A Plague Tale: Innocence

If you want more: Survival horror with an emphasis on stealth, games where two protagonists must persist against insurmountable odds
Notable Differences: More sophisticated stealth scenarios, less action-oriented, less fighting
Availability: Windows (Steam Deck YMMV*), Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, Amazon Luna

If you’ve been holding out on A Plague Tale: Innocence since its debut in 2019, it’s time to change that. Asobo Studio’s survival game set in 14th century France is an excellent follow-up to The Last of Us. Innocence ought to be at the top of your list after wrapping Joel and Ellie’s adventure. Honestly, play it before going onto TLoU’s sequel.

On paper, A Plague Tale and The Last of Us have a number of dramatic similarities: Both chronicle the story of two survivors who must rely on each other in a world ripped apart by an unstoppable plague. Like Joel, Amicia is responsible for the safety of a younger and much more vulnerable person: Her brother Hugo. Younger in age, and prone to panic attacks, Amicia is all that stands between Hugo and a world that offers no kindness.

Where these two games diverge, however, is where things get really interesting. First, Amicia and Joel are wildly different characters. TLoU easily frames Joel as someone who’s more than up to the challenge of surviving and fighting off hostile human forces and infected. Amicia though? Without the years of experience of survival and misery that make up Joel, she, and by extension you as the player, must persist in spite of obvious vulnerability and will hopefully not come out the other end bitter and cynical. The result is a very different tone in both narrative and gameplay, one that I’d argue doesn’t celebrate or default to violence the way TLoU frequently does. The game also has a far more maternal tone, with less masculine-coded aggression across the board.

A Plague Tale also features a dramatic change of pace with its plague-spreading rats than TLoU does with its infected. Though clickers and bloaters present their own unique challenges for Joel, the gameplay scenarios in TLoU are more of an amplification of the same gameplay loop whether you’re fighting humans or infected: Sneak around, do a stealth kill, default to third-person shooter mode if you get spotted. A Plague Tale doesn’t have the same shooter gameplay to fall back on; and as a stealth game, it’s a bit more nuanced.

When faced with swarms of rats in A Plague Tale, the stealth scenarios challenge you with balancing light and shadows instead of facing the threat through direct violence, something that Amicia wouldn’t be capable of and is clearly impossible given the scale of the swarms.

A Plague Tale also has gorgeous music and sound design. The sounds of the rats, particularly when they swarm toward bags of meat (in-game objects you can use to divert their attention), create a delightfully unnerving feeling that will send a chill through your body.

Aside from TLoU’s sequel, and unless you’re looking for a dramatic change in genre, A Plague Tale is perhaps the best game to play after traveling across the country with Joel and Ellie.

*Your mileage may vary