Time to reply to a lot.
Thanks for the recap !
It's funny because I wasn't even a huge fan of the The Evil Within, but The Evil Within 2 is one of the few 60$ games I'm sure to get day one this year. It's just the type of game I will want to play at the moment. Happy to see Mikami back also.
Evil Within the first was a huge love it/hate it game, but I think even many who didn't like it could see the potential it could be and those that loved it could see areas it could improve in. So having a second swing at it could have fantastic results, and some things shown off already show the game is tackling a few flaws of the original already, so far what is most visibly telling is the animation work has been greatly improved, the camera looks better especially when aiming (and they're not utilizing black bars this time around), and if you pay attention to all of the footage so far you can see a few notable improvements to both gunplay and stealth, among some other things. Plus with them having some more open design for areas they can emphasize the player choice option the original game had in a very limited degree more to the forefront of choosing how to tackle each situation.
Yeah finally gave it another shot and aaaagh it isn't good.
The game has basically screwed me on chapter 6. You have to do a long arena fight, where I ended up using pretty much all my ammo. Then as you go to leave the arena it spawns the chainsaw dude.
I have nothing to fight him with and there is no way of getting more ammo.
So fuck you evil within.
That locked chainsaw fight is actually a hardship for most if been a bit more gun-trotting, the one suggestion I might give is do you have spare parts to construct stuff for the Agony Crossbow?
I hope they nail the atmosphere of the city this time,something like RE3 or the first areas of RE2.
I think it'll help the city this time around, Union, is based off of an American small town and is more a hub world in the style of Silent Hill's overworld or the like to openly explore, go to places, stumble on things, etc.
Dude looks like he's decked out for Operation Intrude N313.
Sebastian does come a bit more prepared this time, but if I'm reading footage right it doesn't seem like he gets a gun until a bit in (though he has a knife from the start it seems).
This is a huge leap from the original visually. Nice job.
There's been some big improvements visually for certain, some I'm replying to below are missing the grittiness of the original game but I have a few counterpoints to make.
I still don't see that dynamic lighting that made TEW stand out visually and was the thing that gave it an amazing atmosphere (among other things).
Sure, textures look improved, but somehow it seems "flat".
Or maybe I just have to wait to see more gameplay footage.
The lighting I think overall is an improvement but there is some areas it looks a bit flat, but other areas it really shines it. To reply to the next plethora of points, I'm going to post some lower-quality trailer screens of some other areas but I think part of it is the locations shown on Twitter in question as you'll see shortly below:
I would say the game looks too 'clean' imo.
The atmosphere in the original is more dense, and it has richer art direction.
But we have't seen much so far, so
the only single player game i'm looking forward to this year
but it's kinda colorful, the first game was dark and the atmosphere was perfect even though the graphic was bad
still, gonna be amazing for sure
Gonna be GOTY.
But yeah, the atmosphere/art direction does appear to have shifted away from the extremely gritty/grungy atmosphere of the first game to something more cleaner emphasizing the contrast between the surreal and the every day. We'll see how it works out for the full game (and the gameplay trailer seemed to show some areas that are closer to the first game, sometimes quite literally) but I think I prefer the extremely gothic and moody look of the first game.
It does look a little soft. Is it chromatic aberration? I usually don't recognize it by myself but I feel like that's what I'm seeing here.
It looks like there might be some CA only on the camera enemy in the second pic, which would be kinda neat given CA is a camera lens thing.
But other than that, I don't see it
So going to reply to all of the above at once, so get ready.
Firstly I think most of these screens are coming from two main bits that look cleanrer, the Mobius facility and an artist gallery. Now these aren't 'official' screens, they're screengrabs off YouTube from the official trailers gameplay snippets, but the clean look doesn't go into all of the game as we've seen. Here's some examples:
It does overall look smoother, but there's some areas briefly seen it doesn't look cleaner in my opinion and offers messier stuff and fiercer lighting. We need to see more to make the full comparision but I thought I might mention this.
Some stand-alone replies though:
The game is overall more colorful but a lot of the areas we've seen so far are around the domain of Stefano, one of two psychos we know are in the game, who is a twisted artist obsessed with death. However he seems like a neat and tidy person which I think reflects some in how he does things.
And as mentioned, the game doesn't use chromatic aberration EXCEPT for the camera enemies. There's these 'cubes' the camera makes that freezes time it seems both Stefano and Obscura (the camera enemy) can do, and in those cubes there's heavy chromatic aberration, you can see an example of what I mean in this screen:
There's a lot in the cube, but none outside of it.
I think the lighting is part of it, but in return there's also dropped shadows that work much better than the original game. It'll be interesting to see how this goes as we see more than quick snippets of the same few areas but different parts, though.
Waiting for confirmation that the movement, aiming and camerawork feel better than the first game. Until then, no interest.
For what it's worth you can clearly see the camera improvements when aiming in the game in the footage released so far.
I am getting the feeling that this could be the Silent Hill 2 of this franchise.
Couldn't be more pleased about that.
I have a feeling it has the potential to come out fantastic, the bigger story focus I think will benefit the sequel but also working off the original game basis and making improvements with a team that's a little more experienced.
The Evil Within 2 |OT| Look at this photograph, every time i do it makes me spook
The Evil Within 2 |OT| Shootin' some pictures
The Evil Within 2 |OT| Unreal Horror
The Evil Within 2 |OT| Paparazzi Break
The Evil Within 2 |OT| Photo Mode from Hell
The Evil Within 2 |OT| Psycho Break SNAP
There will be a lot of potential titles, though the camera theme only is for one of the villains of the game but if it stands out then these could be good.
Agreed, so far the atmosphere is really not as good as the first game. The art direction doesn't seem as inspired as well.
Having a western guy as director for a Japanese horror game sequel is definitely not very good in my opinion. I really want to know why Mikami isn't directing.
The guy who's directing in my opinion made some of the scariest stuff in the original Evil Within, for the record he was lead designer on Chapter 9 in the original game and did a number of other interesting bits in the budgeted but still intriguing DLC stuff. With the full team, budget, and focus I think it could churn out something great. I also think it's hard to judge the atmosphere right now because we haven't seen any straight uncut gameplay, only snippets.
this is one of my most anticipated games coming out. so stoked. give me that agony bow
That Agony Bolt is in the game, excited to see how they may improve it as well.
One of my favourite things about this and Wolfenstein: the new colossus is that the textures are finally at competent levels.
I think a big part of this is both of those were on idTech 5, while New Colossus is on idTech 6 and I'm pretty sure Evil Within 2 is as well.
Western horror was never as terrifying as Japanese horror in my opinion.
I am Asian so I could be biased.
There's however
one Japanese style monster I really liked in The Evil Within 2 gameplay trailer.
The new director seems to be a Japan horror lover, so that's a bit reassuring.
There's actually an interesting response to this question the game's director gave in an E3 interview about West and East horror, he mentions how the Japanese horror will shine through because the majority of the team are Japanese obviously, but the original game had a big European influence while this sequel has an American Small Town as one of its central settings. However, he teased on West vs East Horror there might be some drastically different regions we see in TEW2 outside of an American Small Town, but they have chosen not to show anything related to what he's teasing yet.
Mikami is busy with president stuff and he always had a stance on letting people with potential grow,just like he did with Kamiya.
He is not going to give the responsibility of Tango's only known franchise to incapable hands if that was the case and yet,Mikami is not completely out of the picture.
I think John Johanas proved himself with the first game that he is capable of taking the lead and Mikami knows that too.
Apparently Mikami is actually still pretty involved with the sequel, especially in its design. We won't know until we know, but when asked it was mentioned he's working on this project mostly on the design, gunplay, and pacing aspects. Mikami still likes to be hands-on with the projects even if letting other talent shint.
Those last two gifs are very Twin Peaks design wise.
It crossed my mind too, there's a sort of theater motif to the area but the floor and red curtain I feel have to be intentional.
