Summary
A Plague Taleseems confidently shelved for now though it hasn’t been long enough sinceRequiemto be sure that a sequel isn’t in the works. If one is, it’ll be interesting to see when it lands in history, much less the far future when it’s teased to be set inRequiem’s post-credits scene. But while story-related matters will certainly be an important consideration for a sequel, so will whatever changes are made toA Plague Tale’s stealth-oriented gameplay loop. Enemy AI will forever be an insatiable balancing act, for example, but there are definitely areas of improvement aPlague Talethreequel could hope to flesh out.
Likewise, depending on who a third game’s protagonists could be, gameplay may not be fully centered around stealth at all in a sequel. Either way, one of the biggest blights onA Plague Tale’s gameplay is how much players are punished for getting Amicia de Rune killed. There are times when a death is near enough to a checkpoint that it doesn’t strip too much progress away from players, and there are others when a death means having to painstakingly loot everything in the area again, let alone getting caught in an inescapable softlocked situation.
A Plague Tale’s Checkpoint System is Egregiously Punishing
Indeed,deaths are made excruciating inA Plague Taleand they’re worse if players usually enjoy searching every nook and cranny of their environments for hard-earned resources.Innocencehas a delicate, gratifying resource management system where players spend materials on both crafting and upgrade allocations, meaning players need to be judicious with the items they scavenge.Requiemthen changes this slightly, but resources aren’t any less important.
Each death resets players back at the most recent checkpoint and in doing so forces them to pick up all loot again, even if there was loot in a previous room or area that players had retrieved before dying.InnocenceandRequiemare both disappointingly to blame for this punitive checkpoint system, which surprisingly made its way to the sequel and would seem purposeful as a result.
However, all this achieves is bloating the game’s length by having players loot items as many times as they die and return to a checkpoint. Players can choose to forgo these items if they’re feeling frustrated by how long it takes to retrieve them again, but they won’t be able to craft as much ammunition or earn potential upgrades that they would have with them.
In a third game, it would make all the difference if loot was sustained upon death without players needing to collect it again because they’d be able to concentrate on how to evade or defeat the enemy that slayed them instead.
A Plague Tale’s Softlocks are Reason Enough for Checkpoints to Be Reconsidered
In the worst cases, fire pits that were extinguished before dying to a horde of rats may remain unlit when reloading the section and softlock players in an unavoidable and instant death animation.
InnocenceandRequiemthankfully have a chapter select featurein the main menu that breaks chapters into segments for players to load back into, but having to load one of these bookmarks means players must replay a chunk of the chapter, collect its copious loot, and contend with questionable AI all over again.
These two games aren’t tremendously long and some sequences are far easier than others. Still, dysfunctional checkpoints stretch them out more than they’re welcome and howa thirdPlague Talegameapproaches this design could be make or break for it.
