A Critique of A Plague Tale: Innocence

At the beginning of... ...The Witcher, there is an area in the introductory keep that you can't get to. There is a locked door that you cannot get through until you progress the tutorial to a certain point and then are given a key. Somehow enemies have gotten inside another way, but that doesn't matter What does matter is this cooking station elsewhere in the room Geralt, like any person, is capable of getting into this room through this opening. There is enough space that he could squeeze around the cooking frame or he could duck under it or he could pick it up and move it But the game won't let you do these things. Instead you have to wait until you are given the key because this is the only scripted way to enter this room. In the recent Resident Evil 2 remake there are sections of the raccoon city police station that use invisible walls for the zombies. No matter how much Leon or Claire may be injured or bleeding or limping and close to becoming a meal for the hungry and dead these zombies will not follow you over these invisible boundaries between some areas. These aren't reinforced doors and, no matter how close the zombies are to grabbing you, the instant that you step over these lines they drop down to a passive state and begin wandering away like you became invisible. So what do these two things have to do with A Plague Tale: Innocence well I'm using them as a way for you to gauge your tolerance of these sorts of things because A Plague Tale is overflowing with these types of situations. Neither of these given examples are inherently bad especially from a strict gameplay perspective. Games will often have abstract rules and limitations to make gameplay work in the way the developer wants it to work. Games are rarely realistic and nor do I think that should change games should be internally consistent within their own rules and worlds. However, this can only be stretched so far before it will break no matter what. In the case of The Witcher's cooking station it just looks stupid it doesn't break how exploration works in that game because you're quite limited in how you move through areas and the game is built around that. The problem here isn't a lack of freedom it's that the gap should have been smaller or the cooking station larger. Basically, this opening in the wall should look far less accessible. In Resident Evil 2's case it's an exchange of your immersion for some areas in the game being safe and secure from the zombies It seems stupid because there is no justification for it within the game's world The first aid spray being able to heal zombie bites and bring you back from the brink of death is also stupid but it's acceptable because the item is clearly presented to you as having this function. heal your character fix your mistakes. This justification doesn't exist for the zombies nor does it for the cooking frame in Kaer Morhen Here's the point: if this sort of thing deeply aggravates you then I suggest you never play A Plague Tale unless you enjoy being frustrated. The game has a set in stone script that you can rarely deviate from and even when you do the game often breaks instead of being able to adapt to something being done out of order or something it never thought a player could do it goes further than that by requiring you to do complicated things in order to solve problems because that's how the scene was planned when the alternative solution which is both obvious and simple would break it and the game is far too serious and not game-y enough for that to feel right we're not into spoilers yet so here's a tame example.

Channel: Joseph Anderson

Views: 585,332

Rating: 4.850523 out of 5

Keywords: a plague tale, innocence, review, critique, a plague tale review, plague tale review, amicia, hugo, prima macula, plague tale critique, analysis, commentary, criticism, video game, game, black death, 2019, asobo studio, cinematic

Id: _j_pdKwTuWc

Length: 42min 44sec (2564 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 06 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/cptadder]

Based on this video the game might have been better to only feature area killing rather than slingshot sniping everywhere.

*Edit by area killing I mean more environment kills. It makes more sense being stealthy if your only using rats or handy heavy things rather than the fastest sling in the west.

[u/sonpansatan]

Going through A Plague Tail, while it did look nice I could see the "Video Game" stuff pretty clearly, with the torches, bundles of sticks, guards etc. standing out as the video game within the game. Watching this video got me thinking, what if this was made for the NES with NES style graphics. On those types of games, no one thinks twice about "video game-y" rules such as "you can only take one stick at a time" or "you must put down your torch to climb" For me I was always able separating "wow, that's a pretty cool and immersive world " and "this is the game part of the video game with video game rules." I guess I was never that bothered, but also never that immersed either.

[u/JonJonesStillGOAT]

Seems like he was deliberately trying to break the game to come up with “critiques”. It’s interesting because all of these things flew over my head while playing and I just enjoyed it for what it was. Must suck to play games like he does I guess