s try to figure it out.

I’ll start with a general statement, which is repeated like a mantra by everyone who liked (or supposedly liked) the game: “A Plague Tale is an excellent story-driven adventure.”. And this is partly true, because only the plot makes you continue to play the game, giving hope for an interesting climax and some kind of exciting twist closer to the end. The nuance is that the climax turns out to be so-so, and the twist turned out to be unexpected, but completely bland, t.To. the player has no emotional connection at all with the character it was built around. And where can she come from, because he was on the screen for about 15 minutes at most, during which time he gave out barely a dozen lines.

As a result, the finale leaves behind the same feeling as the last season of Game of Thrones – the feeling of being deceived. All the promising hints at a larger, sinister secret remain just hints, and the story degenerates into a "villainous villain seeks to power" caricature.

The villains here, by the way, are a separate and sad story. They’re as flat as characters can be. The formidable inquisitor Nikolai, who is something of a nemesis for the main characters of the game, turns out to be an almost silent dummy, giving out a couple of stock phrases that do not reveal his motivation in any way. The main villain is an absolutely banal mug who strives for power and is ready to do anything for it. And there are no more villains in the game, except for ordinary enemies, but with them everything is clear.

However, the developers of A Plague Tale turned out no better for the positive characters. If Amicia and Hugo, the main characters of the game, are developed quite well, and some kind of chemistry is really felt between them, then the four other kids are not individuals, but functions: some allow the plot to develop, others add gameplay elements, and others try to dilute the gloomy atmosphere of the game with rare, awkward and almost always inappropriate humor. And none of the secondary positive characters goes beyond these functions, playing their meager role from beginning to end. Naturally, there is no talk of any personal evolution, and the initial images turned out to be so dim that by definition they cannot evoke any empathy.

The only exception is the scene of self-sacrifice of one of the companions of Amicia and Hugo, which still leaves behind a feeling of slight sadness and longing, but the whole point here is that self-sacrifice is in itself a powerful narrative device that would have worked in any case, regardless of which of the local dummies would become its victim.

The bottom line is that a “great story-driven adventure” turns out to be not so great after all. I admit that in process While playing through the game, its story is captivating, constantly giving the player promises that it will be even more interesting next. Alas, over time there are more and more promises, but they never turn into anything concrete, and the ending completely puts a huge bolt on all these promises, without revealing a single secondary storyline in principle. Here are the good guys, here are the bad guys, the good ones have won – the end. The only pleasant surprise a couple of minutes before the closing credits was the unexpected moral of A Plague Tale, which I had not even hoped for, and which came at just the right place. But is it worth the 9-10 hours of torment that the player has to go through to get to it?? And here I come to the biggest problem of the game – the gameplay.

In principle, the entire gameplay of A Plague Tale can be described in just two words – dull shit. This is exactly what gaming journalists and those who try to pretend to be behind them hide behind the words “story-driven adventure”, diverting the attention of their audience from the fact that playing A Plague Tale is painfully boring. This becomes most noticeable from the second half of the game, when it becomes clear that the hateful series of the same actions will never be interrupted.

Primitive stealth, in which enemies may not see you literally under their noses, is replaced by rooms with primitive puzzles, many of which boil down to the fact that the player just needs to hammer one button for a minute or two. The reward for an “intellectual victory” can be a chase segment in which the main characters run away along a long gut of a corridor without a single fork in order to burst into another cutscene or another puzzle room. Light the torch, put out the torch, press the Y button, sneak past the blind and deaf soldier, light the torch, put out the torch – this is all that the player in A Plague Tale will have to do throughout the entire passage.

Someone might reasonably argue that Amicia is gradually discovering new alchemical compounds that replace her skills, upgrading her equipment, etc.d., and this should bring some variety, but no, it doesn’t: the core of the gameplay does not change at all, and discarding the visual tricks, we get the same “light the torch, put out the torch”.

But the worst thing is that the developers artificially stretch the monotonous and not very exciting gameplay even further by introducing many game conventions: taking two sticks with you at once and not returning to the bundle is impossible, please go back and forth a couple of times; passing a torch to a companion for a while is impossible, please leave it and move on without light; It’s impossible to distract the enemy with noise in places not intended by the developers, please find a workaround, which, no doubt, will give you more problems like “light the torch, put out the torch”. There are plenty of examples of such ridiculous conventions in A Plague Tale, and the more time you spend in the game, the more obvious they are and the more annoying they become.

But the real apotheosis of hellish despondency is the stealth segment for Hugo, which combines all the worst decisions of the game developers. For an hour you will crawl very slowly on your hands and knees around the cathedral, trying not to catch the eye of the evil inquisitors, and your only entertainment will be eavesdropping on other people’s conversations. And until, by the will of the almighty script, you are given permission to move on, you will continue to dive for some pot instead of distracting the adversary with the sound of a broken bottle, for example. Yes, the same bottle that you accidentally stumbled upon at the previous checkpoint, and the sound of which brought all the enemies in the room running, but for some reason Hugo cannot lift it… Oh yes, a gaming convention. Again.

However, I also can’t help but mention the advantages of the game. And the main one is an absolutely gorgeous atmosphere, which is supported by the visual style of A Plague Tale, the musical accompaniment, the gloomy setting, and certain parts of the plot. A widely publicized field with corpses, through which the main characters will have to walk in the literal sense of the word, really gives you goosebumps. The contrast between the pretty pastoral landscapes and the ominous catacombs filled with rats really makes you feel uncomfortable. The perfectly conveyed morals of the medieval people really evoke a feeling of disgust, even if there were not too many such moments. In general, the atmosphere is what draws A Plague Tale very strongly, giving much more emotions during the passage than the story of the game and its gameplay combined.

The music itself deserves special praise. Written by Olivier Derivière, it perfectly complements almost all the scenes of A Plague Tale, and you want to listen to some tracks even apart from the game, which is very rare for me personally.

So why does A Plague Tale, which seemed to me completely average (if not worse), have such high ratings from the gaming press and ordinary players? Perhaps because Western game reviewers cannot objectively evaluate games about “strong and independent girls”, so as not to snatch them from local social justice fighters.

I won’t say anything about the domestic one – it’s a mystery to me, but 94% of positive reviews on Steam can be analyzed. To do this, just open the statistics of the game’s achievements, and we will see that half of those who bought it barely completed 8 chapters out of 16 (17), and only a third of the players were able to complete this “excellent story-oriented adventure”. And these are the statistics of a fairly short and absolutely linear game, in which it is impossible to get stuck somewhere, where there is no large open world that can get boring to explore, where all that is required of the player is to periodically press a couple of buttons, solve easy puzzles and watch cutscenes.

After the statistics of achievements, we open all the reviews, turn off the language filter and see that many positive reviews are left by people who have only played for three or four hours, but call A Plague Tale an incredible masterpiece and other big words. But three to four hours is not so bad: sometimes there are those like in the screenshot above.

To sum it up, A Plague Tale https://divabingocasino.co.uk/login/ is, in my opinion, a criminally overrated game that is setting a bad example for dozens of other developers right now. Why bother when you can concoct a simple and banal story about “strong and independent” in the best traditions of the most unpretentious young-adult literature, completely neglect the development of game mechanics and hope that people will grab it. Well, well, Asobo Studio did it right!

On a 10-point scale, I would give the game only a five, and even then it’s a stretch, where every point is due solely to the atmosphere of A Plague Tale, but not to the story, much less the gameplay. And something tells me, judging by the other elements of the game, that Asobo Studio was able to convey the atmosphere almost by accident.

That’s all. Write in the comments if you have anything to add on the topic or refute my conclusions – we’ll discuss.
Thank you for reading to the end, happy everyone.

Best comments

I had to watch the video. Since I didn’t play the game, I had to trust Hoarse and watch his video. Siplom liked it.
Initially, the material seemed crazy because the motivation to write it was crazy. Are you saying that igrozhur is shit?? Are you better than a gamer?? You are more competent? You want to prove something to the world? You had the opportunity. Couldn’t prove it.
Firstly, many theses indicate an impressive stage of clip thinking, in which the presence of a main female character becomes a reason to reproach the subject for indulging feminist movements, SJWs, etc.d. The mere presence of the main female character suddenly has a sharply negative connotation.
Secondly,

a criminally overrated game that is setting a bad example for dozens of other developers right now

Why? She sold herself somehow crazy? Or maybe there is a hype around her, she’s on the hype train? Just what information gave rise to this idea??
Well, it’s funny when you start showing psychic abilities in relation to other people. They “supposedly” liked it.
Thirdly, the arguments. The game is bad because for a corridor stealth adventure it has primitive gameplay. You can’t rob caravans there. There are scripts. Yeah. In the game, yes, there are scripts… Especially in the corridor… Uh-huh… Big mistake.
For some reason the plot has a mixed ending. Although even based on your words, this game has something that most games don’t have and which they will get to for another couple of decades if the forecast is good… The driving idea. Or morality. That thing that makes sense of the whole plot as a whole. I can’t give specifics, but you could. Spoilers please. Give specific examples of why the story doesn’t work in this game. Why don’t you give examples?? Why is the entire narrative built on the principle “the plot is crap, the gameplay is crap, the music is okay, the atmosphere is okay. ». This is how you challenge the game director?
Fourthly, what kind of revaluation are we talking about?? What kind of world do you live in if an average rating of 8 is a masterpiece for you?? In my opinion, simply good games have been rated at 8 points for a thousand years now. Below 7 is trash, 7-8 is good, 9-10 is excellent. I didn’t come up with this, I don’t support it, but this is how the world is built, I can’t do anything. Your material is built around a fictitious fact, and besides, this fact in itself is not the best motivation for “exposing”.
I would like to hear some more numbers, because in terms of gameplay, in videos, in what Hoarse says, this game is almost indie. If, unlike the game reviewer, you are a true professional, then consider the context. Taking context into account when evaluating a work is key. Kungurych won’t let you tear it down.
It’s just bad.

I used Rage 2 as an example only because it is the latest example in an endless series of “games” created with the sole purpose of making some kind of profit with minimal resources. Simply put, Rage 2 and others like it are a purely commercial project without a soul (no matter how trite it may sound) And Plague Tale is a great game that, despite all its merits and labor costs, will never pay for its development. Therefore, I am ready to buy such games and turn a blind eye to all their shortcomings (of which there are many) if instead of every next Rage (FarCry, Middle-earth, Just Cause) something like A Plague Tale comes out.

Perhaps because Western game reviewers cannot objectively evaluate games about “strong and independent girls”

and a quote from the video
“I won’t say anything about the domestic one, I think you yourself know the reason for the unity of views”. In the text version, I changed a sentence that clearly hints at the cerebral nature of the roigrozhur.

Can I have information?? There are currently 700 people online on Steam. For me personally, the game came up in the information field only a couple of times, and then without exclamations about some kind of genius, just normal. Well, I didn’t find any information about sales. But you probably found it?

I’m afraid you have no idea what a driving idea is. If a story has a moral, 99 percent of the time it will be one.

I do not challenge the game director, I express my opinion. You have some kind of mania for passing off your fantasies as someone else’s words?

Your narrative is based on the fact that everyone is wrong, they “supposedly” liked it, but your opinion is objective. Although on the other hand, based on your own words, you are not saying that you are competent. Then the point is that you express some opinion if it has no weight?

You do understand that rating and evaluation are two different things?
Look, you’re opening rottentomates, yeah. You check any kinchik. So, the numbers that are supposedly in “ratings” are ratings. This is the percentage of positive and negative reviews. And there is also an average rating in the postscript, it is often always different. In theory, a movie with a supposed rating of 100 (a masterpiece, as you say, is 10 out of 10) can have a rating of 7.
It’s the same bullshit on Steam, bro.
Now open metacritic, where, as far as I know, an average rating is given, and you will be surprised.

In a game that is presented as historical despite its fantasy elements, a 15-year-old girl, who is officially described as “strong and independent,” single-handedly takes on dozens (if not hundreds) of professional male soldiers. Everything is in the best traditions of third wave feminism.

In fact, this is not in the best traditions of feminism, but within the framework of the Young Adult genre in which, despite the Middle Ages and gloom, the entire game is made. And if you get acquainted with the works of this genre (The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner, etc.).d.) Then teenagers always turn out to be smarter, stronger, more dexterous and more independent than stupid adults (it’s a pity that in life it’s usually the other way around)

Whether we compare or not, the essence does not change. There are good games and there are bad ones. All good games are somewhat similar, just like all bad ones. Doesn’t matter AAA, second tier or indie.

I didn’t notice any bugs in this game, except for the slightly crooked animation.

In any case, there is an objective assessment and a subjective. If the game doesn’t work for you on a subjective level, then it’s okay, it happens, but if you are familiar with games firsthand, then on an objective level you should understand that the game is good. If this is not so, well, I don’t know what else to talk about..

I understand that almost a year has passed since this discussion, but still..

In a game that is presented as historical despite its fantasy elements, a 15-year-old girl, who is officially described as “strong and independent,” single-handedly takes on dozens (if not hundreds) of professional male soldiers. Everything is in the best traditions of third wave feminism.

Well, medieval knights can hardly be called professionals. These were not the best of the best people, who were trained for three years and, after being sent to a test battle, were sent to the battlefield. These were simple peasants who were dressed in armor and given a sword in their hands. And among all the knights we met, ten to fifteen “professional” knights. They may have weapons, but they could easily lose to some girl hiding in the bushes. Moreover, she can bombard them with all sorts of incomprehensible crap or set rats on them.

With what kind of games?? Larka is also about a “strong woman”, but the ratings are not the highest. Battle 5 tried to capitalize on this whole topic, but the ratings are still bad. I agree that the game reviewer is wildly biased in assessing story-based games, giving high marks to all these clichéd “heart-warming” stories. But why bring SJWs into this??

I understand that three years have passed, but the knights of the Middle Ages are just professionals. From childhood they were taught to ride horses, fight with a spear, sword, mace and shield. Armor and a sword were expensive, and so was a war horse, and the peasant could not afford it (moreover, on an industrial scale, someone could not dress a hundred or two peasants in armor in armor, because it was expensive and unprofitable). And peasants were often not drafted; war was entertainment for wealthy people.

Comrade, I clearly and clearly let you know that my complaint about everything is exactly one – inappropriate involvement of the SJW topic. And I still haven’t seen anything in fact, only insults and personalization, which I, in turn, did not do. I have nothing against your opinion, I don’t even care about this game in general. But you’re being sarcastic from the very beginning, instead of just factually naming the reasons why you think that the gamer has caved in to SJWs. And you so stubbornly dodge that question that it becomes clear that you are the one who doesn’t understand the materiel.

Well, for example, the fact that while passing it I cried and laughed along with the characters, and this is expensive. Yes, the plot here is not brilliant, but rather simple, and the gameplay is not super innovative and interesting, yes… although wait, in the last god of war and the same last of us, both the plot and gameplay fall under the same definition, and nothing prevents them from being amazing games.

Some kind of nonsense. If I were you, I would hate Metro 2033 then. In 2014 they released a game from 2007. The script is broken – the game is broken, every second is scripted. So tired that the trainer cut me off.

No need, “Get Out” is a great movie that doesn’t even have any SJWs in it. An excellent and unusual thriller for those who love this genre. I agree about Black Panther, I haven’t seen Us.

With what kind of games?? Larka is also about a “strong woman”, but the ratings are not the highest. Battle 5 tried to capitalize on this whole topic, but the ratings are still bad. I agree that the game reviewer is wildly biased in assessing story-based games, giving high marks to all these clichéd “heart-warming” stories. But why bring SJWs into this??

Perhaps because Western game reviewers cannot objectively evaluate games about “strong and independent girls”, so as not to snatch them from local social justice fighters.

I just ask, don’t do this, it’s too much. Igrozhur cannot evaluate “story-oriented” at all, GG has absolutely nothing to do with it.

I smiled every time Hugo showed his childish naivety, when he saw frogs, for example, or when he put on an English shield, or when at the end he said that he needed to find a new castle to live in.

I almost cried when P(R)odric died ;(. I may not remember such very heart-warming moments, but they were quite sad and emotional.

And the whole beginning of the game is not bad at keeping you in suspense until you understand how all the gameplay components work.