The Evil Within 2 Video Game Review

2014’s horror game The Evil Within was a surprising hit, using all the best tricks we’ve come to associate with Japanese horror. The mind-exploring crime story led by detective Sebastian Castellanos was filled with creepy and disturbing imagery, and its themes were no less disturbing.

This year we’re getting a sequel to that little gem. Let’s find out what we know about The Evil Within 2 so far.

The premise…

The Evil Within 2 takes place three years after the events of the original game have concluded. During that time filing an inscrutable and bizarre report ended up getting Sebastian fired. Losing that job caused him to spiral into alcoholism, which means one of two things: he’s going to appear in a movie about a devil hiding in an office building elevator, or something will drag him out of this self-destructive habit.

Not to linger too long on suspense, it’s the latter. It turns out that Castellanos’ daughter, thought dead in a fire years before even the first game’s storyline has begun, is alive. And she apparently needs saving, because the shadowy organisation MOBIUS is up to shenanigans again.

Without spoiling too much, let’s just say that Sebastian is going to reconnect with the STEM device (enabling a shared-mind experience to participants, more or less), travel to a village-construct known as Union, and try to stay alive and sane long enough to save his daughter from whatever it is she is suffering from.

Revealing much more would be probably considered game-ruining spoilers, and there isn’t much more known in the first place, because most reports have had access only to the second chapter in an obviously longer game.

..the gameplay…

In terms of gameplay The Evil Within II isn’t going to differ much from the first game, but some things are known and worth writing about.

To have a nice start, TEW2 is going to have some modest crafting mechanics, allowing you to create healing syringes, more ammo, and upgrades for weapons you’ll acquire. It probably won’t be as robust and as outlandish as in Dead Island or Dead Rising, but we will get some measure of agency over our gear nonetheless. Depending on the scarcity of gear overall, crafting may end up crucial, helpful, or superfluous. We’ll see.

As far as the world structure is concerned, it’s said it’s going to be more open-world in nature, with plenty of occasions to take an occasional detour. Sebastian’s going to have a voice communicator, see, overtly to confer with Juli Kidman, who’s going to be his primary contact in all this mess. A secondary function, however, will allow Castellanos to track disturbances around him, like ghostly appearances and other such weird occurences. They will introduce a bit more of a risk-reward system to the game, with the annotation that the “reward” might come in the form of resources as soon as in the form of a new creepy sequence or a startling world-building revelation. It’s anybody’s guess, really. One way or another, The Evil Within 2 won’t make you follow corridors on a regular basis.

It would be impractical too, since there’s also going to be a hub location, a safe haven of sorts, where you’ll have access to workbench, a chance to get a damn fine cup of coffee, which will restore some of your health, and a general place to breathe a tad easier.

…and the creepy

Much like the previous game, The Evil Within 2 won’t hold back in terms of creeping the players out, especially since a number of its developers have a proudly announced propensity for scaring their audience. Reports speak of such delightful images, as a room full of bleeding bodies dangling from the roofs in a room, which a buzz-saw-handed monstrosity of many heads enters like it’s been taking lessons from Kool-Aid Man. And that’s probably the least creepy of monsters. We will be very wise to try and prepare for some outstandingly uncanny creations. Citing Silent Hill as a visual reference likely wouldn’t be out of place.

Uncomfortable conclusions

All things considered, the game is shaping up as a straightforward improvement on things that made people enjoy the first one so much. Between digging into Sebastian’s past, going once again into the STEM, and greater freedom allowed by the game’s mechanics, The Evil Within 2 appears to be well-worth checking out when it launches on October 13 this year. This also means there’s less time to make a pre-order, if you want one.
Will we meet in a shared mindscape?