To get through a shed of dangerous rats, the characters lure a pig into the shed, close the doors and extinguish the torches keeping away the rats. Sacrificing the pig be to be eaten alive by hundreds of rats to get through
The scene isn't glorified, and is treated with the weight of the sacrifice. But it's still a dark moment of abandonment and sacrifice
A large majority of the cast are children. At one point they are captured by english soldiers and kept in cages. Soldiers in the game will attack and not hesitate to kill Amicia, a teenage girl. Soldiers also verbally abuse the kids.
There is a cutscene where you enter a plaza where a person has already been burned alive and a woman which is about to be. She calls out to the two main characters (which are children) to run and go get help. That makes the crowd which has surrounded to go crazy, saying that they will burn the main characters as well since they are the cause of the plague in their town.
Bodies can be found in some of the city scenes. Some are hanged for execution and others committed suicide. A game mechanic is knocking these bodies down to distract rats.
One character makes a joke about how the best way to take someone out is to hit them in between the legs. Though no one is every explicitly hurt there.
I guess it depends on your idea of excessive. People are eaten alive and there are lots of corpses. On a scale of 1 to The Saw Franchise, this is probably only a 4-5.
There is a scene where the main characters father gets his throat slit open when trying to hide information about where his sick son is currently located. And then later there is a scene where the mother is believed to be murdered. There is a wooden gate which the mother closes to prevent the people who are chasing them to get a hold of the main character and their younger brother. The moment the gate closes a bloodied sword pierces through the gate, making the main character believe that her mother was killed.
While no one is shown actively drowning, a man passes out/dies (depending on interpretation) while trying to get a drink of water out of a canal and lands face first in it.