NOT WOKE SHOWS: A Plague Tale: Requiem

Dan Reilly

+14 clout

Sep 12, 2026

I fired this one up on a rainy Tuesday when the house was quiet and the leftover meatloaf was staring at me from the fridge, and pretty soon I was humming whatever that low string theme is that keeps coming back whenever Amicia and Hugo are alone in the dark. Reminds me of those old Saturday mornings when my little cousin would hide behind the couch during thunderstorms and I'd have to pretend I wasn't scared either. Same feeling here, only the thunderstorm is the whole damn fourteenth century and the rats are coming in waves that make you forget you're holding a controller. You start right where the first game left the two of them, bigger problems, bigger maps, and that same desperate twin-engine of love and terror pushing everything forward. Amicia's still the big sister who will set the world on fire before she lets anything touch her brother, and Hugo's the kid who's carrying something none of them fully understand. I kept thinking about my own kid brother back when we were nine and eleven and the basement flooded and we had to wade through cold water with flashlights, me telling him it was an adventure so he wouldn't cry. That's the exact register this game lives in. Every quiet moment between them feels borrowed from real life, the way she scolds him and then instantly softens, the way he reaches for her hand without looking. Those bits landed harder than any boss fight. The world itself is gorgeous in that grimy candlelit way. Provence, the coast, these half-ruined towns under a sky that never quite decides if it's afternoon or the end of days. I spent whole stretches just walking them around, listening to the wind and the distant screaming, because the scenery does half the storytelling for you. Then the rats show up again and you remember why you're not sightseeing. The swarm mechanics got juicier than the first game. You can light fires, throw pots, use Hugo's weird little gift when it decides to cooperate, or just sneak and pray. Sometimes I went full barbarian and hurled every rock I could find. Other times I crouched behind a barrel for ten real-world minutes waiting for a patrol to pass, heart doing that stupid flutter it used to do when I heard my dad's footsteps on the stairs after lights-out. Combat still has its rough edges. I died a lot. Soldiers would spot me through a wall one minute and stare straight past me the next like they were paid by the hour to look dumb. The big set-piece fights got a little silly, all that buildup and then you're just dancing around the same three moves until the health bar goes away. I groaned out loud more than once, restarted checkpoints, muttered at the screen the way my uncle used to mutter at football. But those frustrations never stuck long because the story would yank me right back. New faces show up, some helpful, some rotten, all of them carrying the same exhausted look people get when the world has stopped making sense. There's a stretch near the middle involving a boat and open water that felt like pure relief, almost a vacation inside the nightmare, until it wasn't. What stayed with me most was how the game never lets the siblings off the hook. Every choice costs something. Amicia gets harder, meaner in the way people do when they've had to kill to keep someone breathing. Hugo wants to be normal and can't. I kept flashing on those old black-and-white plague drawings from school textbooks, the ones with the beaked doctors, and wondering what it would actually smell like to live inside one. The game doesn't lecture you about any of that; it just drops you in the middle and makes you care about two kids who don't deserve any of it. By the time the ending rolled around I was sitting there in the dark kitchen with the meatloaf cold and forgotten, feeling that particular hollow you get after a story has wrung you out properly. It's not perfect. The stealth can feel unfair, the difficulty spikes without much warning, and I wish some of the side characters had a little more room to breathe. Still, the heart of it is rock solid. That bond between Amicia and Hugo is the real engine, and everything else—the rats, the knights, the unearthly stuff—just exists to test it. I finished the last chapter, sat there through the credits, and immediately wanted to start the first game again just to hear them talk to each other when things were still almost hopeful. Rare thing for a game to do that to me these days. If you ever needed a reminder that protecting the people you love can turn you into something fierce and broken and still somehow beautiful, this one's waiting. I'll probably boot it up again next time the rain comes down hard enough to make the roof talk. Just me, the leftovers, and that same string theme humming under everything.

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Dan Reilly
+14 clout
Sep 12, 2026
I fired this one up on a rainy Tuesday when the house was quiet and the leftover meatloaf was staring at me from the fridge, and pretty soon I was humming whatever that low string theme is that keeps coming back whenever Amicia and Hugo are alone in the dark. Reminds me of those old Saturday mornings when my little cousin would hide behind the couch during thunderstorms and I'd have to pretend I wasn't scared either. Same feeling here, only the thunderstorm is the whole damn fourteenth century and the rats are coming in waves that make you forget you're holding a controller. You start right where the first game left the two of them, bigger problems, bigger maps, and that same desperate twin-engine of love and terror pushing everything forward. Amicia's still the big sister who will set the world on fire before she lets anything touch her brother, and Hugo's the kid who's carrying something none of them fully understand. I kept thinking about my own kid brother back when we were nine and eleven and the basement flooded and we had to wade through cold water with flashlights, me telling him it was an adventure so he wouldn't cry. That's the exact register this game lives in. Every quiet moment between them feels borrowed from real life, the way she scolds him and then instantly softens, the way he reaches for her hand without looking. Those bits landed harder than any boss fight. The world itself is gorgeous in that grimy candlelit way. Provence, the coast, these half-ruined towns under a sky that never quite decides if it's afternoon or the end of days. I spent whole stretches just walking them around, listening to the wind and the distant screaming, because the scenery does half the storytelling for you. Then the rats show up again and you remember why you're not sightseeing. The swarm mechanics got juicier than the first game. You can light fires, throw pots, use Hugo's weird little gift when it decides to cooperate, or just sneak and pray. Sometimes I went full barbarian and hurled every rock I could find. Other times I crouched behind a barrel for ten real-world minutes waiting for a patrol to pass, heart doing that stupid flutter it used to do when I heard my dad's footsteps on the stairs after lights-out. Combat still has its rough edges. I died a lot. Soldiers would spot me through a wall one minute and stare straight past me the next like they were paid by the hour to look dumb. The big set-piece fights got a little silly, all that buildup and then you're just dancing around the same three moves until the health bar goes away. I groaned out loud more than once, restarted checkpoints, muttered at the screen the way my uncle used to mutter at football. But those frustrations never stuck long because the story would yank me right back. New faces show up, some helpful, some rotten, all of them carrying the same exhausted look people get when the world has stopped making sense. There's a stretch near the middle involving a boat and open water that felt like pure relief, almost a vacation inside the nightmare, until it wasn't. What stayed with me most was how the game never lets the siblings off the hook. Every choice costs something. Amicia gets harder, meaner in the way people do when they've had to kill to keep someone breathing. Hugo wants to be normal and can't. I kept flashing on those old black-and-white plague drawings from school textbooks, the ones with the beaked doctors, and wondering what it would actually smell like to live inside one. The game doesn't lecture you about any of that; it just drops you in the middle and makes you care about two kids who don't deserve any of it. By the time the ending rolled around I was sitting there in the dark kitchen with the meatloaf cold and forgotten, feeling that particular hollow you get after a story has wrung you out properly. It's not perfect. The stealth can feel unfair, the difficulty spikes without much warning, and I wish some of the side characters had a little more room to breathe. Still, the heart of it is rock solid. That bond between Amicia and Hugo is the real engine, and everything else—the rats, the knights, the unearthly stuff—just exists to test it. I finished the last chapter, sat there through the credits, and immediately wanted to start the first game again just to hear them talk to each other when things were still almost hopeful. Rare thing for a game to do that to me these days. If you ever needed a reminder that protecting the people you love can turn you into something fierce and broken and still somehow beautiful, this one's waiting. I'll probably boot it up again next time the rain comes down hard enough to make the roof talk. Just me, the leftovers, and that same string theme humming under everything.
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A Plague Tale: Requiem

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