Innocence’

Liam McLeod, University of Birmingham. @LiamMcLeod_e Catherine Watts, University of Cambridge. @catchantwatts

https://twitter.com/MidAgesModGames/status/1279047483604316160

https://twitter.com/MidAgesModGames/status/1279047851360817153

1 #MAMG20 Afternoon all! Co-presenting with @catchantwatts so we don’t have much space, do check our image descriptions for more detail! @AsoboStudio's @APlagueTale is set in 14th-century Aquitaine, amid plague and war. We follow Amicia and Hugo de Rune. CW: Spoilers+BodyHorror

2 #MAMG20 We're going to start by looking at how the game's topographical and iconographical choices, though appearing medieval at a glance, are rooted in familiar, modern fantasy worldscapes. The example I'll be using here is the so-called 'village' near the de Rune homestead.

3 #MAMG20 The size of village is key. When later we see its entirety, the village appears more like a large medieval town. The size inconsistency isn't a mistake though: Asobo is offering familiar vistas in a visual language which evokes scenes which *feel* authentic.

4 #MAMG20 This vista is seen at the monastery of the three saints, where we encounter a real shift away from what *appears* authentically medieval into a true dark fantasy. As we reach the apse of the chapel, we see that the ‘three saints’ are in fact the de Rune's themselves.

5 #MAMG20 This dip into a fantasy visual language is important for what happens next in the game as we delve into the monastery. The rats, it seems, are more than just rats, and their collections of human body parts in the crypt evokes the sense of stepping into a literal hell.

6 #MAMG20 Death is the de Rune children's constant companion in their quest to save each other. Amicia takes her first life before entering the monastery, and the iconography of that death follows the two as they are led by Father Thomas through dark corridors.

7/12 #MAMG20 If medieval iconography makes the landscape legible, modern mechanics make it navigable and give it powerful affective properties. Legible guidance in medieval manuscript becomes an affective warning in the toolkit of the modern game.

8/12 #MAMG20 Important to these early levels is the use of light to create contrast which guides the player’s actions, introducing linearity to what might otherwise be an overwhelmingly rich landscape. Light is used affectively to direct instinctual movement in chase sequences.

9/12 #MAMG20 PT:I makes this guidance explicit in the next chapter, introducing the mechanic whereby light repels the flesh-eating rats. Light is “highly visible but uninformative” (Vincent et al) in traditional media; PT:I leads the player to enact their relationship to light.

10/12 #MAMG20 An implicit value system of light is created through the player’s participation. Light is understood as a goal, a tool, and a form of protection, calling back to Ch.1 where the idyllic autumnal light indicated that perhaps we’d be telling a different kind of story. 11/12 #MAMG20 PT:I forces attentiveness to the mechanism of your navigation and endows it with affective value. When Amicia and Hugo begin to commit atrocities to survive, light takes on a moral ambivalence which mirrors the protagonists’ journey. 12/12 #MAMG20 PT:I is a dark musing on the human condition made legible through medieval iconography and modern mechanics. As the player embodies Amicia, they stand with one foot in the dark, the value of their only path medieval in its moral ambivalence.