The Evil Within 2 launch discussion

This Friday 13th will see the launch of The Evil Within 2 (known is Japan as Psycho Break 2). Review copies were supposedly sent out in the last couple of days and the review embargo should be up tomorrow, October 12th. Over the last day streamers have been able to show the first 6 chapters of the game too.

Personally I'm getting this game launch day and I'm excited to play it. I didn't play the original The Evil Within until earlier this year but I'm glad I did. It's a weird game but I enjoyed it and am interested to see what they do with a sequel. I haven't watched any of the streams (trying not to spoil myself too much) but what I have seen in trailers looks promising. Plus the cover art is awesome:

Anyone else looking forward to this? I'm going to go dimmed lights and headphones for it. I can't wait.

Yeah i'm excited too. I loved the first game despite it's technical quirks. I've been avoiding gameplay videos because I dont want to spoil anything.

I turned on a streamer I occasionally watch who got early access and saw something that excited me a lot. Turned it off immediately after that though. I'm not usually one for spoilers but this was something cool.

Patrick tweeted some positive sounding things about it. I bought the first game, on sale, but haven't played it yet. May tackle it as a Halloween game and then see how well this is received and purchase accordingly.

"I never asked for this" Did people really like the first one ? I was never into Horror games but i like the white vinyl / paint look there going for.

I am actually! Zero interest in the first game, it came out, heard the bad press, moved on. But the visuals of this game lookin like some fun weird stuff hooked me immediately this past E3, and the gameplay looking quite smooth and actiony sealed the deal.

Kept toying with the idea of checking out the first one, but the stuff I'd heard about the gameplay when it came out really stuck with me, and I'd really rather not. Besides, I like the idea of just jumping into the sequel without knowing any of the details, given the interesting visuals of 2 and the bizarre shit I'd gleamed from watching the ending to the first one. Like tuning in to a random late-night movie on TV half-way through and being captivated partially because you don't know what the fuck is happening but boy is it happening.

The first game was a bit underrated by the press I felt. It's a really good survival horror game and there aren't many of those anymore. I'm looking forward to EW2. I probably won't get it right at launch but later this year for sure.

Having watched some streaming, they at least managed to lift the quality of voice acting from garbage tier to a weak b-movie level, so that’s something!

It also showed off some pretty cool visuals, but I don’t know. I think I’ll save my money for the million other games coming out that I’m definitely buying, unless this happens to review exceptionally well.

@soulcake: The first game was heavily marred by technical issues on release, months later most of them got fixed and what was actually there was a really cool game with some very quirky design decisions. I was one who passed it up because it ran like shit and looked like shit on release but I came back to it with a better PC and after it had been patched numerous times and it was one of my favourite games I played that year.

I really enjoyed my time with the first game, even though I felt that parts of it were a complete mess. Whenever the game attempted to be an action game, to be specific. The more horror oriented aspects of it were real inspired.

I will likely pick this up later in the year as there are too many great games out as is. That said, if it does turn out to be a real improvement on the first, my patience miiight just falter. Good horror is so rare.

I always wanted to play this first one, but never got around to it.

I’ve been on media blackout for pretty much everything since Destiny 2 cause I’ve dumped all my free into that. How does this game look on a technical level? I remember enjoying the first one quite a bit but man the frame rate and horizontal black bars were infuriating. Reading these few comments gives me some hope the game will be good, just hoping they have got a better handle of the engine they are using.

@paulmako: you sure about the review embargo? It would be great to order this game in advance but Bethesda has their shit review policy now.

There's a launch trailer now:

@sackmanjones I'm not certain about the review embargo but what I've seen mentioned on a few other forums that it's tomorrow. Either way plenty of outlets have had copies for the last few days, which is different to the stated policy of not sending stuff out until release day.

People did like the first one! It's easy to think otherwise given the rough launch the first game had but it seems to have developed somewhat of a cult following since then.

I can't wait for it. I might make this another game to get digitally since I don't want to wait. I am not entirely sure whether to get it on the PS4 or the One though (I mean, I don't know if I'll get an Xbox One X, which I presume the game will play best on console wise). I feel I've already said my feelings on it by making other threads, but the first game when I played through it on release was kind of middling to me. Some of the scare factor was definitely great, but I felt the game didn't know what it was trying to be. When the E3 trailer came for this game, and it being a more personal story, I was intrigued. I replayed the first game on new game plus, and it was honestly nearly a revelatory experience in how I felt about the game.

The story was much clearer (and yet still vague), and the gameplay was a lot better to me. The DLC is also very much worth playing (perhaps required for a full understanding of what's going on, and how STEM works), which I was hesitant to play when those released, so didn't until I replayed the game. The Evil Within went from me feeling largely negative, overall conflicted about the game to think it's one of the best games of 2014. I also recommend reading the first comic, which isn't necessary, but it's decent and sheds light on how STEM works there too. I'd like to read the new one. For the sequel, I am just curious as to whether Ruvik has anything to do with it; it doesn't seem like it, but it would be awkward if he didn't I guess.

Maybe I'm totally wrong, but I feel like The Evil Within is one of those games that people could look back on (if they played it again) and realize it's actually much better than originally thought. It's also a rare game that I feel asks for you to play it on new game plus. It seems some people are streaming the first couple of hours... I'm not watching that, as much as I'd like to!

Watched about an hour or so of Patrick Klepek aka Scoops aka THE WOKE GAMER playing this and this looks different from the first game. But totally in an awesome way. And he likes it, and he wasn't a fan of the first one. I'm excited, the first one was pretty damn cool with some flaws in my book.

The first one is one of the most disappointing games ever. I'd like the perspective of someone who shares that opinion to play this and get back to us about it. I want this to be good.

I think I might pick this one up unless it turns out to be a trainwreck. If they can ditch the terrible trial-and-error sequences that made that first game a few steps away from great, I think it could turn out pretty well.

@paulmako: lmao "art school bullshit." this game looks so fucking bizarre. hate to have to choose between new colossus and this, but i might hold off on new colossus so i can comfortably get in a second playthrough of new order without feeling burned out.

Unlike most people everything that I've seen from the second game is somehow turning me off from it. The gameplay seems tighter but everything else looks weirdly diluted. The menus and levels and enemies.. I dunno, it all appears like it was made more clean and sterile than the first game which, through all its faults, had a very specific look and feel to it.

@frostyryan: Same. I was totally on board to play the newest game from Shinji Mikami, but it just never hit the mark it was aiming for. It was always trying to straddle the line between quiet dread, that makes players to spooked to move forward, and wacky fun, like something you'd find out of Resident Evil 4, and it never really came together.

I am holding out hope for the second if it embraces the latter, as we've seen from the trailers and promotional bits.

I remember picking up the first game and sorta being disappointed with it. I didn't totally disliked it but I wished it went a different direction than trying to be off-color RE4 in spots. Currently, I am trying to play through the DLC I missed out on since I heard it was much better received than the main game itself.

On the case of the second game, from the footage I have watched of it so far, it seems to be far better than it's previous entry that's for sure.

I find it odd that Bethesda made a blanket policy about not sending out early review copies of their games to the press. But I've been seeing some streamers marathoning their way through The Evil Within 2 since Monday. So did Bethesda actually send out early copies? Or did Bethesda only send out copies to be streamed, but not reviewed?

I want to read impressions and formal reviews of Evil Within 2, but it seems like the only option for now is to watch streamers and be spoiled.

@rikiguitarist: probably sent them out to be streamed with am embargo or agreement against certain negative feedback.

Is anyone actually watching some play the first thirty minutes to an hour of gameplay? Game Informer has a video of the first thirty minutes, and as much as I'd like to watch it to see what they have to say, I don't want the intro spoiled. Damn.

All the streams/reactions posted for the game have been eerily positive. I want it to be very good, but i'm finding it hard to believe.

I'm hearing that it's open world, hub-based. With that, my interest waned significantly. Seems no game is safe from the open world fad now.

@ezekiel: It's more akin to Silent Hill than something like Far Cry if you will.

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This is a question for anyone, so when you preorder a game on PSN, does the game automatically start downloading and installing when it's ready, or do you have to go in and do it manually? I never preorder so I don't know.

Ah! Never mind. So I just preordered it on PSN and I guess you download it and it's ready to play when the game itself is released. The game says it's ready to be played at about nine tonight! Awesome. I can't wait. If I'm not tired tonight (or if the game is exciting enough) I may be staying up all night to put time into it.

The ACG review says it's open. How open, I don't know. I thought TEW benefitted from being linear because it was a kind of nightmare in which you descended further and further. The world basically wanted to kill you, and you had no choice but to push on. Silent Hill 2 and 3 didn't interest me. I only played them for about an hour each.

I got the game early and feel the same way. I really liked how the first game was paced whereas this one so far has just been about roaming around town looking for loot. I hope it gets better but so far i'm pretty disappointed

@ezekiel: Never heard of ACG until now, which I guess is a YouTuber? Hmm, okay, but yeah I heard it's like Silent Hill than an actual open world, which is kind of what I expected. It doesn't look like an open world game, just not an entirely linear one like the first. To me, whether it's more open or not doesn't matter, what matters is how good that atmosphere is. I like what I saw of the town, hub area. The game is ready to go for me, I just have to wait four hours and thirty minutes.

@ntm: if you order after pre-load is available, you'll have to manually start it. Games preordered before that usually start the weekend before.

@solh0und: I now know that. Read the PlayStation site and also bought the game to realize this. It's going to be ready in an hour!

So far my experience has left me less than jazzed. The open ended structure the game is rolling with as of where I'm up to has resulted in the pacing suffering a great deal. I also think the addition of ammunition crafting outside of the crossbow and forcing the player to go back to a crafting bench every time they wish to do so adds to the pacing issues.

I really hope the whole game doesn't proceed with the structure of the first area. It seemed novel at first but quickly became apparent that the people at Tango Gameworks have little experience in this design structure. Issues such as lazy progress gating where you can stumble into a piece of ply wood blocking an area and you wonder whether you can rip it off or destroy it but the game won't let you only for you to do a quest later on that sends you back and then gives you the prompt to rip off the piece of ply. Other issues like going to certain areas that are seemingly empty only to go somewhere else and trigger a quest that populates that previous empty area with things to do forcing you to run all the way back to experience it.

Also the new voice actor for Sebastian is also uninspired and generally worse than his old voice actor.

This isn't to say I'm not enjoying it, but it's definitely not pulling me in like the first one did.

So far I'm enjoying this a lot and I'm just about ready to leave the first semi-open world type chapter area, which is very early on from the looks of it and I'm about 4 hours in, so this game may be long. The game feels better than the first and I enjoyed that a bunch, but so far this game is quite a different thing from the first game. Little areas and side stuff (mostly ammo and resources) throughout the open area and obviously tons of enemies. The art seems like a downgrade, but the graphics and atmosphere are there and pretty damn good. It feels like a game that more than just survival horror fans might enjoy too.

Idk, its a cool thing so far and I like it a lot.

Damn. I was already bothered about them changing his face. I wonder if it's because of the voice actor strike.

The far worse ( Or better version of this depending on factors) is How the character designs and voices changed from Condemned to Condemned 2.

With that said, it kinda sucks Jennifer Carpenter didn't reprise her role as Kidman but the new actress sounds alright.

I played the game for almost four hours last night. I am liking it, but the voice acting is the worst part. It's adequate for the most part, but it could have been a whole lot better. It's mainly because some of the direction of the cutscenes and its visualization, how impressive that can be, doesn't match the voice acting, which sounds typical of a Japanese horror game. The other thing I've noticed so far is that, as someone that likes playing games on easy on the first playthrough, this game feels too easy and geared toward those that just want to run and kill things (which, I guess it says is what it is). It's to an extent that a new game plus isn't necessary at all. I'm finding myself not having to be careful other than in the moments that have you transported to a change of location, where you have to sneak past the singing tall woman. So far, more impressive than the first game, but I'd like more challenge. The four hours have been mostly in the Union hub town area and not the linear sections. It does remind me of Silent Hill though, where places are blocked off with a crumbling road that you can't venture past. I'm excited to keep going soon. I got too tired to keep going last night. I like the direction of most of it.

Edit - Yeah, I'm in the crafting part of the menu, and man, on casual difficulty, if you like to just shoot your way through, this is the way to play it. There is no loss for ammo. I'm definitely playing the game on Nightmare next. I like it as a shooter fine, but the lack of tension just in the open town area is somewhat disappointing.

If they couldn't get the old actors back, I would have just preferred new characters. I've played the game a bit now. The new Sebastian doesn't even sound better.

I'm guessing it's more because of budget. Sebastian, Kidman, and the villain were done by actual Hollywood actors in the first game, and now they are all replaced with standard voice actors. TEW probably didn't make enough bank to bring everyone back.

The quick look made this game seem pretty good. Story apparently isnt great but that could be said for resident evil as well. Will look into picking this and the first game up some point in the future on sale.

I'm eleven and a half hours in, the game feels like it might end somewhere around ten hours and yet doesn't. I totally forgot some of the moments that were in the trailer. The game changes up too. I was kind of expecting the entire game to revolve around the nighttime town area, but it's not. I also don't mind the voice acting as much, and the not-so-tense but action-focused gameplay on casual difficulty is quite fun, though right now where I'm at it's actually more stealthy than normal. I like the story and where it's going. It's surprising to me.

I played a few more hours today and can say the game definitely improves significantly once you get out of the first town. The pacing improves and it starts to deal in things much more like the first game. It does retain the open area design but it breaks them up with linear sequences in between. Thankfully the later open areas aren't as large and are more densely packed with areas that feel unique and have purpose.

I'm enjoying it a lot more now, but I still don't like Sebastian's voice, and there isn't as much intrigue as in the first game but I'm now not slightly disappointed with the game anymore and am having a good time.

I just beat the game. It was great! The game I imagine can take anywhere between fifteen to twenty hours. I completed it nearly seventeen hours. The final seven or so hours is really great. I'm not sure how there'll be a sequel honestly, as it wrapped up things really well here. I mean, there's only one thing I can think of. The one thing I disliked is that it seemed like it was Japanese mocap with English voice over, and it doesn't really jive well. Some of the voice work at times isn't that good, but sometimes, like the voice actress that does Myra is great. It went in some directions that I didn't expect.

@oursin_360: Actually, I thought the story was pretty good. Much better than I expected honestly, and I was expecting to enjoy it.

I really enjoyed most of the first game, so I'm super interested to see the sequel.

@ntm: What difficultly did you play on and how did you find it? I’m debating starting on the hardest difficulty but can’t make my mind up.

I just finished this game on Casual, and would only recommend that difficulty if you have no interest in any challenge whatsoever. I was walking through the second half of the game like it was nothing. Anyways, I originally switched to casual about halfway through to see how much easier it would be, and didn't realize I wouldn't be able to switch back lol. Regardless I really enjoyed this and the story ended up being enjoyable in the end, but I wouldn't call it amazing. Overall if you like these kinds of games play this and do it on at least survival. I mean otherwise its a pure power fantasy where you don't have to use any other weapon besides the pistol lol