One single day ahead of its release, A Plague Tale: Requiem is about to be the talk of the town. Over the past few months, a slew of trailers and teasers have put fans on high alert for the long-awaited sequel to A Plague Tale: Innocence. Ahead of the big day, the official PlayStation Blog has posted an in-depth interview with the game’s director, Kevin Choteau.
Located in Bordeaux, France, Asobo Studio was previously known for developing several video game adaptations of popular Pixar films, including WALL-E, Up, and Toy Story 3. The studio also worked on Microsoft Flight Simulator. Many familiar with the studio were shocked when the first title in the A Plague Tale series was released, and Choteau wasn’t surprised.
“We had no experience at all in this genre of game. We’re not known for these kinds of cinematic experiences. So we started with the action-adventure on Innocence and did so as noobs, not knowing what we were doing,” he said. “When we started Requiem, the idea was to take everything we failed with or did wrong in the first one and try to tackle them. We’ve read all the feedback from the players and critics and tried to do something about it. So the first and biggest thing is the gameplay. Innocence was quite narrow, with only one way to approach a situation, and we wanted to address that. We’ve created much wider open areas where you can play as you want.”
Given the technological leap between the release of Innocence and the new title Requiem, PlayStation was keen to question Choteau on how that impacted gameplay, and what players can anticipate when they jump into the game tomorrow.
“We push everything further graphically, of course. But the rats have been pushed to extreme boundaries. We had around 5,000 rats on PS4, and now we have 300,000 on PS5,” he said. “It’s incredible because it’s a new tool that allows us to do this huge rat tsunami that now destroys cities. We couldn’t do that with the previous tech.”
A Plague Tale: Requiem will follow Amicia and Hugo as they continue to navigate a world torn apart by plague. Having learned plenty from the events of the first title, players can expect both characters to have learned plenty of new and unique skills. While the stealth gameplay from the first game remains in some form, the combat system has been largely expanded, with Amicia able to equip weapons such as crossbows or knives, and Hugo able to use his Echo ability to reveal the locations of enemies through solid walls. Of course, he can still control hordes of rats to make defeating enemy forces much easier–and more creepy.
The possibility of another game in the series was brought up during the interview, and it seems that anything is possible.
“I think, for now, it’s the end. But the door is never closed, and we’ll see the player reception. We want to see their reaction before deciding anything. They are driving our production, and if they don’t like what we’ve done, we need to do something else,” Choteau concluded.
Last month, Kevin Pinson, the Lead Level Designer at Asobo Studio, stated that Requiem would be around 15-18 hours long for most players. The first game took between 10-12.
Last week, Xbox released an official A Plague Tale: Requiem music video featuring popular violinist Lindsey Sterling.
A Plague Tale: Requiem is scheduled to release tomorrow, October 18, 2022 on PlayStation 5, PC, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox Series X/S. The previous title, A Plague Tale: Innocence, is available on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.
