Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy drops in 10 days! Curious about what awaits? This fifth devblog gives you the scoops!
We’re still wrapping up and polishing the very last details, but now the game is officially certified! We’ve got a few little surprises ready for the release too, so stay tuned!
Catch us at Gamescom from August 26-30: we can’t wait to hang out with the first of you at our publishing partner’s booth, Focus Entertainment. Now all Resonance is missing is basically… YOU! 😁
This Devblog addresses our last steps in Game Design, creating a believable companion, combat mechanics and the challenges that came with them.
Here are all the sections you may find in this Devblog:
EPIC RIDE AHEAD! GAME WRAP-UP - by Nicolas, Lead Game Designer
WHAT ABOUT COMPANIONS? - by Zoé, Narrative Level Designer
NEVER BACK DOWN - Nicolas introduces you to powerful warriors with guts and convictions, fighting for their future…
WHEN THE TRAP SNAPS SHUT - by Valérian, Lead Level Designer
HOW DOES ONE SUCCESSFULLY BLEND THIS WITH NARRATIVE DESIGN? - Elisa Corbeau, Zoé Sempé & Maureen Bastian our Narrative Level Designers tell you more about it.
FROM THE SHADOWS - Bruno, Lead Gameplay Programmer, hints at something out there you’re not ready to face yet…
by Nicolas, Lead Game Designer
A new world is calling, inviting you into a space where exploration and agility shape every step. Nicolas, could you tell us what players should expect when venturing across the island?
When you dive into this kind of journey, you want the freedom to explore, so making navigation smooth, fast, and responsive was a natural priority for us… Sophia’s traversal moves make you feel light and agile while embodying the spirit of adventure: She can jump, ledge grab, ride ziplines, use her grappling hook to swing over gaps, or even climb up and down some steep cliffs.
To further amplify your interaction with the environment, several mechanisms are spread across the game, allowing you to impact the environment in significant ways as you progress through the game.
For example, Sophia is in possession of a mechanical sphere. This sphere is a tool that allows Sophia to manipulate light in various ways. The sphere diffuses the captured light, and the beams generated outside the sphere can take on various forms depending on the upgrade selected. This way, you can discover secret rooms and overcome epic-scale challenges.
Different types of collectibles are also scattered around the world to reward your exploration and reinforce the feeling of discovery.These include Artifacts that give lore, Charms that bring passive bonuses during fights, and the tombs of ancient heroes to discover. Opening these tombs rewards Sophia with new blades that unlock special techniques that she learns, offering new approaches to combat.
Sophia will also be able to discover “Resonance Points” that unlock Skills and Masteries, granting her new combat abilities, which offer interesting gameplay depth and let you choose your own playstyle.
Keep this simple truth in mind: when the trap snaps shut, only those who truly understand the paths ahead can move forward.
Zoé, Narrative Level Designer, explains how the team works together…
Immersion sits at the core of our work as narrative designers. When Sophia moves through a zone, we must think about what the companion character is doing: how they follow, how they react, how they stay fluid and intentional.
We explored how to make the companion feel alive, enriching the experience through their presence and avoiding the classic issue of a companion just standing there like a lifeless statue. This shows up, for example, in precise companion placements during collectible animations, as in the images below.
While Sophia is in her “I pick up a bracelet collectible” animation, Leni switches into different animations that we select and place in the scene. We trigger them exactly when Sophia grabs the bracelet. The goal is to reinforce the credibility of their relationship while staying consistent with Leni’s personality.
In zones where you stay in one place for a long time, such as during puzzle phases, when the companion isn’t needed for the puzzle, we give them small actions: a movement routine, points of interest to check out, instead of having them simply follow Sophia. This makes the companion feel like they have their own free will. The way we position the companion can also subtly guide you toward your next objective, destination, or point of interest. It’s a discreet but effective way to support level design.
Nicolas introduces you to powerful warriors with guts and convictions, fighting for their future…
To shift from a slingshot in A Plague Tale: Requiem to a more dynamic and rich combat system in Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy, we went through a whoooole lot of iterations.
Combat in A Plague Tale: Requiem focused on stealth mechanics and mid- to long-range combat. For Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy, melee combat was what we were aiming for from the start – as opposed to the other Plague Tale game – especially since we’d be playing as Sophia and wanted to explore her past as a plunderer who must survive in a harsh and brutal world.
For us, this was a challenging task, because we had never designed a combat system before and had to start from scratch.
We watched tons of GDC talks in detail, studied combat games, to fully understand the conventions, the techniques used, and how it all works, and to establish a common language within the team. From there, we defined a framework for our own combat:
It must be grounded, fun, and rhythmic hand-to-hand swordplay.
It must also be fast, intense, instinctive, and visceral.
It must be intuitive for casual players but also provide gameplay depth that should appeal to those looking for more challenges.
Every hit is decisive: one hit can kill.
Sophia is a lethal, smart, and agile plunderer, and her fighting style is not academic: she fights to survive. She’s able to quickly chain actions and smartly kill enemies. In addition to the basic attack, block, parry, and dodge abilities, we defined Sophia’s abilities to suit her as best as possible:
She can use a dagger to make sneaky but deadly attacks;
She can use her grapple to attract enemies to her or stun them at a distance;
She can surprise enemies by making use of the environment, like throwing objects or even pushing them off a ledge.
Sophia can face several enemies at the same time. To avoid being overwhelmed, she needs to “control” enemies using movement, repositioning herself, and taking advantage of the environment to perform contextual interactions. She will adapt her tactics to the different archetypes and variations of enemies she will encounter. The increasing difficulty, with harder enemy types mixed in, creates a challenging experience that rewards skill and timing.
The adventure is also punctuated by key moments in the story featuring 1-on-1 combat against more challenging bosses. Each boss has its own gameplay features and more unique technical combos to counter.
Over the adventure, thanks to Sophia’s connection to the Minoan era, you will be able to take on the role of Theseus, a more brutal warrior than Sophia, and take part in violent Minoan battles.
by Valérian, Lead Level Designer
In Resonance, Sophia’s journey across the Minotaur’s Island is driven by a search for answers. So exploration is more than simply moving from one place to another: each puzzle is designed to reveal more about the world, its characters, and the mysterious trials that once shaped the island.
Rather than existing as isolated challenges, puzzles are woven into both the story and the environment. Some are short and immediate, while others encourage you to take your time, observe your surroundings, and connect different pieces of information. In every case, your thought process remains at the heart of the experience.
Light provides a strong foundation for narrative and gameplay.
While Sophia used her prism to keep rats away in A Plague Tale: Requiem, it felt natural to continue exploring this theme. This time, Sophia relies on a mechanical sphere, allowing you to manipulate light in several ways as you progress through the adventure.
When designing a puzzle, Level designers first consider where it takes place, what moment of the story it supports, and which game mechanics you should engage with. From there, the goal is to develop gameplay ideas that feel like a natural extension of that specific setting.
A successful puzzle should make you feel clever. The solution should feel earned, as though you arrived at it through your own reasoning rather than being guided too directly. When you get stuck, you can ask a NPC for help, but the answer is never revealed too soon. The intention is to encourage reflection without diminishing the satisfaction of discovery.
Finding the right balance is essential.
A puzzle needs to be challenging enough to feel rewarding, but never so difficult or time-consuming that it becomes frustrating. Achieving that balance often requires iteration, with each puzzle refined until its pacing, logic, and difficulty feel just right.
Once a puzzle is solved, the reward should feel tangible. In Resonance, that reward often comes from the environment itself: a mechanism springing to life, a hidden path opening, or a massive door shifting in a way that feels both impressive and satisfying. These moments are created in close collaboration with the level artists, ensuring that every solved puzzle feels like a meaningful step deeper into the world.
Elisa Corbeau, Zoé Sempé & Maureen Bastian our Narrative Level Designers tell you more about it.
As we are crafting a deeply narrative-driven game, we had to make sure that every aspect of the gameplay conveyed Sophia's story: her strength, her goals, her ambitions, and her struggles. To do so, we set up multiple narrative systems, interlocking with combat, exploration, and puzzles.
When solving a puzzle, it is fundamental to allow you to feel immersed in the story and reinforce your immersion through meaningful dialogues rather than an excessive amount of chatter. We wanted characters to interact with one another, to think together, to lighten the mood or to delve into the history of the place they were trying to enter. A system of hints allowed us to provide assistance when necessary.
Encounters and boss fights were a crucial and challenging aspect of Resonance, which had to be carefully woven into the narrative. Sophia fights with her guts and with a purpose, be it vengeance, anger, defiance, or despair. It was important to allow the combat chatter to convey all of this. To do so, we created a dynamic dialogue system consisting of several layers: the top-priority dialogues correspond to the essential lines, the ones that convey Sophia's emotional state at a given point in the story. The lower-priority dialogues are more generic; they are reactions to your actions during the fight.
The balance between the two systems was adjusted by hand, fight after fight, to make sure we had the best narrative flow possible and a satisfying progression throughout the encounter.
At times, the gameplay needs to pause. Sophia breathes. She stops rushing. She takes in all the emotions and the stakes of her quest.
To convey powerful emotions, we designed custom-made real-time events and worked with the animation department to bring them to life together. Sophia’s choreography, materiality, and acting were carefully designed to reflect her emotional state, whether it was fear, anger, dread, curiosity, or pure devastation. During these sequences, the mise-en-scène and pacing play a major part in the projection you may feel toward Sophia’s emotions. We hope you’ll feel the love and care we’ve put into them!
Bruno, Lead Gameplay Programmer, hints at something out there you’re not ready to face yet…
In Resonance, we introduce a new form of Macula, the main threat of the game. This ancient evil is awakening on the island, as a force that not even the sharpest blades could ever hope to defeat. Sophia will have to remain discreet and alert to the slightest sign of its presence, for the threat prowls in the island’s darkest depths, tracking the traces of our heroine.
This new danger brings a fresh approach to stealth sequences and nerve-wracking chases, facing a unique entity that seems to obey none of the rules of any known world. Throughout the game, the entity will evolve, adapting itself to increase its chances of reaching Sophia. To survive, you’ll have to rely on agility, intelligence, and discretion, but remember: in the darkness, your only salvation is light.
From Cara, Lead Writer in our narrative crew
Sophia’s adventure went through several names during development, and for us as developers, saying goodbye to our production codename wasn't easy. In the end, Resonance became a clear choice.
As Sophia's journey unfolds, the title takes on new meaning. Bonds are broken, sacrifices are made, stories come to an end. Yet what they leave behind continues to resonate. Because, in the end, the choices we make never stop with us. They leave a mark that reaches far beyond our own story... and continues to echo in those who find the strength to move forward.
Well, Seadogs, our dev chapter is now almost done, and Sophia turns to you now: “Full sail to the labyrinth! Guys? Ready when you are!”
Both Asobo Studio and Focus Entertainment wanted to thank the fans of the A Plague Tale franchise as well as future Resonance players for their long-time support. We’re all champing at the bit to release the game and finally let you all own it. 🖤
Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy, a brand-new journey in the world of A Plague Tale, available from August 27, 2026 on all platforms.