When Bethesda revealed The Evil Within 2 at the pre-E3 press conference captured, to say that I was surprised could be putting it mildly. Shinji Mikami's go back to the genre he helped pioneer in the Resident Evil series was long awaited by many around the world, but when the sport was actually in players' hands, reactions were extremely mixed. Some loved The Evil Within, some hated it, but the result was a compelling-yet-flawed game that appeared like it would be both beginning and the end of attempting to obtain a new franchise off the ground.
And yet, somehow, we've now gotten a sequel in The Evil Within 2.
We catch up to (now ex-detective) Sebastian Castellanos 3 years after the events of the very first game, and he's definitely the worse for wear. His experience at Beacon Mental Hospital left him a damaged man, and also, since then his daughter Lily died when their family home burned down, and the wife Myra subsequently left him. Things couldn't seem worse whenever a familiar face walks back into his life: Juli Kidman, his former partner who had been previously revealed to become working for the shadow organization Mobius. Kidman shocks Sebastian when she tells him that Lily isn't actually dead-instead, she's being used because the Core for an all-new STEM.
Or, at least, she was getting used for your. Something has happened to Lily's virtual self inside STEM, and Kidman needs assist in finding out what's going on and ensuring the litttle lady is safe. So, once more, Sebastian must step into a world created by linking the consciousness of multiple people together, this time the Mobius-crafted “small town” of Union. Unsurprisingly, things on the inside are far worse than anyone on the exterior might have predicted, and it's up to Sebastian to complete what he can to prevent the simulation from completely collapsing before he can find and rescue his daughter.
Right right from the start, The Evil Within 2 feels not the same as its predecessor. Those changes are small at first, whether they're in the overall atmosphere, the way the game feels, or the conversations taking place between characters, and I couldn't shake the sense that the team had looked to infuse a bit more Western gaming influence now.
And then, around an hour or so in, I hit Chapter 3-and every expectation I had needed to be re-evaluated. At that time, the sport turned into an open-world horror experience, a far cry in the focused and linear style of the initial. Actually, there have been moments that I swore I was playing some kind of later-era Silent Hill game due to how it felt to operate around a little American town, exploring and looking out and fighting demons, reminding me again and again of games like Silent Hill Downpour.
The Evil Within 2 has some really weird pacing, starting there with Chapter 3. Given my “I have to do everything” nature with horror games of that structure, I would not let myself move on until I'd finished all the side missions in that section of the game. (Plus, I had been having a lot of fun simply exploring the town to see what awaited me around every corner.) When I finally cleared Chapter 3, I had been playing it for five-and-a-half hours-following that, Chapter 4 took me around Fifteen minutes. From there, the game wildly swings backwards and forwards, sometimes putting you into situations that can be cleared in a short time span, while other moments dropping you back to open-world segments of Union.
I really thought I had been likely to hate The Evil Within 2 at first due to this, but there turned out to be something comforting about this uncertainty. While it still falls into the trappings a lot of other survival horror games also succumb to, the Tango team took some interesting chances here with being more fluid in how things should unfold or how expectations should be met-and it was nice the inability to always predict what was going to happen next. For instance, there have been a few side missions I undertook in which the conditions for what I had to do completely telegraphed that some big monster would appear and muck up the plans. In a lot of other games, that's exactly what can have happened-but here, there is just calm. Returning to Downpour for a moment, as flawed as that game was, I appreciated how it allowed situations to become presented to the player where simply experiencing what was happening could be enough. There didn't need to be a monster fight every time, or a jump scare always awaiting within the dark-it was okay to show that place in the world while not having to make it be overly dramatic. The Evil Within 2 lets itself have those self same kinds of moments, and I'll argue until the day that I die that horror games that let the player feel safe and comfortable more often wind up getting the stronger potential for real fear when the time is appropriate.
There's also-at least from the way i understood things within my singular playthrough-a surprising quantity of content that players can miss when they don't go looking for this. I probably could have easily shaved 10 hours from my 25 hours of playtime had I taken a more direct route through each chapter, there is however a number of pretty important events or items I know I'd haven't encountered had I done that. While a lot of those optional bits of the storyline are available in the open-world segments, additionally, there are examples to be found in the game's more linear chapters-and I give the dev team a lot of credit to be brave enough to make those things optional when it could have been simple to make them part of the required questlines. Even without those side stories, The Evil Within 2 seems like a far more focused and soundly structured game. I understand what the original was attempting to accomplish by having location and story jumps feel chaotic, but it didn't always operate in execution; here, you usually seem like you're continuing to move forward, and also you know how it's and why.
At the same time, The Evil Within 2 also has its own share of failings in this department-and although they're not as impactful as the positive aspects, additionally they can't be overlooked. Much like my earlier comments about how exactly it seemed as if I was playing a Silent Hill game rather than an Evil Within one, there have been numerous other moments where I swore I had been seeing or doing things that I'd encountered in other horror games-be it an enemy, or perhaps a location, or a situation, or a narrative beat. That can be a was a criticism I shared to some degree with The Evil Within, for everything I thought it got wrong, it still were built with a level of personality and uniqueness into it that's sadly been lost in lots of ways within the sequel.
What it's gained may be much more important, however: characters. I am talking about, the initial also had characters of course, but they weren't developed anywhere close to in addition to they're here. Within my review for The Evil Within, I wrote of their protagonist, “Even after all time I'd spent with him, I still knew little about Sebastian and thought about him even less.” That couldn't be more wrong this time around. I arrived on the scene of The Evil Within 2 genuinely liking Sebastian like a character and taking care of his plight, and the same could be said for pretty much the entire supporting cast. As the game's villains got the job done but weren't overly exciting, everyone that Sebastian encountered added something tangible to the story, leaving me to genuinely be worried about their fates. Giving that depth to the cast substantially raised the narrative of The Evil Within for me-not to say some of the other horror games I've played over the years.
No matter the genre, all of those elements usually succeed or fail depending on the gameplay, which was another area in which I felt conflicted on The Evil Within 2 at first. I've honestly be a little mixed around the proliferation of stealth in horror games, both in the god-awful trend of first-person titles where you have zero recourse for fighting back, or third-person adventures where you're given a variety of guns but only a limited quantity of ammo. To not name-drop Silent Hill yet again, but that series showed you could have horror games where the player felt at a disadvantage and firearms weren't always a problem solver, but without making players spend 1 / 2 of the sport crouched or hidden behind cover.
The Evil Within 2 definitely does the latter, however i found terms with that fact during the period of the sport. Initially, I had been totally frustrated with any kind of enemy encounters, since the monsters here tend to be bullet (and damage period) sponges, and I'm unsure the last time I have seen a character move slower than this version of Sebastian (those three years must have been hell on his body). While his default movement speed is given no upgrades through the span of the game-seriously Tango Gameworks, what the hell-other unlockable abilities for Sebastian make being less Leon S. Kennedy and more Solid Snake a viable, and actually fun, choice for dispatching enemies. When you really need to use your ammo supplies and engage in more direct combat, however, that frustration can relax in as you combat Sebastian's lumbering nature and also the game's sometimes questionable hit tracking. By The Evil Within's final hour, both the gunplay and the concentrate on stealth were elements that I'd become (mostly) comfortable with, and neither was negatively affecting my enjoyment from the game. Still, absolutely, I believe Sebastian should move faster, weapons should have better accuracy together with more potency, and also the reliance upon stealth should be toned down several notches.
At no more your day, I think The Evil Within 2 is a far better, a lot more focused game than its predecessor, from execution to storyline to gameplay to characters. In gaining those improvements, however, it's also lost a number of its charm. This is a legitimately good survival horror experience, and I don't disagree with most of the changes it's undergone hoping that it would be more welcoming and enjoyable for a wider audience of fans. Still, it's a lot like seeing your eccentric artsy best friend obtain a haircut, purchase a new wardrobe, and find a more “respectable” way of earning money. Ultimately, you know the change is better for them and for those around them, but you kind of miss the quirkiness they once brought to your life.
