4: Exploring the Intersections of Illness and Otherness in A Plague Tale: Innocence

Blair Apgar, @BlairApgar, University of York

In the 2019 game 'A Plague Tale: Innocence' developed by Asobo Studio, 'otherness' is directly tied to illness. Set in Aquitaine during the 1348 plague outbreak, the game tells a complex tale of illness, isolation, and otherness during the Black Plague.

The story centres on Amicia de Rune and her younger brother, Hugo. Hugo has a hereditary illness connected to a familial trait (‘Prima Macula’) and has lived in quasi-isolation while in treatment. Amidst a plague outbreak, Hugo is targeted by a fictionalized Inquisition. The plague’s devastation can be seen in a nearby village: empty streets, doors marked with white Xs to signal infected households, bloodied bodies strewn in the streets, a terrified populace immolating its residents. As outsiders, Amicia and Hugo are targeted as plague-bringers.

After the village, the player encounters an ill, alchemic doctor named Laurentius who contracted the disease while helping the ill at a plague hospice. Rather than remain at the hospice, he retired to his farmstead, presumably to die. Such tactics were documented in contemporary sources, including Boccacio’s Decameron. 7 Isolation (self and otherwise imposed) was a common tactic during outbreaks of the disease as a protective measure. The pope himself is reported to have fled to Étoile-sur-Rhône to avoid infection,8 and ordinances were passed in Pistoia to control travel to and from infected areas.9 While the game frames the village’s negative response to the outsider/player as part of an irrational one, any such decision would have been carefully considered and apparently, even legislated.

Fig. 4.1: A Plague Tale: Innocence

7 Boccaccio, Giovanni. Decameron, Book 1. ll. 25-27. 8 Horrox, Rosemary. The Black Death. Manchester University Press, 2013, 45.

9 Ibid., 194-201.

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The game employs swarms of infected rats as the primary threat; without light—their sole deterrent— they quickly engulf and devour the player causing a ‘game over’. According to the game’s director, Kevin Choteau, the rats embody the looming threat of infection and death by the plague.10 By this rule, the player cannot both be infected and finish the game, positioning them as an outsider who traverses the world of the sick and who themselves cannot become ill. The player encounters few living infected people, bolstering the plague = death narrative. Contemporary estimates of fatalities reach as high as 7011 -75%12 and characterize the illness’ efficacy as “healthy one day, dead and buried the next.”13 Letters from the papal court reveal the belief that even brief contact with the ill inevitably resulted in death.14 These accounts reveal the overt otherization of the ill and no doubt informed the game’s depiction of plague sufferers.15 By making the plague instantly deadly to Amicia, the game also perpetuates contemporary beliefs of the disease and creates two false groups: sick/alive. As a result, the ‘ill’ and the ‘dead’ are indistinct while the player remains unfazed by the illness that is laying waste to southern France. Though reflective of medieval attitudes, this dichotomy does nothing to reflect bioarchaeological data of the plague and its deadliness.

Though engaging gameplay, it flattens the experience of the plague and uncritically recreates the fearful stigma surrounding the illness and the medieval belief of the plague’s certain death.16

Fig. 4.2: A Plague Tale: Innocence

10 Parijat, Shubhankar. “A Plague Tale: Innocence Interview – A Harrowing Journey.” GamingBolt, April 2, 2019. https://gamingbolt.com/a-plague-tale-innocence-interview-a-harrowing-journey… . 11 Horrox, 20. 12 Ibid., 59. 13 Ibid., 55 14 Ibid., 42-43. 15 Boccaccio, Book 1. ll. 10-15. 16 DeWitte, Sharon N. “Mortality Risk and Survival in the Aftermath of the Medieval Black Death.” https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0096513…. ; DeWitte, Sharon N., and J. W. Wood. “Selectivity of Black Death Mortality with Respect to Preexisting Health.” https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0705460105…. 13