The Rats — The Swarm of the Prima Macula

You cannot talk about A Plague Tale without the rats. The rat tide — oceans of vermin, thousands upon thousands of them swallowing everything not standing in the light — is the series’ defining spectacle and its most iconic horror. The question hanging over Resonance is simple: how do the rats return when the action moves from rain-soaked France to a sun-baked Greek island?

The exact form the swarm takes in Resonance hasn’t been confirmed, so this entry is marked expected and leans on established series lore. We’ll update it the moment Asobo shows the swarm in its new setting.

What the rats are

In this series, the rats aren’t ordinary vermin — they’re a supernatural force bound to the Prima Macula, the ancient hereditary curse at the centre of the mythology. Where the Macula flares, the swarm follows. The carrier of the curse can even command the rats, drawing and directing the tide at a terrible personal cost. The swarm is, in effect, the physical expression of the curse: plague made into teeth and motion.

Light and dark

The rats obey one iron rule: they fear light and fire. A torch, a brazier, a shaft of sunlight — any of these holds them back, carving a safe path through the sea of bodies. Step into shadow, or let your light go out, and the swarm surges in to consume you. Entire sequences in the previous games are built around this single tension: managing light sources to cross a room that’s drowning in rats.

That mechanic is so central to the series’ identity that it’s almost certain to return in some form. And Resonance’s obsession with light — the Minoan sphere, the god-rays, the contrast between golden surface and pitch-black cisterns — reads like the perfect stage for it. The cold, sunless cisterns beneath Crete are exactly the kind of place where a swarm would thrive and where Sophia’s light becomes a lifeline.

How they might appear in Resonance

Here’s where we’re reading the tea leaves. The Mediterranean setting raises interesting questions: is the swarm present on the surface, or confined to the dark places underground? Does Sophia’s connection to the Macula give her any influence over them, like Hugo had? Are the rats tied specifically to the ancient curse the island hides, perhaps surging from the labyrinth itself?

Given how foundational the swarm is — and how much the game’s lighting design seems built around it — we’d be surprised if the rats sat this one out. The more likely scenario is that Asobo finds a fresh way to deploy them that fits the island, the underground spaces, and Sophia’s particular bond to the curse. The “long-buried curse” at the island’s heart and the swarm are almost certainly connected.

Surviving the swarm

If the established rules hold, survival comes down to the same discipline: stay in the light. Manage your sources, plan your route from one pool of light to the next, use fire to clear a path, and never let yourself be caught in the dark with the tide rising. The stealth and survival guide and the sunless cisterns page cover the kinds of spaces where this will matter most.

We’ll rewrite this entry with confirmed, hands-on detail once the swarm appears in the final game. For the curse that commands it, read the Prima Macula page.