A Plague Tale: Innocence is a moving story of adventure and bonding through the darkest hours of history. In today’s Story Trailer, get a glimpse of the heartbreaking tale of young Amicia and her brother Hugo, on the run from the Black Death, a plague of rats, the Inquisition, and worse besides. Today also marks the beginning of pre-orders on all platforms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKwTUEbcti0
The story begins in the Kingdom of France, as the Hundred Years’ War and emergence of the plague start to take a toll on the population. The De Rune family lives a still-peaceful, sheltered life in their castle and surrounding lands, but it can’t last...
Amicia and Hugo's journey will take them to incredible places, some indescribably horrifying, others hauntingly beautiful, and many a mix of the two. The people they meet, and their fates, will shape their story - and it is unlikely either sibling would survive without the other. As they grow closer, the world gets harsher, and that bond becomes ever more vital.
Pre-orders are now available for digital and retail on consoles, and digital PC. Digital pre-orders come with extra coats of arms for Amicia and Hugo, while retail ones have additional benefits depending on region - please check local listings for full details.
A Plague Tale: Innocence releases May 14 on PC, PS4, and Xbox One. Pre-orders are available now.
Welcome back to our devblog series where we unveil a wealth of details about the making of A Plague Tale: Innocence, Asobo Studio’s upcoming adventure game coming 2019 to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. Today, we’re excited to continue to share more info about a “protagonist" that you will have to face in our game: The Inquisition!
Let’s welcome our Game Director Kevin Choteau who will continue our discussion about the creation of the Inquisition in A Plague Tale: Innocence, started with Narrative Designer Sébastien Renard last week.
The Inquisition, a Perfect Antagonist
The Inquisition seemed like a logical choice for an antagonist once we decided on setting the story during the Great Plague. We were also aware of the already existing mythology surrounding them. There’s a wide set of narratives (such as witch hunts and burnings at the stake) depicting them as the bad guys. Their disproportionately threatening presence beside two children made them a natural choice as an antagonist.
What was also interesting about this time period for us was that by then the Inquisition was almost at an end, as a result of the general and gradual decay of organized institutions. Everything was falling to pieces. Some factions of the Inquisition were deeply aware of it as they desperately tried to hold on to their power. In A Plague Tale, we meet a stronger Inquisition led by the Great Inquisitor Vitalis. Actively looking for a way to end the plague, Vitalis is also hunting Amicia and Hugo for unknown reasons.
Creating an original Inquisition for A Plague Tale: Innocence
Kevin Choteau
It was quite tricky to research the Inquisition since there aren’t a lot of sources documenting their armed forces. You will find way more information on the Crusades than on the Inquisition, so we supplemented the already existing imagery around the Inquisition with our research into the Crusades and knights from the era. This melting pot of influences results in knights wearing bulky and very heavy armour. This directly influenced our gameplay as the Inquisition members are not as nimble as Amicia and Hugo, and can have trouble catching them. This aspect of gameplay directly helps Amicia and the player.
One of the coolest aspects about developing the Inquisition was creating great contrasts within the Inquisition. They project a confident and strong image, yet when the rats threaten them, even the most charismatic Inquisition members can succumb to terror. As soon as they notice the rodents, they lose all their charm.
The Inquisition has its own ways of fighting off the rats. The story is set only a few months after the beginning of the pandemic. At this point the Inquisition is trying to resist its spread the best it can since it hasn’t found the a great solution yet. The guards add spikes to their leg guards to stop the rats from climbing them, and safe spaces are created by lighting torches near their chariots. All the while, their alchemists work on developing new tools to make the Inquisition stronger than the rats.
A villain out of a tale: The Big Bad Inquisition
A Plague Tale is not a historical game, so don’t expect to see historical figures. As you have probably gathered by now, while A Plague Tale gets a lot of inspiration from real life, it is a fictional tale at heart.
The Inquisition that was present in Bordeaux at the time isn’t remembered as very violent or even aggressive. Once we noticed that Bordeaux didn’t suffer a lot from the Inquisition’s presence, we got turned to the English and the Spanish Inquisition for inspiration, due to their far more brutal ways.
We also pondered how to present religion since the Inquisition is historically linked to it. It does come up in the game since we wanted to portray how the Pope and the Church react to the excesses of the Inquisition and the Great Inquisitor Vitalis himself. After all, at the time, several Inquisition members were excommunicated because they went too far. But history isn’t what we want to recreate through our game: it’s only a setting.
See you soon for more behind-the-scenes information and anecdotes about the creative process behind A Plague Tale: Innocence!
A Plague Tale: Innocence releases May 14th on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.
Welcome back to A Plague Tale Webseries. We’re happy and thankful that many of you appreciate the work of our team. Plunge today into the creative process behind A Plague Tale: Innocence in our third and final episode, Children of the Plague!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Edqt7ounzWk
With the first and second episodes introducing you to the characters and the unforgiving world they share, episode 3, Children of the Plague, focuses on their nemeses: the unnatural rat plague that swarms across medieval France and the Inquisition relentlessly hunting Hugo and his sister Amicia.
Death and disease follow in the wake of the plague rats, and not one person - clergy, persecutor, royalty, or peasant - is safe. While for Asobo Studio, rats were second to the main characters and the narrative focus, they became an integral part to the game’s structure and a core part of the experience, influencing every aspect of the design. The inquisition has begun to fight back, and their equipment is tailored towards stopping the plague, using modified armor and light to keep the rats at bay.
A Plague Tale: Innocence releases May 14, 2019 on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
Welcome back to our devblog series where we unveil a wealth of details about the making of A Plague Tale: Innocence, Asobo Studio’s upcoming adventure game coming 2019 to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. Today, we’re excited to share more info about a “protagonist" that you will have to face in our game: The Inquisition!
Let’s welcome our Narrative Designer Sébastien Renard who will cover the creation of the Inquisition in A Plague Tale: Innocence, as well as the many challenges the team faced during development.
The Inquisition, a Constant Threat
The Inquisition you encounter in the game is a combination of historical research and our own idea of the medieval organization. In A Plague Tale: Innocence, they are trying to stop the rats and ultimately the plague from spreading, so you could say that their goal is rather noble. Their methods, on the other hand, are extremely harsh and cruel. The inquisition wasn’t known for caring for the common people.
A Plague Tale’s version of the Inquisition is a progressive one. Driven by a particular and personal faith, the leader of the Inquisition, Vitalis, sees beyond contemporary dogmas. While his army is combating the spread of the Black Death, he attempts to find an answer through alchemy. Vitalis is convinced that he is working for the common good, and is prepared to commit the most heinous acts in its name.
Creating an Original Inquisition
We wanted to depict our Inquisition as having its own identity (made possible thanks to the art direction). The Inquisition was very powerful at the time, and we show this partly through how they continuously develop new technology to deal with the rats. We also wanted to show the great discrepancies between the Inquisition and the Church. The Inquisition is visionary: it understands the new danger faster than the Church, which is too busy hiding. Vitalis himself is at odds with the Church and wants no ties to it.
You will quickly come to realize that the Inquisition has a veritable army at its disposal. This is a good way to convey their power at a mere glance. It’s also a direct reference to how the Inquisition used to seize goods from nobles who had supposedly run foul of the law. By these practices, they grew as a direct rival to the Church.
Sébastien Renard
During the Great Plague, the Church was ready to dismantle the Inquisition. However, in A Plague Tale, we chose to portray an Inquisition that is managing to dodge the Church’s attacks. It’s far more powerful under the Great Inquisitor Vitalis, and as a result, it’s also the only force able to fight the plague.
To counter the animalistic danger represented by the rats, we needed a great human threat. We first thought of other figures, such as heretics, but the Inquisition felt like the right choice. What was incredibly useful about the Inquisition was that we could give it a proper visual identity thanks to their armour and banners. These are symbols of the era and reminders of how religion influenced every aspect of society. The Inquisition therefore brings something new to the table: a human opponent with deeply human behaviour. It also helps to shine a light on the constant clash between innocent children and corrupted adults.
The stealth gameplay comes through as a result of The Inquisition forcing Hugo and Amicia to be wary and stay out of sight as they travel. Amicia can fight the Inquisition, but in order to do so, she must develop her skills over time. At the start of our story, our protagonists are cautious, but gradually, they learn to use the rats in their favour. For both Amicia and the players, the main goal is to understand the Inquisition’s new “technology”, and to either choose to stop it or use it to fight back.
The Inspirations for our Inquisition
The Inquisition is a rather grim symbol of the Middle Ages, and best known for the terrible Spanish Inquisition, which was far more violent than the one present in Bordeaux at the time. There, the Inquisition seemed quite reluctant to severely punish people, with the exception of state criminals.
To create the Inquisition, we were particularly influenced by various works in popular culture. Movies such as The Name of the Rose and Black Death, TV-shows like Inquisitio (a french show) and even the manga Berserk (mostly due to its dark aspects).
See you soon for more behind-the-scenes information and anecdotes about the creative process behind A Plague Tale: Innocence!
A Plague Tale: Innocence releases May 14th on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.
Welcome back to A Plague Tale Webseries. We’re happy and thankful that many of you appreciate the work of our team.With this webserires, plunge into the darkest hours of history, and discover the creative process behind the game!
The second episode: Dark Ages is now available! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y13VeD0fzJQ
After a first episode which mainly focused on the young sibling protagonists Amicia and Hugo, Episode 2: Dark Ages takes us to the Middle Ages. Discover the process that went into forging a grounded, realistic world, set in one of the darkest hours of human history.
The creative team at Asobo Studio explains their inspiration for the world they built - from visiting real French villages whose layouts, streets and buildings find their roots in medieval times, to taking cues from famous painters to craft the game’s naturalistic lighting. The carefully crafted world serves to enrich the story and the characters, and contributes to creating this moving, emotional experience.
Stay tuned for the third episode, available Thursday next week.
A Plague Tale: Innocence releases May 14, 2019 on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
We're excited to announce that A Plague Tale: Innocence will release on May 14, 2019.
Discover the work of our incredible team in a new behind-the-scenes webseries, the first episode of which, Roots of Innocence, is available now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tArvEdvXg08
The first episode focuses on Amicia and Hugo, the two main characters of A Plague Tale: Innocence, and their relationship. These children encounter 14th century France in a similar way to the player, an unknown and dangerous place that they barely understand but must survive. As the realities of the world of adults press down on them, their familial love will be tested as they work together to overcome challenges from the rat plague and pursuing Inquisition alike.
This episode also introduces you to Charlotte McBurney and Logan Hannan, the young actors who provide voices for Amicia and Hugo. Both are immensely talented and have their own approach to and opinions of these realistic, troubled characters. As your constant companions through the adventure, their work is as vital as anyone’s to creating a moving, emotional experience that will stick with you long past the first playthrough.
A Plague Tale: Innocence releases May 14, 2019 on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
Welcome back to our devblog series! We’re unveiling a wealth of details about the making of A Plague Tale: Innocence, Asobo Studio’s upcoming adventure game releasing on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC in 2019. Today, we’re excited to share more info about the art direction of A Plague Tale: Innocence!
Let’s welcome Olivier Ponsonnet, Art Director on A Plague Tale: Innocence to discuss the creation of the game, as well as the many challenges the team had to face during development.
I’m Olivier Ponsonnet, Art Director on A Plague Tale: Innocence. I’m in charge of the game’s graphic design: the creation and development of the characters, environments, buildings, as well as the interface.
Olivier Ponsonnet, Art Director
When working on the game’s universe and atmosphere, we found more inspiration in paintings and movies than in video games. We really wanted to find something unique and special. So, we went to study some artwork of the Polish painter, Zdzisław Beksiński. We soon fell in love with his unique universe, a bit felted, foggy, and deeply dark.
Zdzisław Beksiński’s Artwork
As for movies, MacBeth was one of our main inspirations because of its peculiar graphic direction, especially how they use the mist to cut shots. That is also a technique we used to create A Plague Tale: Innocence. The shots are composed as illustrations with separated subjects in the depths of misty sketching. This allows us to create depth, and to have a graphic approach that reflects the use of the silhouettes.
This is our way to deal with one of the game’s constraints: how to use the light contrast in the gameplay. If we didn’t use the mist, if everything was black, the game would also be totally black. For example, even though there aren’t any lamps on the street, we can still see the whole figure of the city.
Another source of inspiration when developing the game was typical buildings in Bordeaux, South-West France. For me, it is odd in an interesting way to be able to find muses in our daily life. The Great Bell is an excellent example. It’s one of the oldest belfries in France and the last remnant of the old city walls that were reworked in the 15th century, but originally built in the same period as A Plague Tale: Innocence’s story background. We also took parts of the Roman ruins as our references, such as the Palais Gallien, a magnificent vestige in the city center. As for other sources, we were inspired by the typical villages in Saint-Émilion, Carcassonne, and so on.
Great Bell, Bordeaux
Our biggest challenge is the light, as it’s the most important element in the gameplay. In general, artists tend to use the light as a tool to create their artwork. However, it’s almost opposite for A Plague Tale: Innocence. So, we played with colors and lights a lot when developing the game: the gameplay lights are warm, while the setting ones are cool. It allows us to categorize the lights in a certain way: at night, the moon illuminates the path in blue, whereas the torch does it in yellow.
We also used another technique from Macbeth, which allows us to personify the black plague as if the air was dense, impure, and corrupted by the disease. That is to say, this actually plays a double role: it not only allows us to cut our shots, but also supports the game’s atmosphere by emphasizing its heavy and unhealthy side.
Sometimes, it’s just our own interpretation. However, we’ve tried our best to stick to the medieval settings to make the game consistent to its narrative part.
See you soon for more making-of information and anecdotes about the creative process behind A Plague Tale: Innocence!
A Plague Tale: Innocence releases in 2019 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.
Welcome back to our devblog series! We’re unveiling a wealth of details and info about the making of A Plague Tale: Innocence, Asobo Studio’s upcoming adventure game coming 2019 to PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. Today, we’re excited to share more info about a “protagonist” that you can’t miss in our game: the rats!
Let’s welcome lead gameplay programmer Cyril Doillon to cover the creation of the rats in A Plague Tale: Innocence, as well as the many challenges the team had to face during development.
The Technical Challenges of a Swarm
Our initial objective was to display the maximum number of rats while having a good technical optimisation for the game. The trick is to display as much detail as possible for the rats closest to the player, while decreasing that level of detail the further away they are. It’s a huge challenge of optimisation.
The hundred closest rats to the player are as “demanding” (requiring processor power) as the two thousands behind. We have four levels of details:
The fully animated and detailed rats very close to the player
The next one hundred rats slightly less detailed
A third layer of rats sharing the same animation loop, further away
A last layer for the rats in the background, who are a non animated mesh
We use multi-threading at its maximum to have all of that running smoothly. Several cores in the processor are working at the same time, additionally to the AI.
Lead Gameplay Programmer Cyril Doillon
Regarding the light and its impact on the rats, we can’t manage each rat individually if we want them to react to the characters moving with a light source. We merge as much as possible the calculations of the rats for their movement and reaction to light. They all share a basic behaviour, giving us this fluid “horde” effect while still maintaining good performance.
That’s how we manage to have 5,000 visible rats in the screen. The rats behind Amicia aren’t displayed, but they’re still generated, meaning that the processor handles more than 10,000 rats at the same time.
The result feels very organic, almost as a liquid. But we didn’t design the rats as a liquid, it comes naturally from their horde behaviour. Note that scientists have noticed in the past that the movement of a crowd share some similarities with liquid behaviour, meaning it makes sense for our rats as well!
We didn’t find a lot of references to rats in video games. Existing crowd management solutions were not adapted to what we wanted to perform in A Plague Tale. Perhaps some scenes from Uncharted 3 with spiders but it was very occasional in a specific level and not as intense and grounded as we planned with our rats.
We also watched movies like The Mummy or Indiana Jones and their insects, like those in the catacombs in Venice. Generally though, there is little fictional media that achieves what we have in mind and most of our studies were focused on real life: it’s fascinating to study real rat colonies, the way they organize and how they behave all together.
We’ve also been surprised by some of the player reactions. Some get scared the first time they see the rats and stand up, others smile. We didn’t really anticipate the impact the rats could have on some players. It was really visceral.
See you soon for more behind-the-scenes information and anecdotes about the creative process behind A Plague Tale: Innocence!
A Plague Tale: Innocence releases in 2019 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.
Welcome back to our devblog series! We’re unveiling a wealth of details and info about the making of A Plague Tale: Innocence, Asobo Studio’s upcoming adventure game coming 2019 to PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. Today, we’re excited to share more info about a “protagonist” that you can’t miss in our game: the rats!
Let’s welcome narrative designer Sébastien Renard to cover the creation of the rats in A Plague Tale: Innocence, as well as the many challenges the team had to face during development.
Origins
Our original intention was to tell the story of two kids confronted with something that will change them forever. It was the actual starting point. The medieval setting asserted itself naturally: it’s dramatic but exotic/unfamiliar, it’s brutal and crude.
Here at Asobo, in Bordeaux, France, we are physically surrounded by the remains and the scars of this period. It was the perfect setting in fact: the war, the tough unsophisticated life... it’s an emblematic historical period that gives us plenty of conflict and strong material to work with.
The idea of epidemic events based on the medieval beliefs came up with the Black Plague contemporaneous context. Exploring this with innocent children like Hugo and Amicia was emotional and strong. It was the kind of journey we were ready to tell. Being overwhelmed by thousands of rats was a technical challenge but it was freaking awesome and visceral!
The Representation of the Rats
We’ve quickly gone from a bunch of tiny rats to a massive living entity threatening Amicia and Hugo! The beginning of A Plague Tale: Innocence takes place in the autumn of 1348, almost exactly the moment when the epidemic reached the South-West of France.
Sébastien Renard - Narrative Designer
We’ve quickly gone to a massive living entity threatening Amicia and Hugo because we immediately saw how we could use them both in terms of gameplay mechanics and narrative twist. Visually, it has a terrifying impact even on adults. In terms of narration it was also something we could use to raise the tension gradually and with a powerful lore behind.
The rats arrive in the game as if they had always been there, underground. The earth suddenly opens its gates and releases the terror. It’s a similar narrative development to that of Alien or Jaws: everyone knows the threat, but the tension is about when it will be unleashed.
The rats are a natural force colonising the world and breaking the balance. As a blind threat, they attack both the protagonists and the Inquisition, allowing players to turn them against their enemies.
Interactions between the Rats and Protagonists
The rats are a threat at the beginning of the game, or at least the characters see them like this. An underground threat invading the world around them that seems to be, after the initial shock of the first encounter, a familiar terror. One they can understand how to fight and escape. Rats fear the light, they stay in dark corners and night is their domain.
The gameplay relies on the alchemy between these various elements: how to push back the rats through fire and lights and use them to counter other threats while staying careful as they can still eat you in the blink of an eye!
The inspiration for the rats in A Plague Tale: Innocence
We looked for a lot of references before we realised it hadn’t been documented that much. Rats are part of the european background, especially because of the plague, with which they’ve always been associated. They’re always seen as a threat in western societies. However, in Indian culture for example, they’re seen more positively. But they are always considered as smart animals, fast learners, and with a frightening team effectiveness.
For the visual sources, we did not find many references even in the film industry. Some movies managed to use rats or other vermins as “waves” and hordes, but we wanted to explore our own vision. Something like a fluid, a force that is out of control, unnatural but grounded - not magic.
There has been plenty of funny things that we’ve come across throughout development. Or at least, they now make me smile, but it was far less fun for the programmer team in charge of fixing them. I’ve recorded a video of a group of rats playing animations by standing on their legs and looking from left to right. It looked like a choir!
I believe we’ve designed a credible entity that is one of the main characters in our tale, and I’m really proud of what our team has achieved.
See you soon for more behind-the-scenes information and anecdotes about the creative process behind A Plague Tale: Innocence!
A Plague Tale: Innocence releases in 2019 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.
Welcome back to our devblog series! We’re unveiling a wealth of details and info about the making of A Plague Tale: Innocence, Asobo Studio’s upcoming adventure game coming 2019 to PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. Today, we’re excited to share more info about a “protagonist” that you can’t miss in our game: the rats!
Let’s welcome game director Kevin Choteau who will cover the creation of the rats in A Plague Tale: Innocence, as well as the many challenges the team had to face during development.
Origins
The rats stemmed from our will to tell a story about two children facing the cruelty of the world. We looked for a setting that offered the best possible frame and context for a story about fragility and innocence.
The Middle Ages (1348) was perfect for what we were looking for. This is the time of the Black Death, the Hundred Years' War, the Inquisition, the “routiers” (mercenary soldiers terrorising the French countryside) and other dark events.
The Black Death was the most interesting element to explore, as a common belief is that it was spread largely by rats. Using the rats is a great way to give a body to an immaterial, invisible disease, and to create gameplay mechanics around it.
The Representation of the Rats
Rats eat everything. It’s a notion that players get pretty quickly. Rats trigger common and old fears, they hide in the dark and move in massive hordes. It’s the quantity that makes the threat tangible.
Kevin Choteau - Game Director
It’s also the credibility of their behaviour that gives this effect. They’re always aggressive towards the characters and the scale between rats and children reinforces the idea of powerlessness - even the adults run away.
We slowly introduce the rats to the player, building a legend around them and making the first encounter even more memorable. We’ve worked a lot on the staging and directing of this scene throughout the development process to strongly mark players with it. Various moments further in the game maintain the threat at its maximum.
Interactions between the Rats and Protagonists
Near the start of A Plague Tale: Innocence, the rats are a constant direct threat our heroes have to face. Later, Amicia will learn to use them at her advantage to escape from other threats. This was planned from the beginning, and is the basis of our triptych between light, humans and rats, as well as the interaction between these three elements.
The gameplay relies on the alchemy between these various elements: how to push back the rats through fire and lights and use them to counter other threats while staying careful as they can still eat you in the blink of an eye!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8rnUzEnpoA
The inspiration for the rats in A Plague Tale: Innocence
We really struggled to find interesting source materials for the rats. We’ve watched a lot of wildlife documentary about their life and how they react when they’re flushed out.
Rats are a very smart species with fascinating and cruel organisational systems. It’s pretty unique, and often used to convey an image of parasite over brute strength.
See you soon for more behind-the-scenes information and anecdotes about the creative process behind A Plague Tale: Innocence!
A Plague Tale: Innocence releases in 2019 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.
Kevin Choteau
