On October 17, A Plague Tale: Requiem was released to enthusiastic fans around the world. The reviews have been great so far, and the game has a “Very Positive” review status on Steam at the time of writing. The action-adventure game has a lot going for it with a strong narrative and historical setting with horror elements. It’s also one of only a few games that was created only for next-gen consoles and PC, which means that it did not have to be reigned in by older tech. Without having to consider the limitations of PlayStation 4 and Xbox One or older CPU/GPUs, the developers at Asobo Studio were free to push the limits of their in-house gaming engine to deliver a next-gen experience.
A Plague Tale: Requiem is visually stunning, especially on the PC. There are a few PC exclusives that make the game run even better than the consoles for now including ray tracing support and reflex boost support options. The PC version is also one of the few games that are debuting NVIDIA’s new DLSS 3.0 tech, which we have talked about on this site before.
The YouTube channel, Digital Foundry, created a tech review for the game to compare the performance of the game on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S specifically. The video, which is included below, goes into a lot of detail on the tech behind this new release, so we encourage you to watch the original for the full breakdown. However, if you don’t have 20 minutes, we’ll be summarizing their analysis here.
The game is better than the prequel, A Plague Tale: Innocence, overall because the developers expanded the environments, the narrative, and the mechanics of the stealth game. With the outdoor areas being much bigger now, players can feel the expanse as they try to sneak past armed guards and hordes of rats.
Speaking of rats, the signature of the game was also made bigger and better for the next-gen consoles. The number of rats increased from 5,000 in the prequel to 300,000 with the swarm inhabiting the dark spaces just outside of the torchlight. Since A Plague Tale: Requiem is primarily a stealth game with puzzles to solve to get where you want to go. When combining guards and rats, players have to be especially clever with the use of light and sound in order to make it through unscathed. This upping of the gameplay mechanics and visuals make the game even more enjoyable than its popular prequel.
It should be noted that while the PC version allows for 60 FPS with the right hardware in place, currently, the highest frames per second rate for the consoles seems to be 40 FPS if players are utilizing a 120hz display. Generally, consoles seem to be capped at 30 FPS while using a 60hz display though, so fans are a little disappointed.
Though it’s disappointing that the prequel ran at 60 FPS on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, the reason the new game does not makes sense. The new game is much more taxing and prioritizes visuals over mechanics. Visually, this game has bigger areas to navigate and much, much more detail. Plant life alone is a huge indicator of this huge increase in detail. Considering criticism of the first game was the narrow paths players were sort of pushed through, this upgrade to a wider, more detailed world is a stunning improvement that takes up a lot of power.
As far as comparing console picture display though, Xbox Series S seems to lag noticeably behind Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5. Series S only has a 900p resolution setting versus a 1440p resolution for the other two consoles. These numbers are the same as for the previous game, so nothing was lost. It just didn’t improve either.
Overall, the game looks amazing and is worth a try if you liked the first game. You won’t be disappointed. It is also worth keeping in mind that this game just came out, so there is potential for patch updates and upgrades in the future.
