A Plague Tale: Requiem

I enjoyed the first game more

This game seems like some of the charm was lost because somehow my character forgot how to do everything she could do in the first game, I can hide under a thigh high table with my head and legs hanging out and the AI can’t see me because I pushed A and I’m “hiding” and the game forces you to do that often (ughhh), and by chapter 7 — I’m still hiding more than I’m fighting. It’s just too slow. The AI is unreasonably predictable and whack a mole. See AI, watch him make his rounds from cover A to B, learn his route, run as soon as he turns around to walk from point A to point B. What he sees a dead fellow soldier? He’ll go check him out and then literally drop his aggro level in seconds after declaring he’s dead, and go back to route A to B. It’s a bug I’ll suppose but it happens multiple times. (Sometimes he’ll stay aggroed, as he should and alert buddies, as he should). The combat is clumsy. And forced. You can temporarily escape a hand to hand combat knock down once, your screen turns red for 20 seconds or so, but if they catch you again during that time you are gonna die, if you make it out of that red screen you can escape again. Doesn’t matter how well you time buttons — you are gonna die if your screen is red and they catch you. The rats will sneak into the light just a bit to occasionally kill you around a fire or lamp post, making you play the whole scene again. Resources to craft upgrade are slim. I’ve died far too many times, because of clumsy game design choices and not bad decisions on my part. The first game I’d rate a B. This game is a C- so far. I’m thinking of knocking it down to the easiest difficulty and just finishing it for the story - or maybe I should just read the wiki article for the story — because the combat and gameplay are pretty lame.

This is the basis of the game’s AI, and they didn’t take it much further.
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I dread every time I come to an open area scene like this spot in Chpt. 6 because the AI is so dumb it ruins the game. Guard looking your way? They spot you. Guard looking 90* away from you or greater do whatever you want. Run around open chests, don’t stealth at all unless you are really close. The guards are like a bunch of foosball players on rails — like a bunch of sliders that can only sense anything if they are pointed at you and all you have to do is spend 45 seconds watching them to learn their pattern and then color inside the lines to navigate through the sliders. Watching cookie cutter identical guards walk slowly around in sure predictable paths is not my idea of fun gameplay. Kill off one at a time and the others never know the difference. There are no surprises there are no real consequences. It’s a rigid AI with rigid combat rules, and a low bar paper rock scissors fight mechanics. I feel like the gameplay mechanics are two decades old. We’ve come a lot further than this people. I guess so far I’m not seeing why the game is spattered with so much affection. The story is good, mostly, but a good story and bad gameplay don’t make a great game. It might make for a better book or movie. A poor or non existent story with great gameplay can still make an excellent game. (Counterstrike, Slay the Spire, Castle Crashers, SuperMario Brothers, Noita, etc). Rarely when an excellent story and excellent gameplay come together does a gem like Witcher 3 emerge.

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For those that are playing this, how is the gameplay? First game was nice for what it was, but very limited in the actual gameplay. It was mostly move and hide, with a very basic sling shot. Lots of set pieces without much actual gameplay options. I don't expect the girl to become Geralt of Rivia, but hoping there is a bit more depth to the gameplay this time around.
It’s the same. Or worse because you start all over with nothing but the sling. In fact you don’t even have the sling sometimes. I never like in games when in the sequel it’s like you forgot everything and have to start all over with zero skills again.
 
That's too bad, I was hoping for more direct fighting as well, I only played the first game for an hour before I got tired of running away and hiding.
 
Uh, this game has WAY more fighting after around the halfway point. This isn’t a short game either.
 
I am at the same part on Chapter 6. It is tough and I already died once. Going to try again. I am really enjoying the game though. It’s beautiful and I don’t mind the slow pace. I keep forgetting what I should craft and what works to kill the idiots with helmets.
 
A Plague Tale: Requiem gets the full PC deep dive treatment: settings analysis, optimised settings, console settings - plus PC vs console performance analysis with completely matched visual quality.

 
they need to hurry up with the RTX patch...the game looks gorgeous as is but RT can take it to another level- although it'll probably also crush performance
 
Would they have told RTX is always on when you put settings at ultra, how long would it have took people to realize there was nothing RTX like just looking at the game ? The FPS at launch would have made that credible, with some having to run on console AMD optimisation in mind/narrative.
 
Finished it yesterday. It's better than the first, less annoying over all IMO. Yeah the AI is kinda dumb but it's fun to kill them anyway. The running bits were simple but wow crazy ass shit.
 
I love how people keep conflating ray tracing with RTX. NVIDIA's marketing was genius.
 
Finished it yesterday. It's better than the first, less annoying over all IMO. Yeah the AI is kinda dumb but it's fun to kill them anyway. The running bits were simple but wow crazy ass shit.
I find the gameplay very bleh


I’d rather watch this in the form of a well done piece of cinema. It’s on rails anyway, and the little puzzles, whack a mole guards, and constant stealth hiding are barely passable for a modern gameplay mechanic. I feel like the gameplay is as clunky as games that came out 20 years ago — and it isn’t endearing.
At this point, I just started chpt 10, I switched it down to easy mode and I’m just playing it to see the story.
 
Finished it for the story on Easy.

Wow.

Raise it back a letter grade for a stellar story with an ending that leaves you silenced.

I looked over at my 11 year old daughter who was watching me play and she had tears in her eyes.
 
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Yeah, between the story and unique visuals I thought it was an outstanding game. Excited for the third installment, which seems to be set WW1-era ish.
 
I enjoyed the first game more

This game seems like some of the charm was lost because somehow my character forgot how to do everything she could do in the first game, I can hide under a thigh high table with my head and legs hanging out and the AI can’t see me because I pushed A and I’m “hiding” and the game forces you to do that often (ughhh), and by chapter 7 — I’m still hiding more than I’m fighting. It’s just too slow. The AI is unreasonably predictable and whack a mole. See AI, watch him make his rounds from cover A to B, learn his route, run as soon as he turns around to walk from point A to point B. What he sees a dead fellow soldier? He’ll go check him out and then literally drop his aggro level in seconds after declaring he’s dead, and go back to route A to B. It’s a bug I’ll suppose but it happens multiple times. (Sometimes he’ll stay aggroed, as he should and alert buddies, as he should). The combat is clumsy. And forced. You can temporarily escape a hand to hand combat knock down once, your screen turns red for 20 seconds or so, but if they catch you again during that time you are gonna die, if you make it out of that red screen you can escape again. Doesn’t matter how well you time buttons — you are gonna die if your screen is red and they catch you. The rats will sneak into the light just a bit to occasionally kill you around a fire or lamp post, making you play the whole scene again. Resources to craft upgrade are slim. I’ve died far too many times, because of clumsy game design choices and not bad decisions on my part. The first game I’d rate a B. This game is a C- so far. I’m thinking of knocking it down to the easiest difficulty and just finishing it for the story - or maybe I should just read the wiki article for the story — because the combat and gameplay are pretty lame.

This is the basis of the game’s AI, and they didn’t take it much further.


I dread every time I come to an open area scene like this spot in Chpt. 6 because the AI is so dumb it ruins the game. Guard looking your way? They spot you. Guard looking 90* away from you or greater do whatever you want. Run around open chests, don’t stealth at all unless you are really close. The guards are like a bunch of foosball players on rails — like a bunch of sliders that can only sense anything if they are pointed at you and all you have to do is spend 45 seconds watching them to learn their pattern and then color inside the lines to navigate through the sliders. Watching cookie cutter identical guards walk slowly around in sure predictable paths is not my idea of fun gameplay. Kill off one at a time and the others never know the difference. There are no surprises there are no real consequences. It’s a rigid AI with rigid combat rules, and a low bar paper rock scissors fight mechanics. I feel like the gameplay mechanics are two decades old. We’ve come a lot further than this people. I guess so far I’m not seeing why the game is spattered with so much affection. The story is good, mostly, but a good story and bad gameplay don’t make a great game. It might make for a better book or movie. A poor or non existent story with great gameplay can still make an excellent game. (Counterstrike, Slay the Spire, Castle Crashers, SuperMario Brothers, Noita, etc). Rarely when an excellent story and excellent gameplay come together does a gem like Witcher 3 emerge.

Yeah this game has some really shitty parts. Worst part is lack of a save system. In this type of game it is a must. One foot touches the edge of a rat area? Instant death. Walk through small amount of rats in another area? No damage. The game doesn't do a good job with the instant death hit boxes and without a save system it just gets old, fast.

The "stealth aspects are horrific. The luring mechanics don't work half the time. You can throw a rock right at their feet or right past their head and they won't see it. Or start a fire 5 feet next to them and they won't see it. Like you said, they have to be looking right at something to detect it. And the reset for the soldiers take far too long. And without a save system you can't save progress. So when the game bugs out it randomly respawns you elsewhere in a bad position. What should take 60 seconds often takes 15+ minutes. I'm not sure why developers are too lazy to implement a save system. In a linear game like this it should be extremely easy. Instead it spawns you in places where the guards instantly detect you and puts you in a stupid loop of automatic restarting. Lazy developers is all it is.

NPCs are dumb as you pointed out.

The other problem with random respawns is 50% of developers don't even bother to test where they spawn you. We really need to go back to save systems in games. I just find it crazy how games 15 years ago could do it fine. We have faster drives, larger drives, more RAM and faster CPUs. Laziness is the only thing I can think of when it comes to lack of saves. 15 years back when I thought new hardware would bring great improvements to games I had no idea how far backwards developers would intentionally go. Again, laziness. Most game developers are just lazy. When you get stuck in an automatic fail loop once that shit gets annoying. It spawned me in some bush, right in front of a soldier that could see me once. Automatic detection, automatic fail. Rinse repeat 5 times in a row before I had to exit and restart the entire section again. A save system would easily prevent these bugs.

Laziness and poor gameplay, the story and setting is good. Music, ambience and graphics are great. This is one of the best looking games I've played. Like you pointed out, it just isn't enough to hide the bad gameplay.


Just look at these graphics:

A Plague Tale  Requiem Screenshot 2022.12.11 - 16.53.14.02.png


A Plague Tale  Requiem Screenshot 2022.12.12 - 17.10.34.11.png
A Plague Tale  Requiem Screenshot 2022.12.11 - 16.59.22.89.png
A Plague Tale  Requiem Screenshot 2022.12.11 - 21.20.32.64.png


I just wish the gameplay itself was better. Really ruins the mood set when you deal with the brain dead, half functional NPCs.
 
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I'm still waiting for the ray-tracing patch to hit before playing this...this new concept of releasing games and patching in ray-tracing months later is really annoying (Doom Eternal got RT support 15 months later, Elden Ring is almost 12 months in and still no RT even though it was announced at launch as 'coming in a post-launch patch')
 
I watched Let's Plays of both of these games, one after the other, as they seemed to be one of those type of games that might have a decent "cinematic" story. I don't like any of genres the games belong in, so there was no chance I was going to play them myself - else I would not have watched Let's Plays. Was only interested in watching for the story. I can now safely say I won't be watching the next game or any other games in this series. The story is utterly pointless to me. Did anyone else gather any meaning or sense out of it?

The premise of the games were absolutely absurd and only got worse in the second game because the only thing halfway saving the first game was that the story was not concluded and maybe the seeming non-sense could be explained. But the second game just confirmed it was all non sense.

POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD:
So in a mostly "realistic" world that generally matches our reality, there is no such thing as divine beings that reveal themselves or perceptibly intervene in mortal life. In this world there is no supernatural aspects like ghosts, mystical powers, magic, etc. In this world the only major scientific/natural difference from our reality is so-called "alchemy," which itself is severely limited and does not differentiate itself much from what is possible with normal chemistry/science in both worlds. EXCEPT this "Macula," defying all logic both in our world, and far more importantly, in the SAME world of this story.

There is no explanation of its origin. No explanation of its nature. No explanation of its purpose. It is a random non-scientific supernatural semi-sentient force that appeared in a "realistic" world randomly in the 6th century, began super-influencing human minds through genetics, and giving those humans psychic mind control powers over rats.
(EDIT: And the rats are themselves given superpowers. The ability to grow into enormous super populations far beyond normal, without anywhere near the levels of food necessary to grow that large and indefinitely maintain/grow that level of population. They can also exert destructive physical force capable of bursting through and destroying massive stone walls, as well as rapid-speed tunnel great distances underneath seas.)

Simultaneously a "protector" is automatically "spawned in" when one of these influenced minds are born. Somehow memories and feelings from past protectors and Macula hosts are psychically passed on through time and space to future protectors and hosts.

Why suddenly in the 6th century did it begin? Why not at the beginning of civilization? Why not at the beginning of intelligent life? Why not even earlier? Why did it begin in humans? Why/how is it semi-sentient? Why is it aligned specifically with rats? Where does its supernatural power originate? What does it even want? Why does it want it? Why throughout history has there never been any other supernatural powers or events if the Macula proves the supernatural exists?

The whole plot is one big joke. I'm guessing it did start out as a joke and someone said "let's see how much we can get away with this BS."

It would be one thing if this was a comedic or silly story, or it did not in any way try to take itself seriously or portray the world as realistic. But none of that is the case. It pretends to be serious. And nothing in the story was compelling since everything revolved around an artificial premise, with no depth or interesting revelations over time. I am flabbergasted as to why these games got such high ratings. Even if I was the type to enjoy the gameplay of these genres, I didn't see anything particularly exciting or interesting happening on the gameplay side either.
 
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Yeah this game has some really shitty parts. Worst part is lack of a save system. In this type of game it is a must. One foot touches the edge of a rat area? Instant death. Walk through small amount of rats in another area? No damage. The game doesn't do a good job with the instant death hit boxes and without a save system it just gets old, fast.

The "stealth aspects are horrific. The luring mechanics don't work half the time. You can throw a rock right at their feet or right past their head and they won't see it. Or start a fire 5 feet next to them and they won't see it. Like you said, they have to be looking right at something to detect it. And the reset for the soldiers take far too long. And without a save system you can't save progress. So when the game bugs out it randomly respawns you elsewhere in a bad position. What should take 60 seconds often takes 15+ minutes. I'm not sure why developers are too lazy to implement a save system. In a linear game like this it should be extremely easy. Instead it spawns you in places where the guards instantly detect you and puts you in a stupid loop of automatic restarting. Lazy developers is all it is.

NPCs are dumb as you pointed out.

The other problem with random respawns is 50% of developers don't even bother to test where they spawn you. We really need to go back to save systems in games. I just find it crazy how games 15 years ago could do it fine. We have faster drives, larger drives, more RAM and faster CPUs. Laziness is the only thing I can think of when it comes to lack of saves. 15 years back when I thought new hardware would bring great improvements to games I had no idea how far backwards developers would intentionally go. Again, laziness. Most game developers are just lazy. When you get stuck in an automatic fail loop once that shit gets annoying. It spawned me in some bush, right in front of a soldier that could see me once. Automatic detection, automatic fail. Rinse repeat 5 times in a row before I had to exit and restart the entire section again. A save system would easily prevent these bugs.

Laziness and poor gameplay, the story and setting is good. Music, ambience and graphics are great. This is one of the best looking games I've played. Like you pointed out, it just isn't enough to hide the bad gameplay.


Just look at these graphics:

View attachment 533840

View attachment 533839View attachment 533841View attachment 533842

I just wish the gameplay itself was better. Really ruins the mood set when you deal with the brain dead, half functional NPCs.
At least on PC you can make backup saves.
 
Flogger23m

A buddy and I were talking about the game. It was like three different dev teams an A team a B team and a C team were given rough instruction and told to complete 5 chapters each, but nobody was overseeing or communicating well between the groups, and then they came back together in two years time and pasted the chapters together and pushed it out the door. It’s like it never went through that final play through QA process with a competent director. And while they were in these silos all three teams decided they wanted to model their chapter’s gameplay after a slightly different game. 1 team like the original Thief, another team liked older tomb raider, and a third team tried to match the original plague tale most closely. The gameplay mechanics, quality of graphics design, and even displayed story character personalities changed too much chapter to chapter. Some chapters were very well done, and some should have flat out been scrapped. The game could have been improved simply by leaving about 1/4 to 1/3 of it out completely. The hide under a table mechanics with basic plodding identical foot soldiers early on were the worst. (That’s 20 year old gameplay) But there are places where the hide mechanic was intense to the player and well done. Like the boss fight at the end when you had to alternate between hiding and turning cranks to raise the gates to get out of the room. Some of the gameplay was taken from the worn and tattered playbook from original Xbox and poor Xbox 360 games and some of it was genuinely intense and enjoyable. Several different teams and a poor final editing process is my guess.
 
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I was going to comment on that, but I am not yet done with the game. It feels like the game is balancing between being an interactive movie game (which is fine) and a regular game. The gameplay is simple yet tedious. But it is still too involved to be a proper interactive story game, and doesn't have the decision making that makes those games interesting.

Everything else with the game is nice though. I wish the gameplay was designed better. The way you select between weapons and their elemental affects is just horrible.

Also the another thing I was disappointed about is that they changed the voice actors. I had zero problem understanding the characters in the first game. Was odd to hear them switch from a French accent in the first game to an English accent. Made zero sense and I think the voice acting was fine in the first.
 
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RT shadows.... That's it?!

RT AO as well...I'm wondering if the original plan was to add more RT features (RT global illumination?) but performance would have tanked

Patch Notes common to all platforms
Bug Fixes
-Fixed random crashes or blockers that could happen in some chapters

Patch Notes specific to PC
Changes & Updates
-Implemented Ray Tracing in the graphic settings (shadows and ambient occlusion)

https://forums.focus-entmt.com/topic/64318/patch-notes-update-18-01-23
 
Difference is essentially not noticeable. Not worth it for the performance hit unless your system is fast enough. Graphics are phenomenal without RT and also taxing.
 
I enjoyed the first game enough to buy this one. Damn this game has some nice visuals. This series has a bit of the same vibe as The Last Of Us only not nearly as thought-provoking, and production value is not as high (which is a tall order considering Naughty Dog’s quality). Still this series is surprisingly good.
 
The game's latest update introduces a 60FPS performance mode on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X...the new update also introduces new PC specific graphics options, such as the adjustment of the number of animated rats on screen, their refresh rate and that of the characters to reduce CPU usage and improve performance on low-end systems...

https://twitter.com/APlagueTale/status/1656243376029663234
 
The game's latest update introduces a 60FPS performance mode on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X...the new update also introduces new PC specific graphics options, such as the adjustment of the number of animated rats on screen, their refresh rate and that of the characters to reduce CPU usage and improve performance on low-end systems...

https://twitter.com/APlagueTale/status/1656243376029663234
The 40fps mode on Xbox Series X was pretty good before. I'll check this new performance mode out and report back.
 
First one was a truly surprisingly great game, I need to get around to this one.
 
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