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2019-01-31


(Video) A Plague Tale: Innocence - Ep2 – Dark Ages

A Plague Tale: Innocence - the webseries’ second episode takes you through the darkest hours of history

A
Plague Tale: Innocence, the new own-IP title from Asobo Studio, will
release May 14 on Xbox One. Asobo Studio invites you once more to
discover the creative process behind their upcoming game, A Plague Tale:
Innocence. With this webseries, Focus Home Interactive highlights the
work of this incredible French team—the second episode, Dark Ages, is
available now.

After a first episode which mainly focused on the
young sibling protagonists Amicia and Hugo, Episode 2: Dark Ages takes
us to the Middle Ages. Discover the process that went into forging a
grounded, realistic world, set in one of the darkest hours of human
history.

The creative team at Asobo explains their inspiration
for the world they built—from visiting real French villages whose
layouts, streets and buildings find their roots in medieval times, to
taking cues from famous painters to craft the game’s naturalistic
lighting. The carefully crafted world serves to enrich the story and the
characters, and contributes to creating this moving, emotional
experience.

Dark Ages, the second episode of the webseries, is
available to watch today. Stay tuned for the third episode, available
Thursday next week.


0:06
[MUSIC STARTS]
0:13
From the start, we asked ourselves:
0:15
what period do we rarely see
explored in videogames,
0:19
or has room for us to
express it a little differently?
0:23
We arrived at the Middle Ages.
0:27
Our heroes encounter different
aspects of this period.
0:31
At the beginning they have
this comfortable, noble life.
0:34
Beyond that, they encounter the
realities of a battle-scarred country,
0:36
poor settlements of the 14th century,
0:40
the Inquisition, and its
hierarchical structure.
0:48
Regarding the environments, we wanted to
stay as true to the period as possible,
0:53
relying on one of our strengths as
a French studio based in Bordeaux.
1:00
Every day we walk the streets here, of which
many were built during the Middle Ages.
1:09
We wanted to do justice to this unique
architecture with winding streets,
1:15
rickety houses, things patched up, and
built with very simple materials.
1:20
Typically, these villages are
portrayed as being made up of only
1:23
half-timbered houses with jutting corbels.
1:26
It’s the classic thing you see everywhere.
1:29
We tried to break this convention.
1:31
There are plenty of examples of villages in the
Bordeaux area that date back to the Middle Ages,
1:36
without having only these
‘agreed upon’ archetypes.
1:41
We did a lot of research
1:44
to really bring the flavor,
the feel of that time,
1:49
in architecture and the
rendering of the universe.
1:54
For example, we often came back to this notion
that at the time the streets were extremely dirty,
2:00
Dirt was everywhere, the notions of
hygiene were not at all those of today.
2:03
In terms of lighting, we worked
quite a lot with master paintings
2:08
to try to emulate natural
light as much as possible.
2:11
We avoid the impression of having
2:13
an unnatural spotlight somewhere
that illuminates the scene.
2:15
For example, we keep in-game
sources of light very raw,
2:17
in the style of a Vermeer
or Bruegel painting.
2:26
Claude Lorrain is a painter
of the 16th century.
2:29
There is a color, a tone in his paintings,
2:32
with slightly orange and
soft skies that bring
2:35
a romanticism to the image, a sweetness,
something a little dreamlike.
2:38
We wanted to have that in our game.
2:42
What I love about what we've done so far
2:44
Is that it's actually very
close to the initial vision,
2:46
what we wanted in terms
of mood and feelings
2:51
We speak to the type of player who
wants to live this kind of experience.
2:55
As a result, we have enormous freedom.
2:59
It gives us the opportunity to make
a game even closer to what we think
3:04
some players search for and love today.
3:07
Of course, we also made a game that
we would have liked to play ourselves.
3:22
[XBOX SOUND]