A Plague Tale: Requiem Demands You WEEP (Review)
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- čas přidán 17. 02. 2023
- You gonna cry?... Wait no stop. #JJJreact
Alegra (Amicia):
/ alegra sofia - topic
open.spotify.com/artist/1tHNd...
Micah (Lucas):
mrayh3.wixsite.com/micahheemstra
/ @heemstrastudios3510
Olivier’s Walkthrough:
• A Plague Tale Requiem ...
My Stuff:
Twitch: www.twitch.tv/imjerglebutimlive
Twitter: TaHoMasWilliam1
Discord: discord.gg/JSmRJYVamy
0:00 Intro
1:49 Rats
3:11 Gameplay
8:44 Voice Acting
13:17 Characters
20:33 Music
25:33 Criticism
29:53 The Tragedy of the De Runes
44:32 Bloopers - Hry
![Making of - A Plague Tale: Requiem [Behind the Scenes]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/OApHe-UUKyY/mqdefault.jpg)
41:00 I did not make Amicia kill Hugo. I simply refused (and by that even went further "unlearning", including ignoring a crosshair drawn by the game to tell me where to aim), aware that I risked not finishing the story, but I did not want to force her to (she had suffered enough) and I did not believe she would be able to. While I understand that the game mechanics suggests she should do it, but if I put myself into her position, after she believed in a solution right until the last second, having just talked to Hugo in his normal voice, I don't think she would be physically able to harm him as long as he is alive, even in that condition. Amicia would still try to find a solution and still have hope. And even if that means she fails to save the world, because Amicia is a flawed protagonist, she is not perfect, and to fail this situation is not unlike her, and not a problem for her character arc. Lucas was aware of the outcome since the beginning of the story, so he could prepare for that moment all the time. And with Amicia saving Lucas by killing countless soldiers, it is only fitting that he takes that burden off Amicia's shoulders and does the one kill she cannot do. While that causes the ending in which she has not seen Lucas for a year because of this, I am very confident she would forgive him with time and they end happily together. BTW since "Requim" is oozing with metaphors, Hugo asking Amicia was asking for assisted suicide by someone who is sick of a terminal illness and at a point where they don't want to live anymore and ask a loved one to help them end their life. "Requiem" is masterpiece of allegorical story telling, very imaginative, in the truest sense a tale in the likes of Grimm's Fairy Tales, which use colorful characters and environments in a distant time to talk about modern ethical themes and issues.
I found this video accidentally after revisiting your outer wilds cover/mashup, and after having played through this phenomenal game I had to check out this review of yours. And the quality was way above my expectations. I mean you even got some voice actors to work with you!
I'm not usually a commenter, but I had to publicly announce my appreciation for this video.
That means a lot! Thank you
36:00 A very beautiful and powerful scene, not only because it shows Amicia crying: This is the first time you as observer understand what Amicia is feeling, because before you can do that on an abstract level, as we normally don't experience what she does in the story. But a breakdown like this, everyone knows in one way or the other. And your recording shows that it should have been a cutscene with forced camera angles, because the motion capture performance shows the emotions in Amicia's face, but it is hidden because the camera is behind her back and far away. This performance BTW was not done by Robyn Wolf, but by an animator with help of animator Lise Sourlier (she is on YT too). You praised Charlotte McBurneys performance, but you also have highlight Robyn Wolf's motion capture performance (she is Amicia''s body and soul, you see her performance through the character model), which Charlotte synced her performance too (Robyn has video of her motion capture work in Instagram, and you can actually hear that her voice is not far away what Charlotte did later, recording over Robyn's lines) and the performance of the animators who played Amicia outside the cutscenes (the scene of Amicia hugging Hugo one last time in the dream is a motion capture of Lise Sourlier as Amicia with her spouse - so you actually see two people loving each other hugging).
I didn't talk about the motion capture performances much as back when I wrote the video back in November there wasn't as many videos and such showing behind the scenes stuff. Robyn did do a fantastic job though but as an audio guy and some limited voice acting experience, I analysed Charlotte's performance a lot more. I agree that both of them deserve recognition though.
@@TaHoMasWilliams When Charlotte was doing the playthrough of "Requiem", she talked about how Amicia is a collaborative work of many artists. Not only Robyn, Charlotte and the animators playing her outside the cutscenes (sometimes syncing the performance to Charlotte's voice). Amicia has also two fathers: Writer Sebastien Renard and Asobo's art director Olivier Ponsonnet, who created Amicia's design and CGI model to project Robyn's performance. They all created a masterpiece, one of the best protagonist characters in fiction - I see Amicia up there with Frodo or Ripley. I am glad you took the time to reflect upon the game, the story and characters. It deserves this kind of attention, it's a remarkable piece of art and storytelling.
31:50 The scene with Amicia being attacked by the two farmers is actually much more dramatic as it shows in the game. Because while the camera focusses on Hugo and zooms in, opposite of the camera the motion capture performance by Robyn Wolf of Amicia being choked to death is continuing. And Robyn plays it very real, you can see the panic and fear in Amicia's face, but also the immense anger Amicia feels of being slowly killed by these two large men above her, completely helpless. And this is what Hugo sees when he looks at her (from above you can see he looks directly into her face and knows what her sister is going through). You can only see this in photo mode. I wish they would have kept it in camera, because it would have been much clearer how traumatic this event was for them. And when she later has her meltdown in the barn, the line "I am tired of being scared" is a reference to that moment right at the beginning. You can see screenshots of this on the IMDB page of the game.
Thanks for sharing that. I was confused why that situation was traumatic for her as it seemed like nothing she hadn't gone through before
@@TaHoMasWilliams The wonderful aspect of having a game engine as a medium to show a motion capture performance is the ability to study the the actors outside the usual camera angles. Unlike film or video, where a performance is lost that is not filmed, in the game engine you can "walk around" the actors like on a theater stage and observe the reactions of the characters off camera. In many cutscenes of "Requiem" using photo mode there is much to discover you do not see during the regular playback of the motion capture recording (also weird stuff, like character models "stored away" like puppets of a Disney ride waiting for their signal to enter a scene).
@@TheTuubster I've never thought to try that but I will likely pay more attention to it now
Finally an informative (and funny) review of this game. Really like your style. Got a like from me.
Glad you enjoyed!
33:00 No, you get this a little wrong, I think: "All of this because of Hugo." Not quite: The rats are a metaphor. They are not literally rats. They symbolize the hate someone reflects back into the world who experiences hate. At its core, the story of Amicia and Hugo is about how to maintain your humanity, to not lose your ability to feel compassion and empathy, when you are faced with violence and hate towards you. How to not become a sociopath in a psychopathic world. Amicia and Hugo are reactive, they reflect the violence they experience back into the world: Amicia as the more mature does it selective, directed at those individuals who threaten her life. Hugo as the less developed mind does it unreflective and punishes everyone around him with broad strokes. The Macula is a metaphor for a psyche that responds to hate and violence by escalation into even more hate and violence. So both Amicia and Hugo are a mirror of the world around them, but both are responding differently. Amicia is constantly fighting for her soul and for Hugo's. Like you said: She is not who she wants to be - she was forced (by her mother, left alone (!), while she begged her - "I need you!") to be Hugo's protector too soon and learned to use violence as the tool, as this was what the world around her taught her. And this struggle is apparent through the whole story. I see Amicia as a metaphor for child soldiers, forced to be killers by adults at young age and how their mind fights against what they have learned and for who they really are. Hugo is a metaphor for both individuals with a tendency to become sociopathic as a self-defense mechanism and a metaphor for a WMD, desired by power hungry men like the Count to control the world, with him in the end literally going nuclear, turning Marseilles into a Ground Zero (again a response by him towards violence he experienced, unreflective and broad, because his mind is less developed). Funny enough: Amicia's solution to hide far away until Hugo is an adult, able to control himself, would have been the solution. The only reason why it didn't work: Because the environment around Hugo triggered him constantly to respond with violence as a self-defense - with the attempt to kill his sister he loved dearly being the event that made him go nuclear (and devour the sun like a nuclear winter would globally).
26:00 My criticisms (all causing a break in the immersion of an otherwise perfect game):
1. The upper eye lid shadow breaks off outside when she rolls her eyes inward. Not an issue during gameplay, but in photo mode while doing portrait shots. It often is the single thing giving away her face is CGI.
2. Same goes for a too strong shadow on her eye balls towards the nose, sometimes going pitch black.
3. Amicia's apron clips into her legs. Which is especially annoying since in "Innocence" this clipping problem did not exist and her apron gave way to her legs - so they had this problem solved in the previous game.
4. Some secondary characters have lesser quality facial animations during cutscenes (the C**nt sticks especially out, while Arnaud is almost as perfect as Amicia).
5. During gameplay the characters usually have mask like facial expressions not fitting to a situation (when Amicia is stressed during stealth, she should look stressed, when she is laughing during the dialog her face show show her laughing).
6. During gameplay Amicia looks straight ahead, even when standing in front of a wall. The environments should have "points of interests" that Amicia looks to (like a table in front of her or a wall application) when the player stops in front of them. Amicia looking straight at a wall makes her appear like a puppet.
... annoys me to death since these are just minor things that fixed would make this game 100% perfect. If I would have money on the bank, I would throw enough money at Asobo as private investor to just spend the time fixing these issues to make the game as perfect as it deserves, so it feels like an absolutely real environment when playing it.
BTW, in case you don't know, since you did not mentioned it: Anna, the voice of Sophia, is a Twitch streamer and has a YT channel in which she did a complete playthrough with Charlotte McBurney. It is a very insightful commentary as both talk about the game, the story, the making of it (recording the voice, the acting choices) and sometimes the writers of the game pop in and add anecdotes.
I did know that actually. They answered one of my questions too! However I already had the script written by then. This video just took a long time to edit and record lol.
@@TaHoMasWilliams Awesome work btw. Very insightful. I hope many more create essays about this story, there is so much to discover and reflect upon. It's like an onion, every layer you peel off reveals something new. I love allegorical story telling, and boy does "Requiem" deliver in that department.
Well worth the wait! Love the review, I especially love the look into sound design.
As brief as it was lol
Well said. All of it.
1:20 It was the right choice creatively, but not because of the rats. Because of Amicia. They clearly had the intention to create a fully believable human character this time, rendered in realtime on your computer, that you empathize with and in the end have such a deep emotional connection, that you feel what she feels. And the simple appearance of a crosshair, that you are used to thousands of times during the game, suddenly makes your heart stop. Using allegory and metaphors to tell a story placed in the 14th century, that is relevant to our times today (as there are women in Ukraine right now going through similar struggles like Amicia, protecting their children and hating the enemy's soldiers, even joining the army to kill). And they succeeded. Even if the ingame animation is rough, during the cutscenes Amicia sometimes is not distinguishable from a real human being. I know she has not the details like Alloy or the versatile facial animation like Ellie, but somehow they managed to create a character that appears photo realistic (which Alloy and Ellie do not, they still look like an animation character) and projects the emotions played by motion capture actress Robyn Wolf perfectly, that you see the soul of her performance in Amicia's eyes. This game made clear, that in a couple of years you can play games with photorealistic environments and characters like a live action movie, but instead of just watching it like "The Lord Of The Rings", you are inside it and control the characters - but on your screen you see real worlds and real creatures, rendered in realtime by your graphics card. The coming years are exciting, as game engines become a legitimite story telling medium like film for video, providing the same characters and environments, but you can interact with all of it (and move the camera freely around to make photos or alternative takes of cutscenes).