A Plague Tale: Requiem – Creating a New Setting for Amicia and Hugo

Hi everyone, I’m Sébastien Renard, Lead Writer on A Plague Tale: Requiem, and I’m excited to share some details about the making of our game!

Giving History a sense of history

A Plague Tale: RequiemIt will maintain the same high level of realisticalism as the original title. It is rooted in history by the building we are currently undertaking. Requiem’s world through an extensive process. This involved close collaboration between art and narrative.

Many tools and resources were used, including books but also data gathered from the web, such as Wikipedia. This is an excellent place to begin your research! You can also visit more specific websites. Roxane, who is a Medieval History Doctor, was also part of our team. She helped us to imagine a medieval France. Even some members of our team have personal knowledge of French areas where we worked. Our intuition is a crucial element in this process: we need it to find balance between our creative decisions and their credibility in the game’s world. For instance, women in An Apocalypse Tale have a freedom that isn’t realistic compared to the historical setting, or their role in dialogues scenes isn’t representative of the discussion dynamics occurring at that time. Another example would be Amicia’s outfit, because women wouldn’t wear pants at that time. These are anachronisms.

A New and Fresh Setting

An Innocence Tale from a Plague Tale, players experience Amicia’s and Hugo’s story in gloomy, war-ridden environments. This direct sequel was created to allow the player to see a new scenery. We considered many locations before setting the game in France. This time around, the southern regions of the country are explored. It will provide a new visual experience.

Provence is a brighter, colorful and vibrant alternative to the dark atmosphere of Aquitaine in 14th-century Aquitaine. We can bring our unique, emotional tones and grounded tones to other landscapes. This creates an even greater contrast between medieval reality, which is full of terrible events, and more beautiful environments, often uncharted.

A Detailed and Contrasted Décor

A key aspect that we wanted to emphasize was the ability to create details on different levels and make them more varied. This would give the game a richer experience. It’s a real challenge to keep renewing the setting for a whole game; we must keep it coherent with the story, the emotions we want to convey at that moment, but also what these new places would imply in terms of gameplay, including the possible combat or puzzle mechanics that would make sense in such environments. Therefore, we explored new possibilities in addition to what was previously suggested. InnocenceHow could we improve upon the villages, fields and churches players already know?

We also have vibrant and bustling markets. A medieval dyery was one example of unique locations we used. Roxane inspired this concept. Her input was precious to find The right ideas, and she suggested details which truly heightened the game’s visual impact: having players go through a dyery means enriching the historical context while working on adding colorful details that make sense in the 14^th century. Our busy ports with large ships are another example of how important the Mediterranean trade was at the time.

Thanks for joining us for this sneak peek — we can’t wait to reveal more about Hugo and Amicia’s next adventure in the coming months! A Plague Tale: RequiemXbox Series X|S and PC and will be available day one with Xbox Game Pass!