There’s a scene in A Plague Tale that’s truly a picture of innocence. Perhaps the only one. Two teens, highborn protagonist Amicia and poor thief Melie, work to liberate an abandoned castle from swarms of killer rats, guiding them into pits with flaming braziers. As Amicia strains to lever the metal contraptions, she imagines herself an Amazon warrior, and narrates a battle against invading hordes. Melie resists the charade – she’s the game’s modern conscience, cynical, wary of status – but then begins to embellish the fantasy herself. In that moment they forget who they are. They’re just two children playing.
Titles stapled together with a colon often feel unwieldy, but A Plague Tale justifies its subtitle. It’s the thematic glue that binds the adventure together, and makes it sticky. Yes, this is a tale of kids thrust into a diseased adult world, fighting to restore an innocence lost. But it’s also something darker, about how thin the veneer of innocence is, and how it may rest on stubborn blindness to injustice and suffering. Innocence, this tale suggests, isn’t so much a gift of childhood as of privilege, rendered hollow by an unseen human cost.
Amicia de Rune and her five-year-old brother Hugo, sheltered offspring of a 14th-century French lord, are ideal specimens to convey such ideas. Amicia is carefree and curious, treating life as an adventure, only complaining that she doesn’t see her parents much. Her mother, in particular, is occupied with Hugo, the boy afflicted with an unnamed condition that keeps him confined to his quarters.
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Denne historien er fra April 2021-utgaven av Edge.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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BONAPARTE: A MECHANIZED REVOLUTION
No sooner have we stepped into the boots of royal guard Bonaparte than we’re faced with a life-altering decision.
TOWERS OF AGHASBA
Watch Towers Of Aghasba in action and it feels vast. Given your activities range from deepwater dives to climbing up cliffs or lumbering beasts, and from nurturing plants or building settlements to pinging arrows at the undead, it’s hard to get a bead on the game’s limits.
THE STONE OF MADNESS
The makers of Blasphemous return to religion and insanity
Vampire Survivors
As Vampire Survivors expanded through early access and then its two first DLCs, it gained arenas, characters and weapons, but the formula remained unchanged.
Devil May Cry
The Resident Evil 4 that never was, and the Soulslike precursor we never saw coming
Dragon Age: The Veilguard
With Dragon Age: The Veilguard, BioWare has made a deeply self-conscious game, visibly inspired by some of the best-loved ideas from Dragon Age and Mass Effect.
SKATE STORY
Hades is a halfpipe
SID MEIER'S CIVILIZATION VII
Firaxis rethinks who makes history, and how it unfolds
FINAL FANTASY VII: REBIRTH
Remaking an iconic game was daunting enough then the developers faced the difficult second entry
THUNDER LOTUS
How Spirit farer's developer tripled in size without tearing itself apart