This review contains spoilers.
When A Plague Tale: Innocence was released in 2019, the action-adventure stealth video game was Asobo Studio's first original production in a decade. The studio had spent those 10 years adapting children's animated movies, and it shows. Innocence never challenges your thinking or complicates your feelings, despite presenting itself as though it would.
The subject matter is dark and sufficiently gruesome to have earned the game an M (17+) rating. It is filled with disease, mass deaths, and swarms of rats eating people alive. One might reasonably presume that adults are the target audience -- yet aside the disturbing content, it is mostly written and designed as if for children.
Like basic adventure stories that move from one plot point to the next with no pause for character exploration, Innocence's script is disappointingly simplistic, given what seemed like the promise of a mature story. The characters and themes rarely risk a close encounter with depth, and ludonarrative dissonance takes care of undercutting the few exceptions.
How does all this violence impact Amicia and her little brother Hugo? Innocence clearly wants players to sit with this question, but gives them nothing to actually chew on. In the end, all is well; there are no physical or psychological consequences, despite repeated and ominous warnings about Hugo's use of rat powers. The game seems more interested in hinting that a sequel might have the answers.
Unfortunately, the gameplay is just as bland. The hostile guards offer up a Greatest Hits compilation of every stealth game AI meme you've ever seen -- they're boneheaded, blind, and quick to forget nearby murder. The puzzles are easy enough to put even Skyrim's to shame, and consequently just feel tedious to complete. Alchemical resources are overly abundant, always nearby when the game has decided you will need them for a concoction, even in places where it would make no sense to find them. Investing them to upgrade your skills does little to impact the gameplay.
Innocence may also be the only title I've ever played that bothers to give you new abilities as you progress through the game, only to strip you of any reason to use the old ones. Combinations and synergies are simply nonexistent. Then, in the final boss, the opposite occurs -- you cannot beat the cartoon villain by using any of the abilities you've learned throughout the game. The basic attack is all that will do.
Finally, if anyone ever asks you for an example of railroading in video games, you should point them to this one. Even in a peaceful castle that serves as your base of operations, there is precious little to explore. Everything feels like a watered-down version of a more serious story and more serious gameplay. The studio was inspired by The Last of Us and Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons, two games I loved, but it comes short of hitting their highs, though I did think the relationship between Amicia and Hugo was cute and heartwarming at times.
I played Innocence because it had strong reviews and I was hoping to show my non-gamer girlfriend that games could have mature, high-quality narratives on par with novels and film. It was a miss.