Video Game / A Plague Tale: Innocence

"I won't ask again. Where is your son?"
"In good hands."

A Plague Tale: Innocence is an action-adventure stealth Survival Horror game developed by Asobo Studio and published by Focus Home Interactive.

Set in France, during the early stages of The Hundred Years War, the game follows Amicia de Rune who, along with her younger brother Hugo, must escape the encroaching Inquisition and the swarms of diseased rats during one of the worst pandemics in history: The Black Death.

A sequel, A Plague Tale: Requiem, was released on October 18, 2022.

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This game provides examples of:

• Abnormal Ammo: In addition to stones, Amicia is able to craft various alchemical projectiles to use in her sling. The various types can do such things as stoke dying fires, extinguish existing fires, and draw rats to a certain area.
• Alchemy Is Magic: Downplayed. Most of the alchemy is just chemistry with different names, as it was in real life, but the Prima Macula is distinctly supernatural.
• All for Nothing: Zigzagged concerning the part where you have to find the cure for Hugo. First, Amicia retrieves the Sanguinis Itinera from the university, which gets destroyed in the process, and then Amicia and Lucas chase back to the de Rune estate to create the elixir. All this is for nothing when Hugo escapes the next day and turns himself over to Vitalis, where he reaches the next threshold. The intro for Chapter 16, upon loading a game, mentions that the elixir slowed the Macula's development and prevented Hugo from crossing the first threshold too quickly.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: The Player Character shifts to Hugo for Chapter 14.
• Artistic License – Biology:
  • While the game gets a lot of things right about the time period, rats would never be able to rapidly devour a human corpse of all its flesh or rip them in half, especially while going through armor, regardless of how many there were. Also, while rats generally dislike bright light, they don't normally burst into flame and instantly burn up if it's directed at them for too long. Of course, these aren't exactly normal rats.
  • The fact that the rats haven't touched the bodies of the de Rune household can be excused by magic, but not the fact that they're still in mint condition several weeks after death.
• Artistic License – Religion: The church excommunicates Vitalis and it is treated that he is still a significant figure of power in the church. In fact, as an excommunicated priest, Vitalis would have lost all of his privilege and position because of it. A powerful nobleman or king might be able to ignore excommunication but Vitalis as a clergyman meant that his soldiers were now obligated to ignore him. Killing him would still be an issue for Amicia and Hugo but that's because killing an excommunicated person was still murder, not his status.
• Ask a Stupid Question...: Hugo asks Rodric if one day he'll be as strong as him:
  Rodric: Mate, you control an army of rats.
• Asleep for Days: Amicia passes out after bumping her head in a trench while searching for Hugo. She is found by Arthur and Mélie after being missing for three days.
• Auto-Save: You cannot save the game at will and have to rely on defined save points for respawning.
• Bait-and-Switch: Amicia and Hugo's mother is presumably killed with a Gory Discretion Shot. However, it turns out she is still alive; one of the family servants was the one skewered to the door.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Downplayed. Beatrice's torture leaves her with several cuts, bruises, and dirt on her face, but nothing too disfiguring, especially by the standards of medieval torture.
• Bittersweet Ending: Amicia and Hugo save their mother, get rid of the rats, and put a stop to the Inquisition's corrupt, unholy ulterior motive. The three of them escape together with Lucas, but Robert, Rodric, and Arthur are dead, Mélie has left the group, and everyone is permanently scarred by the events of the game, and the knowledge of their bloodline's powers and the danger it puts them in. There's also the fact that killing Vitalis, even though he was excommunicated, means the Church will likely hunt them for the rest of their lives, forcing them to leave the region.
• The Black Death: Early on, Amicia and Hugo visit a town where the Plague has killed most of its citizens.
• Blue Blood: The de Rune family, led by a respected knight, Robert, and his wife, Beatrice, a renowned alchemist. Then the Inquisition came...
• Boom, Headshot!: The way to kill enemies is to hit them in the head with a sling.
• Boss Arena Recovery: There are usually ammunition and alchemical items placed in the boss arena, so you can fight them even if you entered without any ammo.
• Boss Room: The boss fights all happen in enclosed spaces:
  • Conrad is in a small courtyard with a locked gate, which you can enter by jumping through a wall.
  • Nicholas is fought in Castle d'Ombrage's courtyard.
  • You fight Vitalis in the front area of the cathedral.
• Break the Cutie: Amicia is introduced as being spirited and headstrong, but the Inquisition's raid on her home shakes her to her core, and it just gets worse from there.
• Breather Episode:
  • After the orphans clear out the rats from the courtyard of Chateau d'Ombrage in the previous chapter, in Chapter 8—Our Home, they explore the castle while making themselves at home there. There is no action or danger in this chapter. Similarly, Chapter 11—Alive, also set at the Chateau, is bar any action.
  • Subverted in Chapter 15—Remembrance. It starts out just like Chapter 8: the orphans are organizing the defenses of the Chateau, without any imminent danger. Then suddenly, the rats begin to overflow the pits.
• Brother–Sister Team:
  • Through many trials, Amicia and Hugo learn to have each other's backs effectively.
  • Mélie and Arthur are this, as a pair of competent thieves.
• Bulletproof Human Shield: Amicia hides under the corpse of a soldier when archers shoot at her after she successfully escaped the Army's camp. This is subverted, however, as one arrow is shown piercing clean through the body, implying the corpse serves more as a smokescreen to throw off the archers' aim than it does as a true shield.
• Chasing a Butterfly: In one level, Hugo dashes along a riverbank gleefully watching frogs leap into the water. At the Chateau, he chases butterflies. Never having been out in nature before, he's fascinated by animals.
• Children Forced to Kill: Early on, Amicia upgrades her sling and becomes capable of killing humans. The first two times she does this it's only at the dire need to save Hugo or herself and she's clearly stricken with horror, even trying to pray for forgiveness. Later, when Inquisition soldiers are walking through rat swarms and protected by lamps and fires, she can get them killed by extinguishing the light. Amicia clearly does not enjoy this. But It Gets Easier soon.
• Convenient Escape Boat: There is one parked at a pier by Laurentius' mill which the kids use to get away from the rats.
• Conveniently Timed Attack from Behind: When Amicia and Hugo try to sneak out of their house, they bump into a guard. Good thing their mother is there to take him out with a stone from behind.
• Corpse Land: The battlefield is filled with corpses.
• Corrupt Church: The Inquisition is a corrupt sect of the Catholic Church, or at least it started out that way. Overheard dialogue in a mission late in the game seems to imply they no longer consider themselves Christians, and are only exploiting the institutions of the Church to accumulate political power. When a Catholic Archbishop shows up to investigate them, he labels them heretics and occultists and has them excommunicated.
• Crapsack World: It's the Dark Ages, there's a war and a plague going on, and the Inquisition is out in force. No one's having much fun.
• Creepy Cathedral: The Final Boss fight takes place in a cathedral that's in complete disarray because of the plague. The scene features lanterns falling from the ceiling and hoards of rats clashing into each other.
• Cruelty Is the Only Option: At Laurentius' farm, you have to sacrifice a pig to reach the laboratory.
• Darkness Equals Death: Much of the gameplay involving rats is that if you don't have a torch you could be eaten to death. Once you unlock Hugo's power to control the rats, you start deliberately extinguishing the light to turn it against your enemies.
• Deadly Graduation: Sir Nicholas demands Hugo to kill his sister with the rats in order to complete his training he received by Vitalis.
• Defiant to the End: Amicia and Hugo's father, Robert, says nothing to Sir Nicholas when he offers him one last chance to turn in his son, and promptly gets executed for it.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Not surprisingly, the Middle Ages has quite a number of subjects that would not fly today:
  • Amicia is talked about becoming a lady and following the lords on hunts. Women were very much used as signs of status and were treated a lot less like actual people, being seen as pawns. Similarly, her father tells her that her tomboyish attitude would very much be very different when she would marry a lord, even though he personally doesn't mind. Amicia's tomboyish antics would fly very much in the face of the standards of what women were supposed to be like and even act like in medieval Europe.
  • Cursing is seen as downright blasphemous, and especially using the Lord's name in vain infuriates many people. In the modern era, while more extreme slurs are still disliked being used in public, the minor swears do not bother anyone now.
  • The Catholic Church has a lot of power in the state and they do not hesitate to use it to their advantage. A very far cry from how secular France is now.
• Diabolus ex Machina: Swarms of rats will frequently emerge from the ground and attack the heroes. This is subverted when you realize that the swarm was trying to protect their master and his sister. Once Hugo manages to consciously control them, the rats turn into a Deus ex Machina when they come to aid the heroes in front of the church where Vitalis resides.
• Dramatic Slip: Hugo slips and falls while escaping the enemy from the battlefield. It gets him and Amicia caught.
• Dream Within a Dream: When Amicia bumps her head in a ditch while searching for Hugo, she falls unconscious and has a dream. She wakes from it but the realm turns out to be another surreal dream.
• Due to the Dead: Amicia is devastated when she comes back home to find her dead father's body eaten up by the rats before she could give him a proper burial. She prays that her father rests in peace nonetheless.
• Eaten Alive: Anyone who is caught by the swarm of rats and does not have a torch will be eaten alive. It doesn't take many to do it, either.
• Elite Mooks: The guards with shields are more difficult to kill because you cannot hit them on the head from the front.
• Empathy Doll Shot: During her journey across the city to reach the library, Amicia can come across a bed with dead children covered under a blanket and a doll next to them.
• Enemy Chatter: The enemy soldiers often drop some plot-relevant information during their conversations.
• Equipment Upgrade: Amicia can craft upgrades to her tools and weapons on workbenches scattered around the levels.
• Escort Mission: Amicia has her five-year-old brother Hugo as her charge for the story. Hugo, thankfully, isn't a burden whenever he's close to Amicia, can crawl into small spaces either to grab items or open doors.
• Everyone Has Standards: The Church won't hesitate to excommunicate the Grand Inquisitor when they learn of his plans.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: Aside from their family, and the orphans, almost every single person Amicia and Hugo encounter either tries to kill them or winds up getting killed by the rats.
• Exact Words: At Laurentius' farm, Hugo asks Amicia if they are gonna feed the pig. She affirms but with a darker meaning in mind.
• Expositing the Masquerade: At the secret library, Vitalis tells Amicia that he's been watching Hugo for quite some time now.
• Fetch Quest: The retrieval of the Sanguinis Itinera from the library, of the elixir from the de Rune estate and of the key to Beatrice's cell.
• Follow the White Rabbit: Hugo's chapter is kicked off with him noticing a rat disappearing behind a door. He decides to follow it.
• For Doom the Bell Tolls: The bells of the cathedral toll before the Final Boss battle.
• For Your Own Good: This is Amicia's justification for not telling Hugo about their mother having survived.
• Foreshadowing: During their journey, Hugo mentions to Amicia in passing that he would like to see a monster for real. Later, he gets to meet Vitalis, who his mother calls a monster at one point.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • The rats are established early as being able to strip a human to the bone in a matter of seconds. However, when the player distracts them with pieces of meat, like a side of ham or a person, the rats will be occupied for far longer, if not indefinitely.
  • The game often urges you to continue but allows you to explore the current scene. While this can break immersion, it is needed to get your equipment upgraded or to find collectibles.
  • This particular form of the plague, known as "The Bite", is said to be spread by rats; one bite makes someone contract the plague and become infectious to others. Over the course of the game, Amicia, Hugo, and their various companions can get swarmed by rats and cry out but stumble into lit areas and are totally fine. It may simply be that people think the plague is spread by rat bites. This is the Middle Ages after all.
• Good Parents: Amicia and Hugo's parents are clearly this, as they intentionally shelter them in the hopes of trying to save them. Their father tries to fight off the Inquisition when they arrive, and Beatrice tells the Inquisition nothing about how to use the Macula even when being tortured.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: It is really easy to outsmart guards. If they hear a noise, they go there to investigate and just stare at the source of the sound while you snake around behind their backs (or kill them). A redeeming factor is that if multiple guards hear a noise, only one will go to investigate. The other, however, still keeps looking at the source, allowing you to sneak behind both of them. Similarly, if a guard notices you, they will only go to the place they last saw you, so running back to hide behind one barricade further is usually safe.
• Guilt-Induced Nightmare: Amicia falls down a slope and knocks her head on something early in Chapter 13 and dreams of locations and people she's already encountered, scolding her for not telling Hugo the truth. It's unclear if some or any of the chapter is real, but regardless it ends indicating what happened - that Hugo ran away and into the arms of the Inquisition hoping to find his mother.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: One of the priests, in the beginning, is found dead in a stairwell, with his lower half completely destroyed due to the rats attacking him.
• Harmful to Minors: Throughout their journey, Amicia and Hugo are exposed to death in many forms thanks to the Inquisition, The Black Death, and the ravenous rats that carry it. Amicia herself kills people who threaten Hugo's life as well as her own, which leaves her shaken to the core. Even after she resigns herself to killing, she has to pass through a house where a man committed suicide after his wife and child died, under a scaffolding where people were hanged, and through a graveyard piled with the unburied dead, each of which horrifies her.
• Headbutt of Love: Amicia gives one to her brother during their Big Damn Reunion after Hugo went to the dark side.
• Historical Fantasy: The game is set during The Hundred Years War in 14th century France. The countryside is experiencing the Black Death with rats swarming by the thousands from underground, eating everything in their paths, and one of the main characters having a supernatural condition that has historical records going back to Roman times. With this condition, said character unintentionally summons the rats and learns to control it by the end of the game.
• Hollywood Acid: The alchemical compound Devorantis is described at the workbench as "a nitric acid concentrate that is particularly aggressive with metals. The toxic vapors given off by the reaction add to the target's panic." It's bright green. Helmeted enemies struck with it cry out in dismay and tear their helmets off, but are not incapacitated.
• Hollywood Torches: It's not as bad as it could be. All the locations where flaming torches and lanterns can be seen have had people in them recently who would have lit them - the Roman bath on the de Rune estate has had Inquisition soldiers snooping around in it. It may be a gameplay element showing the player which items can be set alight, but no matter how long-abandoned a place is, there will be faintly smoldering dim coals when the heroes arrive.
• Human Sacrifice: Vitalis sacrifices a whole congregation of people to give him access to the powers of Hugo's blood.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: It is indicated quite clearly that your most dangerous adversaries are the human enemies who are pursuing you, instead of the rats, which are more a force of nature if anything.
• If We Get Through This…: On finding the now destroyed forge of Rodric's father, Amicia promises Rodric that they will find another castle for him to build a forge. Minutes later, Rodric is dead.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: The battlefield is scattered with corpses impaled on poles.
• Instant Sedation: The compound Somnium is described at the workbench as "a highly volatile modified alcohol that, when it evaporates in the human respiratory tract, immediately causes the subject to fall into a deep sleep." Slapped over an enemy's face, either as an attack from behind or in a quick time event immediately before Amicia can be killed, it causes a very brief struggle and then total collapse.
• It's Personal: The second Vitalis reveals that he ordered the attack on her home, Amicia is out for his blood. It gets even more personal when she discovers that he is torturing Beatrice.
• It's Probably Nothing: The guards' reaction when their alert level reaches zero after hearing noises.
• Just a Stupid Accent: Most of the characters, most notably Amicia, speak English with a French accent in order to remind us where the story takes place.
• Last Villain Stand: When all his guards are incapacitated, Vitalis stands up to Amicia for the Final Battle at the cathedral.
• The Late Middle Ages: The game is set in France, circa 1348. It is in the midst of a war with England and a devastating plague that ravages almost all of Europe.
• Latin Is Magic: The Sanguinis Itinera is a book filled with alchemist knowledge.
• Let's Get Out of Here: This line is used several times throughout the game.
• Light Is Not Good: Many of the enemies you face are brutal inquisitors of the Catholic Church, who are trying to use the Plague for their corrupt purposes. The final boss is brightly lit and clad in white and commands white rats which don't fear the light, and fittingly, you have to extinguish the light to give Hugo's swarms the chance to fight him.
• Lightning Reveal: When the orphans arrive at Chateau d'Ombrage, there is a thunderstorm, and the castle is illuminated by lightning when they first see it.
• The Load: While Hugo can't be left alone too long, which could make it hard to move around, he's a really sweet kid, never complains, and is as helpful as someone so young and sheltered can be. And that's before he unlocks his powers. Amicia ends up finding it harder to do things without him, while he does great when he's alone.
• Locked in the Dungeon: The Grand Inquisitor has Beatrice locked up in the basement of the Bastion. Hugo has to sneak in and rescue her.
• Lost Aesop: After Amicia's horrified reaction to her first kill, the game seems to be setting up a major theme about the effect killing (even justified killing) can have on someone. But this never really becomes part of the story, and later chapters even become more combat-heavy. Instead, this becomes an important part of the sequel, as Amicia has to struggle with her reaction to resolving problems defaulting to violence from her experiences and hardened nature from her ordeals.
• MacGuffin Delivery Service: Subverted. Once Amicia finds the Sanguinis Itinera at the secret library, Vitalis shows up to seize the book but you manage to escape.
• Make Sure He's Dead: After dropping a whole bunch of masonry on top of Lord Nicholas, Arthur picks up a good chunk with the intention of double tapping the enemy. Unfortunately, he gets distracted by the reunion of Amicia and Hugo, and misses the knight recovering.
• Man on Fire: One or two mooks are lit on fire in the burning university.
• Meat Moss: It's black rather than red, but the weird matter that builds up on every surface where rats have had dominion for long enough has this sort of look, helped by the human bones and even skeletons embedded in it. The one place the black matter has not touched is Hugo's room at the de Rune estate which foreshadows the importance of his role in the affair.
• Misfit Mobilization Moment: While the orphans are normally more or less content to try surviving at Chateau d'Ombrage, Arthur's death combined with Hugo joining their side after crossing the Threshold mobilizes them to finally attack the Inquisition itself.
• Mr. Exposition: Laurentius fills in details about Hugo's "disease".
• New Era Speech: Vitalis declares that he would launch the beginning of a new era where he would save everyone from the plague with his powers.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Amicia's decision to hide the truth from Hugo about the survival of their mother undoes all the effort she put into finding a cure for him as Hugo goes for a Sneaky Departure and ends up siding with Vitalis.
• Nightmare Sequence: Amicia has a tense nightmare after she fell and bumped her head while looking for Hugo. In it, she sees Hugo walk away with Nicholas in a sea of rats.
• Nobody Here but Us Birds: At the army camp, Mélie communicates with her brother via bird sounds.
• No Escape but Down: In a cutscene early on, Amicia and Hugo jump from a cliff into a river to escape the Inquisition.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Despite ridding the region of a raging maniac and the Plague, the de Rune family is ostracized and actively wanted by the authorities. However, the villagers in the epilogue aren't vindictive, and while they keep the de Runes away, they just say they don't want trouble and don't try to detain them.
• Notice This: Items that can be picked up will glow.
• "Not So Different" Remark: At one point, Nicholas asks himself why Beatrice keeps resisting. He claims they both have the same goal - to fight the plague - and only their methods differ.
• Oblivious Guilt Slinging: When Amicia and Lucas are using food to lure a pig into an enclosed space where it will be eaten alive by rats as a diversion, Hugo doesn't understand what they're doing and is adorably excited about feeding the nice piggy. Prepare to feel like a complete asshole during that scene.
• Off-into-the-Distance Ending: The Playable Epilogue ends with the cart of the de Rune family rolling off into the distance.
• One Dialogue, Two Conversations: Unbeknownst to Amicia, Hugo overheard Arthur talking about how Beatrice was still alive and held captive by Vitalis. Later, he asks Amicia if they would ever see their mother again. Amicia, having decided not to tell Hugo anything knowing that she can't mount a rescue, tells him that she's dead. When he asks if it hurts where she is, Amicia says it doesn't. As soon as Amicia's asleep, Hugo runs away to try to find their mother.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: Both the protagonists and the enemies. If an enemy gets close^note in some cases you can save with a Quick Time Event, but that will cost you an expensive ammo to you or hits you with an arrow, you are dead. Similarly, enemies die with one hit with a stone. Except for enemies wearing the helmet, which take two hits: one for removing their helmet, and one for the final kill.
• Parents as People: They were doing their best, but Amicia feels like The Un-Favorite because her father is usually busy with the estate and she barely sees her mother, who's always locked up with Hugo and is dismissive when Amicia tries to tell her that her dog was attacked. As a healthy older girl she just doesn't get as much attention from them as she craves. The game opens with her father going out into the woods with her, and from the dialogue their mutual affection is clear but it's still been some time since their last outing and Robert isn't entirely familiar with what his daughter can do.
• Patrolling Mook: Most mooks Amicia encounters are of this kind. She has the option to evade, distract or kill them.
• Percussive Maintenance: Rodric resorts to this while trying to make recalcitrant machinery work at the chateau.
• Photo Mode: A classic one with camera pans and color settings is available from the pause menu.
• Playable Epilogue: There is another playable short chapter after the credits have rolled.
• Please, Don't Leave Me: Implemented as a game mechanic. If Amicia wanders off too far from Hugo, he will start calling out for her and thus jeopardize their stealth missions.
• Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure: Halfway through the plot, after Amicia has learned to be gentler with and more caring of Hugo, and immediately after the doubled Hope Spot of Mélie bringing back Arthur alive and Amicia and Lucas creating a powerful medicine, Hugo runs away. Even though they get along much better by then, Amicia chose to keep news of their mother's survival from him, unknowing that he was listening.
• Power-Strain Blackout: While trying to escape, Hugo collapses out of exhaustion after killing several of Vitalis' minions. This leads to him and Beatrice getting recaptured.
• Prepare to Die: Said by Nicholas during his boss fight with Amicia.
• Press X to Not Die: When you get attacked by a guard or rats, you might have a chance to save yourself if you have the necessary ammo ready. The caveat is that you can only carry one of these types of ammo with you and they are much more expensive than regular ammo.
• Pyrrhic Victory: One English soldier laments that the region they just defeated the French for belongs to the rats.
• The Reveal: Hugo has supernatural powers running in his blood, which allows him to control the rats.
• Riches to Rags: Amicia and Hugo are of noble status, but the Inquisition's arrival at their home costs them everything, turning them into Noble Fugitives.
• Rugged Scar: Facial scars of some description are very common, even on the young characters. Amicia acquires a small one on the bridge of her nose very early on.
• Rule of Three: Both Nicholas and Vitalis have to be buried three times under a pile of rats before they succumb.
• Run or Die: Several times you just have to make a run for it to survive, e.g.:
  • In the beginning when you flee the estate and the rats are emerging left and right.
  • Past the burning windmill where you have to run to reach the boat.
  • At the university where Rodric tells you to stop thinking and run after you set the room on fire.
• Say My Name: Amicia calls out for Hugo a lot.
• Scare Chord: Used when you've been spotted by an enemy.
• Scenery Porn: It's fall to start with, and the French countryside is brilliant with autumn leaves. As winter sets on, there's much less color to be seen, but sunsets and snowy landscapes still have their charm, and the chateau where Amicia and her friends hole up in is messy but very cozy-looking.
• Scenery Gorn: The black, bone-filled Meat Moss of rat nests built across all surfaces, drooling dark reddish fluids from the ceiling, certainly leaves an impression. So too does the desolate battlefield, the large town being cleared out by the Inquisition, and the imposingly beautiful Bastion where it's headquartered. There are a relatively small number of locations in the game and the ones that are revisited - the de Rune estate, the large town, and the cathedral of the Bastion - are very much the worse for wear.
• Secret Room: Amicia finds a hidden door behind the Lion's head at the Roman baths that leads to Beatrice's secret lab where Lucas manages to mix the elixir for Hugo.
• Security Cling: Hugo clings to Amicia after she rescues him at the battle camp.
• Sequel Hook: The Macula has a number of thresholds, and this game only concerns the crossing of the first one.
• Sequential Boss: This is a common theme for all boss fights. You have to hit them multiple times, and they become more dangerous after each one.
• Shell-Shock Silence: The soundtrack goes mute after Amicia's first kill.
• Ship Tease: Mélie teasingly claims that Amicia seems rather taken with Arthur. She also snarks that Lucas wanting her help with a lock is just an excuse for him to spend time with her. Nothing comes of either one, though, so maybe Mélie just has a dirty mind.
• Shout-Out:
  • When Lion is killed by unseen rats, Robert mutters "What devilry is this?", a reference to Lord of the Rings.
  • Amicia's Nightmare Sequence with the arms reaching out for her in a tunnel is coming straight out of Repulsion.
• Slashed Throat: Nicholas kills Amicia's father this way.
• Smack on the Back: Rodric smacks fragile Lucas hard on the back as a sign of approval after the latter returns with the elixir.
• Snake Pit: There are rat pits installed as a defense in the courtyard of Chateau d'Ombrage. They're empty during the day.
• So Proud of You: When Lucas manages to produce the elixir for Hugo, Amicia tells him how proud she is of him and that Laurentius would be as well.
• Stealth-Based Mission: The chapter in which you control Hugo is entirely about infiltrating the enemy's lair to find Beatrice all while staying undetected.
• The Stinger: The Playable Epilogue happens after the credits roll. Then there are some more credits.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Killing Vitalis is a big one for the protagonists. Yes, Vitalis was a corrupt sadistic power-hungry monster who no one in the audience would miss, especially since he was excommunicated. The townsfolk don't immediately run off or try to capture Hugo and Amicia and may or may not know much about the witch-boy with rat powers who killed a psychotic witch-tyrant with worse rat-powers and saved them. But regardless of whether or not he was evil, the fact the protagonists killed such a high figure in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church means that the Church will never stop hunting them and the local townsfolk do know the two are wanted, and so they have to leave the region.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Sir Nicholas has this feeling when bumping into Amicia and Hugo by chance at the camp:
  "I pay a ransom for the de Rune children and I have to capture them myself? These Plantagenets are useless..."
• Sympathy for the Hero: Downplayed, but one of the villagers doesn't seem happy about following Conrad's orders to chase down random strange children. This will not stop him from giving Amicia a game over if he spots and catches her.
• Take a Moment to Catch Your Death: Nicholas is assumed dead after getting a scaffolding of huge rocks dropped on him by Arthur. The latter is relieved and watches the Big Damn Reunion between Amicia and Hugo, only for Nicholas to get up and silently rise behind him...
• Taking the Bullet: It's revealed that the estate's caretaker Lambert jumped in front of Amicia's mother to take the hit from Nicholas' sword.
• Team Hand-Stack: After Arthur's death, the five remaining heroes decide to go for Vitalis. In order to show their solidarity, they do this hand shake white shouting their Battle Cry "To the death!".
• Tentative Light: Besides Hollywood Torches, Amicia also has to do with sticks which are burning up quickly.
• Tested on Humans: Vitalis has no qualms about sending in his mooks to test out Hugo's new powers.
• These Hands Have Killed: Amicia looks remorseful at her hands after killing Conrad.
• This Cannot Be!: Vitalis screams "It's impossible!" when Amicia hits him with a stone during their boss fight.
• This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: When Mélie wants to assist Amicia and Hugo in taking down Vitalis at the cathedral, Amicia tells her to stand back because "It's our blood".
• Throwing the Distraction: Throwing/slinging stones at metal objects is a good method to distract guards. You can also throw bowls to the ground if there are no metal objects available, but you can only carry one of them.
• Thwarted Escape: Hugo and Beatrice's escape from the Torture Cellar almost succeeds until they are caught by Nicholas on their way out.
• Time Skip:
  • There is a skip of three weeks in Chapter 11 during which Lucas searches for an elixir to cure Hugo.
  • Another time skip of one month occurs in Chapter 15 after Hugo passed over to the dark side.
• Timed Mission: The game runs on Take Your Time except for a couple of action-based sequences that require you to perform a task in a given amount of time. For example the sequence where Amicia and Rodric have to cross a street behind a moving wagon with archers firing at them from a distance.
• Too Dumb to Live: Father Thomas, the surviving monk at the church, knows about the rats and their fear of light yet he hands the torch to Amicia and heads into the dark to call for Brother Morel.
• Torches and Pitchforks: After they first leave their castle, the townsfolk first avoid Amicia and Hugo, then they start chasing them down.
• Torture Cellar: The Inquisition has one that Hugo has to infiltrate in order to find his mother.
• Turns Red: During the boss fights, the enemies become stronger as you wear them down. This is justified in the case of Conrad, who becomes faster as you remove pieces of his armor.
• Undying Loyalty: Many servants of de Rune refuse to cooperate with the Inquisition. In the tutorial stealth scenes in Chapter 1, several of them even appear to see Amicia and Hugo but do nothing to alert the Inquisition soldiers focused on them.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: After Hugo has access to his rat swarm controlling powers, the game becomes much more action-oriented as you no longer have to fear the darkness.
• Video Game Caring Potential: Amicia can get apples for Hugo, play hide-and-seek, and go out of her way to find flowers he puts in her hair. There are also a few opportunities where you can go out of your way to not get an English soldier and later two wounded Inquisition men Eaten Alive by rats, which the game notices.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: The default for the above opportunities, and much easier than finding another way, is to just have those people Eaten Alive by rats. You can also eventually minimize the stealth aspect of gameplay by, rather than making distractions and sneaking around, just headshooting enemies.
• Visibility Meter: Enemy units respond with an Alertness Blink if your stealthiness is lacking.
• War Is Hell: On top of the horrors of the Rat Plague, the The Hundred Years War is already in full swing with the once-pristine countryside being turned into a bloody quagmire of corpses, abandoned siege engines, and ruined fortifications with both the English and French men-at-arms gleefully slaughtering each other and making more fodder for the rats.
• We Can Rule Together: Vitalis tries to get Hugo on his side.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: The majority of the Inquisition only wants to stop the plague and believes their actions are necessary. Several soldiers willingly sacrifice themselves to try and awaken Hugo's powers, saying it would be an honor to die for the cause. Unfortunately for them, their leader does not share their views.
• Where It All Began: Two-third into the game, Amicia revisits her home estate, now destroyed and covered in Meat Moss.
• You Monster!: Beatrice calls Vitalis a monster when the latter sends in his minions to test out Hugo's powers.

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