A Plague Tale: Requiem Can Fit 300,000 Rats On Screen

Developer Asobo Studio continues to push the boundaries for just how many rats can possibly fit on screen in a video game. While A Plague Tale: Innocence showcased a truly impressive mischief of rats, its upcoming sequel A Plague Tale: Requiem will take that up several notches as it can apparently fit 300,000 vermin on screen at once, leveraging the hardware power of the PS5.

Asobo Studio outlined how this was possible on a recent PlayStation blog post. Apart from loading times being significantly reduced, the improved draw distance possible on PS5 now means more rats can be fit onto the screen – and it’s quite a big leap from the first game. While the original game was able to fit 5,000 rats on screen, A Plague Tale: Requiem will be able to fit over 300,000. Those squeamish about rats might want to proceed with caution.

The developer explained how it managed to achieve this in the blog post, stating in further terrifying detail:

“Rats are a key feature of A Plague Tale, and for this second game we wanted to push new-gen possibilities to the max to bring the rats-induced horror and trauma to a next level. The number of rats on-screen has been multiplied by 60, growing from 5,000 to 300,000! It’s a good number to convey the vision of the apocalypse which keeps increasingly oppressing our heroes. We’ve also changed the aspect of their movement, so that they look like a giant wave, much like a tsunami crashing down on you. We’re lucky to work with our own, in-house engine and rely on it to tackle challenging renderings like this one, of an element which is completely specific to A Plague Tale.”

We’ve seen how these tsunamis of rats will look in-game thanks to some previous gameplay footage, though we think that might also just be the tip of the iceberg if they haven’t shown us everything.

A Plague Tale: Requiem releases on 18 October 2022 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.

Source: PlayStation Blog