Episode 137 - Horror Hairdresser - The Evil Within 2

I’m going to stab the podcast out of you! Welcome back to spooky
Halloween! Today, we’re going to be talking about the Evil Within
2, a survival horror title from Tango Gameworks. The Evil Within 2
focuses more on larger areas than the game it’s a sequel to, with a
pseudo-open world design, but gives the player an expanded action
set to handle this larger space. There is a focus on stealth, and
the bigger areas means that running away to hide somewhere else is
more feasible than it would be in a more corridor-focused game.
That being said, this isn’t really an open world game, with few
options for returning to previous areas or completing quests out of
sequence, which ends up working well with the survival horror
mechanics. A truly huge area risks overwhelming the player and
leaving them without any way to defend themselves once their meager
supply of ammunition runs out, or alternatively, providing far too
many resources for the game to maintain its bite. Sticking with the
Big Rooms Game approach mitigates these issues, keeping it grounded
in the genre, though the design can still be somewhat problematic
for players trying to fully complete the game. We’re going to be
talking about resource management (on the player side as well as
from a design perspective) in a game that features semi regular
boss fights, how the sci-fi elements of the plot can get in the way
of the splatter horror theme of the overall aesthetic, and we point
out several places in the game that could have just been doors.
Thank you for joining us for the first full episode of Halloween
this year! We actually played the original Evil Within back before
we were even doing the podcast, and a bounced off of it pretty
quickly, so playing the sequel after several years mostly comes
down to word of mouth about it being more accessible and maybe even
a little better in some aspects. We found this to be pretty true,
but what did you think? Were we just being baby gamers, unable to
handle the masterpiece of the first game? Did you enjoy the more
open design of the sequel? Let us know in the comments, or over on
our Discord! Next time, we’re going to be dipping back pretty far
to take on the shooter/point and click adventure game “Realms of
the Haunting” so we hope you’ll enjoy whatever it is that ends up
being.