Video Game / A Plague Tale: Requiem

"This world hurts, and it keeps hurting. And you want to hurt it back. But it's a fight you can't win, Amicia."

A Plague Tale: Requiem is the sequel to A Plague Tale: Innocence. Developed by Asobo Studio and published by Focus Entertainment, it was released on October 18, 2022.

The game picks up six months after the events of Innocence and continues the story of Amicia and Hugo de Rune as they journey to the south of France to find a cure for Hugo's condition.

Similar to the first game, the player controls Amicia on her journey, supported by her brother. The gameplay is similar to the first game, but both siblings have learned some new tricks.

Reveal Trailer | Story Trailer | Gameplay Overview

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A Plague Tale: Requiem contains examples of the following tropes:

• Abnormal Ammo: Amicia can use a variety of trick bolts fired from her crossbow, in addition to the various types of ammunition in her sling.
• Actionized Sequel: Thanks to her crossbow and the new knife consumable, Amicia is now much more formidable in open combat, so going loud is a totally viable option.
• Advancing Wall of Doom: There are sequences where you have to run from something, usually a Swarm of Rats. This comes in two variants. One where the camera follows Amicia as normal, and you have to maneuver and avoid obstacles, but you cannot see the full scale of the rats coming after you. The other, more cinematic version has the camera showing Amicia from the front, so you can see the whole extent of the rats advancing, but not the path ahead, so you merely have to run "backwards". The same scene can alternate between the two variants.
• All for Nothing: Not truly revealed until the ending of this game, but all of Amicia's efforts in both games to keep Hugo safe, from people who want to use him or hurt him, or even the Macula itself, are all for nothing. Sure, she got rid of some very nasty people along the way who really needed to be dealt with, but all of her attempts to slow the Macula's progression or even outright cure it amount to nothing when she finds that there is no cure and Hugo will die. This comes to a head when Hugo loses control and becomes the Nebula and forces either Amicia or Lucas to kill him.
• All Myths Are True: Subverted. When the heroes arrive on La Cuna, they find that there is a local cult who worships a Child of Embers. After entering their sanctuary and observing their ritual, they find out that the Child of Embers is actually the previous carrier of the Macula. Amicia deduces that the cult's beliefs are not true and the cure for Hugo should still be found on the island. By the end, it is revealed that even that part is not true. There is no cure, it's just the Macula playing tricks on Hugo to make him believe that there is a cure.
• All the Worlds Are a Stage: A Fantasy Sequence towards the end shows Amicia and Hugo walk past scenes from earlier in the game with Hugo dragging death behind him.
• Bag of Spilling:
  • Having had six months of peace after the end of the first game, Amicia's stopped carrying alchemical reagents and half forgot about how much she'd depended on Ignifier. She keeps her sling and it's still lethal, but it's noisy to use, suggesting it's not as refined and upgraded as it can become in Innocence.
  • Lucas does carry reagents but literally drops them in a fall during an early setpiece immediately before he and Amicia encounter rats for the first time.
• Big Bad Ensemble: The Prima Macula and Victor de Arles are the main villains. The Macula is an Eldritch Abomination who serves as the source of corruption for Hugo, kickstarted the plot by luring him to La Cuna, while Victor is the main human villain with the soldiers the heroes they have faced answering to him, created the Child of Embers prophesy, and attempts to raise Hugo as a weapon for his own ends. By the end, however, Victor becomes a Big Bad Wannabe who gets killed first, leaving the Macula as the sole main villain who attempts to consume the world with its plague and rats.
• Big "NO!":
  • The Count's reaction to watching his wife getting killed by rats.
  • Amicia lets one out if Lucas decides to kill Hugo at the end.
• Bittersweet Ending: The game ends with Amicia being forced to kill Hugo in order to stop the rat apocalypse. In addition, many of Amicia and Hugo's companions end up getting killed, including their mother Beatrice. And this isn't getting into how large swathes of France have essentially been depopulated due to the massive rat swarms Hugo summoned. Pretty much the only thing that prevents this from going full Downer Ending is Amicia, Lucas, and Sophia surviving and Amicia resolving to help future Macula carriers and protectors.
• Brief Accent Imitation: Amicia briefly imitates Arnaud out of dissent.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • The Order becomes this. The alchemist Vaudin is a callous Jerkass who does nothing but piss off Amicia and exasperate Hugo's condition, causing both to lose faith in the Order's methods. When Amicia and Hugo finally reach the island from Hugo's dreams, they piece together from the ruins that the Order abused and imprisoned the previous carrier, and in doing so pushed him to the point of triggering the Justinian Plague.
  • Downplayed and ultimately subverted with Beatrice: at the beginning, Beatrice goes along with Vaudin and the Order despite repeated and valid protests from Amicia. When she finally meets her children on La Cuna, she readily accepts their discoveries and provides a possible solution based on those findings.
  • This can happen with Lucas if he's the one to kill Hugo with the crossbow as it's implied in the epilogue that Amicia severed their friendship, unable to look at him without remembering what he did.
• Calling the Young Man Out: On the rowboat, Sophia calls out Hugo for not listening to the adults around him. She also calls out Amicia for her reckless One-Man Army approach, which Sophia believes has been a bad influence on Hugo.
• Cargo Cult: Played with. Count Victor has formed a cult based on an interpretation of Order ruins on La Cuna. The Count admits that he made up the whole thing, misinterpreting the Macula carrier as the Messianic "Child of Embers". This ultimately has disastrous consequences when the Count's cooky wife Emilie kills Beatrice to become Hugo's "new mother", and Hugo's resulting rampage kills her and transforms the island into a Macula hellspace.
• Central Theme: There's times when you can change the seemingly impossible, but there's also times you can't. It's a matter of knowing when you need to open your eyes to the fact that you are powerless to prevent certain things from happening, no matter how much you want to.
• Children Forced to Kill: While it's touched upon in the previous game, much more emphasis is placed in this game about the toll fighting and killing takes on Amicia. In the first chapter, she basically has to psyche herself up by reminding herself that if she dies her family dies, and afterwards her hands are shaking. Later, in a moment of quiet and safety, she dissociates and stares into nothing, remembering her previous Guilt-Induced Nightmare, and her readiness to kill gets her and Lucas in trouble.
• Cliffhanger: Chapter 6 ends with Arnaud, by then still an unknown Elite Mook, towering over a defenseless Amicia and we have to assume going in for the kill. Then the scene fades to white and the story picks up two days later with Amicia recovering by a campfire.
• Collapsing Lair: There are several scenes throughout the game where Amicia has to run from a collapsing structure as it is being overrun by rats. The most prominent example happens when the group runs for the exit of the collapsing tower where Basilius was held prisoner.
• The Compliance Game:
  • Sometimes Amicia distracts Hugo from worrying thoughts by suggesting a game like racing for the next tree.
  • At one point on the island, Sophia asks Hugo to "charge the castle" so she and Amicia can have a talk in private.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: On various occasions, Sophia will ask the heroes how they can take the horrible events unfolding before them with such calm to which Amicia replies that they have gone through these things a lot.
• Convenient Escape Boat: When the heroes exit the destroyed Fort on La Cuna, a boat is conveniently waiting for them by the nearby shore.
• Corridor Cubbyhole Run: In the ruins of Marseille, you have to cross an area where the rats attack in waves with house walls scattered in their path. You have to time your runs accordingly to advance wall by wall.
• Corrupt the Cutie: This game slowly but surely destroys Hugo entirely. The first game, even when he had to kill, he was begging the enemies to back off because he didn't want to hurt them. At the start of this game, he still doesn't really want to hurt anyone, but he slowly but steadily grows all the more willing to kill as the story progresses, with even Amicia, who has become violent and willing to kill anyone even on the smallest perception that someone could hurt her family, begins begging and screaming for him to pull back or he'll lose himself. It comes to a head when Emilie kills Beatrice, resulting in Hugo summoning a massive swarm of rats to kill her and everyone who tries to defend her, with both Hugo and Amicia screaming for their blood. And all this is to say nothing of him becoming fully possessed by the Macula at the end of the game...
• Crapsack World: After leaving Guyenne, the de Rune family thought that Provence could be a safe haven to them. The rats thought otherwise, and the result was a hellish landscape, including the destruction of Marseille, one of France's biggest cities.
• Cutscene Incompetence: The fight scene on Sophia's boat ends with a cutscene where Amicia drops her cover and immediately gets hit by an arrow.
• Dark Fantasy: A supernatural plague that manifests itself as thousands of plague rats.
• Darker and Edgier: The first game was already pretty dark but Hugo and Amicia had a much lighter impact on the world, with the Inquisition a mostly-normal human threat that could be worked around and even the Macula seeming like something they could manage. The epilogue to the first game suggested that with the death of Vitalis and Hugo passing various threshholds, the rat swarms in Guyenne dissipated and people started to get back to their lives. Amicia has a bit of dialogue in this game suggesting that in fact they are still there. The Macula is also far, far more malevolent.
• Darkest Hour: Chapter 13, aptly titled "Nothing Left". Beatrice has been killed, the rats have killed the Countess, incurring the wrath of Count Victor, Hugo is in shock and Amicia can't see a reason to go on. Shockingly, it still gets worse in the final chapter, "King Hugo".
• Death Glare: Hugo's facial expression when he sees the Countess having killed his mother.
• Death Is the Only Option: The only way to end the Macula is to have Hugo killed. The plot revolves around trying to find a cure which does not exist.
• Decoy Protagonist: In the first game, though Amicia is the one the player controls, Hugo was the one the story actually revolved around and the center of the entire storyline. In this game, however, the inverse is actually true as while the story does focus primarily on Hugo, it's actually more Amicia's story this time around, trying to actually save her brother in defiance of the guaranteed fatality of the Macula as she herself clearly needs him more than he ultimately needs her, and having to learn that there are times things can't be changed no matter how much you want them to be.
• Defiant to the End: During the showdown between Amicia and the Count in the arena, the former is hopelessly overpowered but goes for a final attack with the following line:
  "I am Amicia de Rune. And I kneel to no one."
• Demonic Possession: A variation of sorts. In this case, it happens after Hugo kills the Countess, in revenge for Beatrice's murder. While traveling through the palace's underground levels and a huge rat's nest, the Macula takes an opportunity with Hugo's shock with what he did and try to possess his mind. This attempt is not 100% successful, since Hugo still listens to and helps Amicia and Lucas. Then, the Macula tries to eliminate both the protector and the alchemist with a rat swarm, but fails, and Hugo ultimately regains control of his mind:
  Lucas: His mind is… extinguished. I think it's not just the shock… It's the Macula.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: Arnaud dies in Amicia's arms after performing a Heroic Sacrifice to get the Count killed.
• Disney Death: Amicia is shown to be dying from an arrow wound on the boat. But then we cut to the next chapter where she wakes up on a beach with her torso bandaged.
• Don't Make Me Destroy You: When the violent beekeepers threaten to kill Amicia, she warns them that they don't actually want to do that. Too bad they won't listen.
• Doom Magnet: No matter where they go or what activities they're doing, every place the de Rune siblings visit eventually devolves into chaos and bloodshed. Hugo eventually lampshades this:
  Hugo: Nothing ever stays nice. It always turns bad. Always… Why?
• Dramatic Dislocation: Amicia's shoulder gets dislocated when the Count tosses her down a flight of stairs. This renders her unable to fight for a chapter until she joins Lucas who relocated her shoulder.
• Dream Weaver: The Macula acts like this to attract Hugo to La Cuna.
• Elaborate Underground Base: La Cuna holds a secret and vast underground base built by the Order where the previous carrier was locked away.
• Emergency Cargo Dump: When Sophia's ship gets chased by the Count's, Arnaud decides to toss some cargo overboard to gain speed. However, it's too late and their ship gets rammed.
• Emergency Weapon: While you could run out of stones for your sling in the first game, in this game you can rely on your sling to always be charged with a stone if other ammunition is gone.
• Empathy Doll Shot: Being a sweet kid, Hugo is dismayed to find a tree that slaves were chained to and outright horrified to find a bloodied doll left at its roots. Child slaves are a terrible enough thought, but the idea of a child slave who was separated even from this comfort has him cradling it against his chest.
• The End... Or Is It?: The Stinger shows the arm of a newborn baby, all but outright stated to be in the present day. As the camera moves up their arm, the Macula's signature Scare Chord is heard as some of its Tainted Veins are seen hiding on the baby's arm beneath their blanket.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: The beekeepers are murderous partially because of how much damage the thieves did to their livelihood, partly because they attacked an old man, the grandfather of one of the younger vigorous men, and left him in a terrible state. They leave the farm to go looking for Amicia and Hugo because while the two were trying to escape they were attacked by and killed the man's nephews.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Some of the beekeepers are less enthusiastic about killing the thieves than others, or openly dismayed to see them killed. Not that that will stop them, especially since thieves seriously injured Granddad.
• Evolving Attack: In addition to the Equipment Upgrade feature from the first game, in this game you can also choose to improve Amicia's fighting/sneaking skills.
• Fake Action Prologue: The first chapter opens with Amicia and Hugo fleeing from a dangerous foe, who turns out to be Lucas playing an evil wizard in their game.
• Fantasy Gun Control: The game is set in 1350, when rudimentary blackpowder weapons did exist. The game has none of these, instead it has Greek fire, something that had existed previously in the Byzantine Empire, but not in 14th-century France. Even more interestingly, shooting at barrels of Greek fire makes them explode when shooting an ignis at it, something that blackpowder would do, while Greek fire would rather burn with an intense flame instead.
• Foreshadowing:
  • It's in the title itself: a requiem refers to laying the deceased to rest. The game will see Amicia losing both Beatrice and Hugo, as well as other allies, before the game is finished, leaving Amicia to mourn their losses and move on without them.
  • At the start of the game, a hairdresser at the Red City market offers Amicia a new hairstyle, commenting that "a woman's hair is her righteous crown." Later, Amicia gets several involuntary haircuts before finally deciding to chop it all in the epilogue, signifying her growth and the attempt to start over fresh.
• Forgot About His Powers: Downplayed, as neither Amicia nor Hugo has forgotten about his ability to direct the swarms of plague rats according to his will, but on the other hand, given how destructive and horrifying the ability is, especially to strangers witnessing it for the first time, nobody is actively encouraging Hugo to use his abilities and train with them, especially because doing so is tied to his sickness, and so controlling the rats comes with the side-effect of weakening Hugo's vitality. By the game's start, after the events of the first game, the Macula subsided for about six months, essentially rendering Hugo powerless, only to re-awaken in response to two farm workers attempting to strangle Amicia to death in front of him. After that point, Hugo is separated from Amicia for several chapters whilst in Provence, forcing Amicia and Lucas to manage the rat-infested districts of the city without his aid, and by the climax, Vaudin's attempts to treat him merely trigger a seizure that unleashes a tsunami of rats that devastate the city. Hugo's guilt over this makes him reluctant to use his powers again until Amicia is nearly killed during the attack by Arnaud's mercenaries, and he only fully starts actively using the powers again whilst they're being hunted by the Beast's soldiers and Amicia's concussion prevents her from being able to protect him herself.
• Futile Hand Reach: Hugo reaches out for Amicia when the latter gets pulled from the wagon down a slope early on.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: When Amicia has to kill Hugo, the game controls become much more sluggish than normal, signifying that she really doesn't want to do this, even though she knows it's the only solution.
• Gory Discretion Shot: The scene cuts away before we see the Countess slitting Beatrice's throat.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: Amicia can attach grappling hooks to her crossbow.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The Prima Macula becomes this, full-time. Unlike the previous game where the Macula manifests itself as a disorganized corruption that needs to be mastered by Hugo, here it shows that it has not only sentience, but an objective: to spread itself over the world. To achieve this, the Macula manipulates Hugo's dreams to lure him to La Cuna and see what happened with the last carrier, in an attempt to make him disillusioned and angry with the world. The plan almost failed thanks to Amicia and her group until the Count captured Hugo and lied to him, saying his sister was dead, a lie that leads to terrible consequences.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: In the final chapter, there is a Dream Sequence where Amicia is lost in an area with Phoenix statues. After leaving the area, she stands near a brazier while she encounters an endless flow of rats taking humanoid form and approaching her, fighting them off by shooting ignis at them. Meanwhile, she hears Hugo's voice trying to dissuade her from fighting. when the rats eventually reach her, she gets shunted back to the previous area and the scene repeats. The only way to break out of this loop is to follow Hugo's advice and put out the flame, then Amicia will wake up.
• Heroic BSoD: Both Amicia and Hugo are in shock after their mother gets killed. It takes a while until they can muster enough strength to press on.
• History Repeats: The story draws parallels with the carrier/protector relationship Hugo and Amicia are having and a similar couple in the 6th century.
• Hope Spot:
  • The first minutes after arriving on La Cuna island. It's a bright, happy, safe place where the siblings believe they will find a cure to the Macula. All they do find is the remains of the Order's failures, and the bloodthirsty side of the cult that wants to possess Hugo.
  • Right after finding Basilius, things start to take a minor turn after Amicia, Hugo, and Sophia escape the underground chambers, realizing that while there is no cure for Hugo, keeping to themselves, safe and quiet, would reduce the strain and keep the Macula and Hugo's powers pacified and dormant for a time being. Upon learning that Beatrice and Lucas have made it to La Cuna, they share this info with the two and they finally have a plan to live quietly in a house up in the mountains, far away from civilization where Hugo's powers will be hunted and antagonized. Then the Count asks to speak to Amicia alone...
• Human Sacrifice: Milo has numerous slaves killed to worship the Child of Embers.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: At the end, Hugo asks Amicia to kill him since he cannot do it himself.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: After Hugo witnesses the death of his mother, he goes into a dissociated state and lets the Macula take over. Amicia eventually gets her brother to snap out of it by instilling new hope in him.
• Indy Escape: There are several sequences where the only thing that saves the heroes from an onrushing Swarm of Rats is to run straight down a path until a barrier is reached that the rats can't cross.
• In the End, You Are on Your Own: At the climax in Marseille, Sophia unable to continue on due to an injury. Amicia then gets separated from Lucas, which leaves her on her own to find Hugo.
• It Can Think: Whilst the Macula was always a semi-supernatural phenomenon, it appeared to be uncontrolled and chaotic in the previous game, until Hugo started manifesting his will over it. In this game, the Macula and the plague rats connected to it, demonstrate a disturbing level of sentience, giving prophetic dreams to Hugo that lure him to La Cuna and the resting place of the prior Macula carrier, apparently intent on using him to fully manifest itself like it did with the previous host. Amicia even says that it "lured him in", and by the endgame, it practically takes on the status of an Eldritch Abomination that manifests as a sentient plague.
• It Has Been an Honor:
  • When all seems lost in the climax, Amicia has a heart-to-heart with Lucas and quotes this almost exactly. This is lampshaded by Sophia who asks the two if they share the honor speech because they think they won't make it.
  • Soon after, Hugo's voice in the Nebula tells Amicia that he loves her and that their time spent together had been the world to him.
• Kill the Ones You Love: At the end, Amicia has to kill her brother to stop the Macula from spreading any further.
• Lampshade Hanging: When rats as an environmental hazard are re-introduced and Amicia has to put a long-burning torch into a wall sconce so she and Lucas can climb a wall, the latter comments with dismay about having to leave behind their surest protection.
• Last Stand: The path to Basilius's prison is paved with bodies. It turns out, this was the doing of previous Protector Aelia who tried to free Basilius but couldn't get through and died in a heroic fight against overwhelming forces of the Order.
• Made of Incendium: The high grass the heroes are able to hide in is also extremely flammable and kills anyone within seconds after a flame touches it.
• Malevolent Masked Man: The first enemies the children encounter are medieval beekeepers, who make crude protective masks out of wicker baskets to tend to the hives, giving this impression.
• Masquerade Ball: The cult gathering at the mountain on La Cuna requires all guests to wear masks which allows Amicia and Hugo to infiltrate without being noticed.
• Medieval Morons:
  • The farm workers the children encounter in Chapter 1 are willing to attack and murder the children merely for being in the area after some thieves attacked and burned some of their valuable crops, and disregarding their pleas that they had nothing to do with that. Dialogue indicates that one of the primary aggressors, Mathias, has crossed the Rage Breaking Point, especially after seeing the state the thieves left his grandfather in, and is willing to take it out on anybody in the area. Their stubborn instance on attempting to kill two innocents ultimately results in two workers' deaths, and potentially the entire rest of the farm afterwards depending on how many Amicia kills.
  • Shown in the handling of the Macula. Everyone who either tries to handle it or exploit it for their own purposes ends up making the situation much worse.
• My Greatest Failure: Amicia suffers a lot of this, causing Lucas to beg her to stop blaming herself for failing to prevent all the tragedies that occur as a result of the Macula.
• Nerf: Hugo's powers are stronger and more evolved, but they now are governed by a resource meter, and overusing them will cause Hugo to pass out. Also, the passive effect from the end of the first game that had he, his sister, and any friends untouched by rats seems to have gone away, meaning they're always a hazard.
• New Game Plus: Once you beat the game, you retain all the upgrades and skills from your previous playthrough.
• New Skill as Reward: Amicia gains points and eventually new skills after performing successfully in battle.
• No-Gear Level: After Amicia dislocates her shoulder thanks to the Count, she cannot make use of her weapons and instead has to make use of her smarts to escape his clutches.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Amicia and Hugo playing around in Chapter 1 winds up distracting a farm boy named Tobin from his duties of keeping watch over the farm located inside an abandoned castle. This allows some thieves to enter and attempt to rob the place, resulting in a fire that burns several valuable hives and turns the workers murderous towards any strangers like the de Rune siblings. When escaping, they witness one of the farm owner's sons strangling Tobin for his failure to keep watch, his dialogue making it clear he intends to kill him. When Hugo intervenes, the sons instead try to kill them both, resulting in Hugo summoning rats to devour their aggressors and protect Amicia. This results in the farm owner hunting them down with the rest of the workers for Revenge, resulting in several mandatory deaths, including his own, and potentially all the workers getting killed. None of that would have happened if Amicia and Hugo hadn't spent some time playing with Tobin or saved him afterwards.
• No-Harm Requirement: On the way from the Red City to the harbor, Lucas asks Amicia not to kill any soldier which she grudgingly agrees to.
• Ominous Walk: After the Count tosses Amicia down the staircase and she dislocates her shoulder, he gloats and slowly walks towards her while she tries crawling away from him. This is a case of Why Don't You Just Shoot Him? since this allows Amicia to find a way to escape.
• Only a Flesh Wound: Amicia can shrug off injuries quite remarkably. First she gets her torso severely slashed by the Count during their duel in the arena which is forgotten a few scenes later. Then Lucas corrects her dislocated shoulder which instantly returns her to pristine fighting condition. A third justified case happens when she gets her torso pierced by an arrow and Arnaud gives her a potion to drink which relieves her of any pain since a boss battle is coming right up.
• The Phoenix: A phoenix appears in Hugo's dream that turns out to be a symbol of the Order.
• Playable Epilogue: Set one year after the events of the game, there is a scene where Amicia visits Hugo's grave, then leaves to make notes for the next Carrier and Protector on how to deal with the Macula.
• Please Wake Up: A non-lethal version where Hugo pleads Amicia to wake up after she gets knocked out by Arnaud.
• Poor Communication Kills: The first chapter has Amicia and Hugo playing around near a castle that is home to several farmers and beekeepers that was shortly beforehand attacked and had several valuable crops and hives burned by thieves who also seriously injured one of them, leading the rest to become murderous to any strangers on the property, willing to kill the children despite their protests they have nothing to do with the events. Eventually, Hugo winds up summoning rats to devour the farm owner's sons who were in the process of strangling Amicia to death, resulting in their father leading the rest of the farm after them for Revenge. Depending on how Amicia handles the resulting stealth section, all the workers can wind up killed along with the owner.
• The Precarious Ledge: On several occasions, the heroes have to pass over a narrow ledge. The most memorable example happens on the island where Hugo almost falls to his death when slipping from the ledge over an abyss on the way to Las Madres.
• Pull Yourself Down the Spear: After the Count impales Arnoud with his sword, the latter uses his last strength to pull himself down the sword to get close to the Count and pull off his helmet so Amicia can attack the vulnerable spot with her sling.
• Pupating Peril: Sophia spots a nest of cocoons at the base of the tower where Basilius was held. Suffice it to say the cocoons eventually burst and unleash a Swarm of Rats at our heroes.
• Running Away to Cry: If Amicia finds the Secret Room in the ruins after her mother gets killed, she breaks down and cries which she didn't dare to do in front of Hugo and Lucas.
• Run or Die: There are several sequences where Amicia has to run from a horde of rats. These sequences play out as you just pushing run while taking turns and jumps at the appropriate time. There is also a similar scene where she runs from guards.
• Say My Name: As with the first game, characters constantly shout each other's names. Amicia calls out for Hugo a lot, Hugo and Lucas call for Amicia.
• Scenery Porn: The first game was beautiful at times but took place in war and plague ravaged Aquitaine during the fall and winter, so the environments tended towards stark and gloomy even before rats got involved. This game is set in the summer and the more colorful coastal region of Provence, and far more setpieces involve gorgeous sunny natural vistas and towns filled with life and movement. This also leads to more contrast when the scenery is ravaged, and there are even more intense and surreal locations than the first game as well.
• Schmuck Bait: Both Amicia and Hugo fall for this without fully realizing it. The dreams of La Cuna that Hugo has are just lures by the Macula to draw him there in order to break him and possess him. Amicia, desperate for a way to save Hugo, also falls for it and keeps pressing on, despite Hugo's pleas that they leave. Unfortunately, leaving always was the answer, though it takes Amicia and Hugo finding Basilius's body and Hugo nearly losing himself then and there to realize it. There is no cure for the Macula, but leaving and living happily in isolation away from where people would aggravate his condition would ensure a longer life for Hugo.
• Scream Discretion Shot: Hugo's death by sling (or crossbow) is not shown as the scene cuts away from Amicia's screaming to the epilogue.
• Sheathe Your Sword: Amicia will encounter a single brazier and a sea of rats spilling from giant skull statues that starts forming into humanoid shapes after entering the Nebula. Her first instinct is to attack them, but Hugo keeps on saying that the "time to fight is over," hinting that she has to put out the brazier, as otherwise she'll be trapped in a loop of winding back at the field of phoenix statues.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: The bulk of the game is about Amicia trying to save Hugo. Not only does he have to die at the end, but they cause a lot of collateral damage while getting there.
• Shout-Out:
  • The big womb-like structure at La Cuna's underground rat nest resemble too much the Megamycete from Resident Evil Village.
  • After the heroes leave the nest, they reach the village in the island of La Cuna... that have a huge hole in the middle, resembling the no-man's land in San Diego that appears in Call of Duty: Ghosts.
• Shrine to the Fallen: The epilogue shows Amicia heading for a shrine she built for Hugo.
• Shrouded in Myth: The frescos at the mountain temple on La Cuna reveal that the people of the 6th century misunderstood the meaning of the Prima Macula and made a god out of its carrier. The Count gives this story his own spin by creating a Cargo Cult around the Child of Embers.
• Silent Credits: At the end, after Amicia kills Hugo, suddenly the credits start rolling with no other sound than the blowing of the wind, while showing the rising sun in the background.
• Slashed Throat:
  • The slaves get their throats slashed by Milo and his men.
  • Beatrice suffers this fate by the hand of the Countess.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Highly on the cynical side, even compared to Innocence. No matter what Amicia and Hugo do, the plague follows them and things just get worse over time. While they finally stop the plague, it can only be achieved by killing Hugo, and even then it's already done a horrible amount of damage.
• Sparing Them the Dirty Work: If the player waits too long before killing Hugo in the final chapter, Amicia will fall to her knees and cry that she cannot do it. Lucas will step up in her place to do the deed with the crossbow.
• Spiteful Spit: One of the slaves marked for Human Sacrifice spits on Milo as an act of defiance.
• The Stinger:
  • After the final scene, the first part of the credits rolls. After this there is an entire chapter of Playable Epilogue.
  • After the Playable Epilogue, the rest of the credits roll, followed by yet another stinger, which shows a child wrapped in a blue blanket with the Macula's Tainted Veins, with the sounds of a heart monitor in the background. This implies the story will leap ahead to the modern age.
• A Storm Is Coming: On La Cuna, Sophia informs Amicia that she can feel a storm coming up which coincides with things turning ugly.
• Sugar Apocalypse: The beautiful town of La Cuna with its friendly inhabitants gets razed by the rats.
• Swapped Roles: It doesn't take too long into this game to learn that the roles have been reversed with the lead characters. Hugo still depends on Amicia for protection, but by now Amicia has become totally dependent on Hugo, specifically her role as his protector, to the point that even the slightest delay in getting help for him has her start tearing herself apart and freaking out. It's only when she's with him and actively pursuing a goal that she calms down.
• Tailor-Made Prison: Basilius was kept in a prison built specifically for him underneath the island.
• Take a Moment to Catch Your Death: After the action sequence on the river is over, skipper Joseph gets suddenly shot in the neck and dies shortly thereafter while spouting Blood from the Mouth.
• Take Your Time: In most scenes, with the exception of boss fights and chase scenes, you can take any time to finish an area, no matter how much the characters are in a hurry.
• Tap on the Head: Notably averted at the climax of the river chase with Arnaud's mercenaries. Arnaud gives Amicia a Hammer Hilt with the pommel of his sword to knock her down after he tries threatening the others trapped on the boat to lure her closer. Unlike the times this happened in the previous game, it's treated much more seriously, with Amicia suffering a visible concussion from the blow all throughout the next chapter and a steadily-bleeding head wound, somewhat impairing her attempts to flee from the Beast's soldiers. It takes two days for it to heal, and afterwards Amicia carries a visible head wound from it throughout the rest of the game.
• They Would Cut You Up: Amicia's goal is to save Hugo from the clutches of the Order because as Vaudin demonstrated, all the Order was interested in was to carry out cruel tests on Hugo with no regard to his health.
• Thrown Down a Well: The Order was deeply afraid of Basilius' powers and didn't know what else to do about him other than chaining him up in a tower deep underground.
• Time Skip: Six months pass between games. Amicia is visibly taller and broader-shouldered than before and her voice is a bit lower. Lucas has hit puberty and now looks more like a teen than a child and his voice actor has changed. Hugo's hair has gotten longer.
• Title: Requiem: This is featured in the title.
• Took a Level in Badass: Both of the de Rune siblings have upgraded their capabilities:
  • Amicia now has a knife that she can use for stealth kills and wields a crossbow in addition to her sling. She's also significantly more formidable in open combat.
  • Hugo's powers have evolved, and he can now control rats with much more precision, and can use them to sense enemies, which manifests in gameplay terms as being able to see enemies through walls.
  • The rats themselves are more dangerous, capable of attacking in waves to overcome fire on their own, as well as climbing walls.
• Trauma Conga Line: The heroes ae subjected to a sheer never-ending string of traumatic events.
• Traumatic Haircut: After a Hopeless Boss Fight with the Count, Amicia has her braid lopped off with his sword in a Kick the Dog moment.
• Unholy Matrimony: The Count and the Countess are both stark raving mad and also Sickeningly Sweethearts. This is a rare case of the matrimony actually being a positive thing, as their relationship does keep their darker qualities in check, at least until the de Runes show up.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The Order started the Justinian Plague. After failing to find a way to control the Macula, they locked up the previous carrier, Basilius, resulting in him crossing the Despair Event Horizon and unleashing the plague on the rest of the world in revenge.
• Vein-o-Vision: The rats give Hugo the power to see human blood vessels through walls. You can use it as an Enemy-Detecting Radar but only in areas where rats are close by.
• Wham Line: In Chapter 12, when Amicia tells the Count that he is wrong about the Child of Embers:
  Count Victor: You're probably right… because I invented most of it.
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • In Chapter 1, the siblings encounter Tobin, a child worker at his family's farm, whilst playing in the woods. However, beside he was playing with them, he failed to alert the farm workers when some thieves entered the property, resulting in a fire that destroyed several valuable crops and beehives. One of the owner's sons, Mathias, crosses the Rage Breaking Point at this, taking it out on Tobin and is found strangling him afterwards, claiming he was their father's greatest mistake, and that he'll 'correct that now', before Hugo intervenes.
  • Implied with the Order and their treatment of Basilius, the carrier of the Prima Macula before Hugo: he was subjected to inhumane experimentation, who then separated him from his protector and locked him up and left him to die. Judging by the size of his corpse, he couldn't have been any older than six.
• You Wake Up on a Beach:
  • Hugo's Recurring Dreams start off with him waking up on some unknown beach.
  • This happens to Amicia when she wakes up on a beach near Marseille after going overboard from Sophia's ship.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: While on La Cuna, the protagonists follow clues that might lead them to a way to cure Hugo. Each time, a piece of backstory about the previous carrier, Basilius, and his protector, Aelia, is revealed, but instead of the cure, they find more clues to follow on another part of the island. At the end, it is revealed that the Macula has no cure, and all the Order could do is to lock Basilius away.

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