A Plague Tale: Innocence is a narrative-heavy action-stealth game set during the Hundred Years’ War in 1300’s France. You play as a young woman named Amicia de Rune as she finds herself and her little brother Hugo caught in the middle of an invading English army and a nasty plague of flesh-eating rats. You soon find out that their desperate expedition isn’t simply happenstance, and the fascinating plot had me guessing what was really going right until the credits rolled. There are two main gameplay loops that become familiar throughout the many distinct chapters. First is the stealth that has you sneaking past enemy soldiers using a repertoire of handy equipment, while the rest of the game has you puzzling your way around hordes of horrific rats. Various abilities unlock throughout the story and it was fun to use a wide assortment of them during the final few acts. Using fire/light rays to circumvent the hordes of rats was fun to solve as well, and some encounters were surprisingly clever. Both gameplay concepts are well designed with really good checkpointing, so even if you fail an encounter it puts you right back into the action fairly quickly. You’ll also be accompanied by other secondary characters frequently, but thankfully the game never feels like a giant escort mission. The presentation really needs to be commended here because it’s remarkable. Most of the voice performances are really good—Charlotte McBurney’s performance as Amicia is especially terrific—and the game’s atmosphere is fittingly bleak. The main narrative does lose a little steam in the last few chapters and there’s one late-game mechanic that felt a little under developed, but A Plague Tale is a shockingly great game. It’s not super long too—you can easily finish it in just a few sittings.