Asobo and Focus Home Interactive released a new trailer for A Plague Tale: Innocence called “Monsters”. It focuses on the less-than-scrupulous members of the Inquisition doing the mysterious bidding of Vitalis, the head of the local chapter in France. The comment section on YouTube is calling one of the main villains, Lord Nicholas, the “Medieval Boba Fett”. He’s the Inquisition’s attack dog and seems to fulfill the role of a ruthless bounty hunter on the prowl.
Lord Nicholas leads the Inquisition’s forces and works directly under Vitalis. His mission is to capture Hugo, the main character’s little brother. It’s up to Amicia to protect her brother and flee from the Inquisition while the ruthless English army invades and lays waste to all in their wake.
This is also in addition to brigands and bandits running roughshod on the countryside while disorder and chaos breaks loose. Amicia, Hugo, and other orphans flee in terror as all hell breaks loose. You can get a glimpse of the action taking place throughout A Plague Tale in the trailer below.
The interesting thing about it is that no one is really portrayed as the good guys here. Asobo gives a grim-dark depiction of medieval France – one that was once beautiful and placid, turned vile and dark through the tumult of war, plague, and pestilence.
But all the fighting and killing is still just a backdrop element to an even more ferocious foe: flesh-eating rats.
The hook for A Plague Tale is that players will need to use stealth and cunning to evade Lord Nicholas and the Inquisition, the bandits, the English army, and other ruffians, while also attempting to use fire, trebuchets, torches, and slingshots to wade through the innumerable flood of insatiable rats.
It’s interesting that they took a grounded concept and then put a bit of a stealth-horror spin on it.
It at least looks different from a lot of other games out there, and the structure of the story and characters is one of the few times that lends itself well to having a female lead as the playable protagonist. The idea is that every other force in the game is strong, and you’re basically playing as the weakest characters in that scenario. So long as Asobo doesn’t get woke with their depiction of Amicia, I think A Plague Tale could end up being a decent AA-sized game.
We’ll find out how well it all comes together when the medieval-stealth title drops on May 14th for the Xbox One, PS4, and PC.
