Can you kill rats in A Plague Tale: Requiem?

There’s a lot of rats in A Plague Tale: Requiem. There were a lot of rats in its predecessor, Innocence, as well. But Requiem? Even more rats. And they are not to be messed around with, capable of delivering Amicia and Hugo and swift and gruesome death if you’re not careful and stray into the darkness for long.

Of course, the rats can also be used to your advantage in certain situations. Just about all the time they’re present on stream, they’re as much a tool to be shaped and shifted as they are a danger to try to avoid.

As you try to make your way around and through the swarms of rats and the dangerous plague that they spread with them, many players will naturally come up with a possible solution: just kill the rats. You have weapons, after all, and many more than you ever had in Innocence. While Requiem’s version of a more grown-up Amicia is no champion fighter or assassin by any means, she can now at least put up a fight if the situation arises with a new knife and crossbow alongside her original sling.

So, with all these weapons at your disposal, can you actually kill the rats in Requiem?

Can you kill rat swarms in A Plague Tale: Requiem?

There’s a very short and sweet answer to this one: Nope. Despite sometimes seeing rats die in various ways at various points in the game, there’s no way for a player to kill rats during gameplay in Requiem.

While that might not seem overly realistic, think about it this way: Amicia has a knife, a crossbow, and a sling. Those are all fairly precise weapons, capable of taking out one or two rats at a time if she was able to kill them. Almost every time you see rats in Requiem, you’re seeing them in swarms of hundreds, if not thousands. So even if you were able to kill rats, it wouldn’t even do you any good. Best to play along with the game’s intent: stay in the light, or manipulate the light sources around you to keep the rats at bay, and yourself safe.