Red rocks, dust, eroded cliffs… This decor taken from a sequence of A Plague Tale : Requiem, available October 18 on PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series, looks like it’s straight out of a western. However, no American cowboy has ever trod the place that served as a reference for the Bordeaux teams of the Asobo studio: these landscapes are inspired by the « Colorado provençal », ocher quarries located in Rustrel, in the Luberon (Vaucluse). After developing his two young characters in a region inspired by New Aquitaine in A Plague Tale : Innocence (2019), this second episode, which still takes place during the Hundred Years War, leads them to the Southeast.
The ocher quarry, whose hues turn from yellow to mauve, has left strong memories for members of the team, tells the Monde Director Kevin Choteau: “I remember it because I went there with friends when I was a child. We had an ocher battle there. We threw it everywhere, which was a very bad idea. We came out of there all orange but we had had the best day of our lives. It marked me and I wanted to be able to place this place in A Plague Tale : Requiem. »
The transposition as close as possible to French landscapes is unusual in video games. And this, despite the proliferation of studios on the territory, since the National Video Game Syndicate (SNJV) listed 700 in 2021. France only occasionally finds itself at the heart of a video game adventure, as with Versailles 1685: Conspiracy at the court of the Sun King (1996), by Cryo Interactive, the Parisian episode ofAssassin’s Creed : Unity (2014), Ubisoft (developed in Montreal), or Card Shark (2022), by Nerial, British studio founded by French people. Finally, players are more regularly confronted with very stereotypical appearances of the country: the battlefields of the First or Second World War, the Parisian stage in an adventure game on a global scale (Hitman), or the reconstitution of fragments of territories in a simulation (Euro Truck Simulator 2).
Fascination for the United States and Japan
« When we develop video games, we necessarily think internationally. We always hope that they will be sold abroad. And it’s true that we can wonder if, by using France, we don’t risk losing the foreign public., analyzes Jehanne Rousseau, founder of the Spiders studio. However, breaking away from the world market is difficult, as this industry requires significant investment. Jehanne Rousseau recalls that her last production, Steelrising (available since September 8 on PC, Xbox and PlayStation), cost several million euros and mobilized a team of seventy-five people, not counting external collaborators.
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