A Plague Tale: Requiem Devs Spent Hours Studying Real-Life Rat Swarms In Action

Freshly announced A Plague Tale: Requiem will bring “the next generation of rat hordes” to your gaming device. To deliver the most convincing depiction of small rodents in huge numbers, Asobo Studio took advantage of new hardware at its disposal.

A direct sequel to action-adventure A Plague Tale: Innocence, Requiem is built upon the idea of unstoppable force, coming from swarms of carnivorous rats. These pests already were sort of the primary antagonist in the first game, both vital to its combat and puzzles, and the devs already had to perfect their hive-like behaviour on screen. Of course, there is a lot more to be explored in the sequel, and Asobo has some new ideas.

Game director Kevin Choteau during a conversation with Gamesradar+ said the team “spent hours studying footage of real-life rat swarms in action,” to invoke the feeling of something that could really exist in our world. From the beginning of A Plague Tale: Innocence development, Asobo wanted “the maximum amount of rats on-screen as possible,” which required a lot of deplorable work.

Other than quantity, the team wanted to make sure every single rat looked believable and scary when it was alone. “There was always this balance in making sure that just one rat could be really well animated with realistic behaviour and pathfinding, but then being able to multiply that and maintain the plausibility,” Choteau said.

A Plague Tale: Requiem debut trailer confirms the rats are back in full force, flooding the streets of French cities in great numbers. If you wonder how the next-gen capabilities (the game is skipping Xbox One platforms) will allow Asobo to push its rat technology to the new limits, Choteau simply said: “more of everything.”

“We’ve reached a point where graphics are already as good as they can be,” Requiem game director says. “So the fight is somewhere else. The next-generation is about creating as much of a living world as you can. Where everything is moving and reacting to your actions.”

We’ll see how Asobo succeeded in this uneasy task sometime in 2022 when A Plague Tale: Requiem will launch on Xbox Series X|S and PC. The title will be available on day one via Xbox Game Pass. The game also joins the very short list of games exclusive to cloud streaming on Nintendo Switch.

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