During E3 of 2016, while watching Bethesda's press conference--I was beginning to think they wouldn't even show the game. Maybe it wasn't even in production or whatever. I was watching it with my friends and I was highly anticipating, above all else, a reveal trailer or announcement of some sort. And holy shit, near the end of the conference, the trailer dropped.
As soon as I saw a long dark corridor with a shadowy, sinister woman standing on one end, and a man slowly backing up in a haze of what seemed like mist, I had known. Holy fucking tits, it was real! It was a CG trailer and it was a work of stunning and eldritch art. I love the tone that they set and the imagery, as well as the psychedelic aspect of it. Their rendition of "Ordinary World" by Duran Duran was also pretty damn great. It was all fantastic and I was super-hyped. But let me tell you the greatest part of it all: they actually showed gameplay. This shouldn't come as a surprise though; the game has been in development since March of 2015.
Tense and nerve-wracking music began to play and there it was: the awesome gameplay at the end of the trailer, followed by a release date: October 13, 2017. It couldn't be any better.
From what I've seen according to Bethesda's recent trailers: the game looks polished, refined, and even better than the first. The controls don't seem clunky or tight, they seem a bit more fluid and smooth this time around. The graphics--good Lord--have been enhanced heavily and they appeared to have ditched the whole "grainy" effect the first game had. Also, the frame-rate was exceptionally improved, which was sort of problem the first one had.
Let me say, this is how you do a sequel. Undoubtedly and irrefutably, this is how you make a damn sequel. You take the aspects that made the first game great and you expand upon and flesh out the mechanics, gameplay, story, and art design.
Judging by the game's monsters and enemies, it looks insanely good. The atmosphere is dreadful and grim. There's a supernatural tone of ominous insidiousness that is imbued into the game, that the first game did so well. The movements are better. The enemy designs are better, and the mechanics have been improved upon. An example would be: Sebastian now has a skill-tree type of upgrade system that has unique abilities with each skill. Another cool change is: the game seems to be a tad more open-world. Not to the sprawling degree of Skyrim, but enough for players to explore and deviate from the main path to add more diversity to the game. As long as it doesn't end up being too "open-ended" I'm totally fine with this. Along with that, we can now craft ammo for guns we want to use more than others, and we can make healing syringes from herbs (Insert Resident Evil references here). They basically took the trap part mechanic and fleshed it out. And I believe there are mini side-quests in the game as well.
The Evil Within 2's story is set back in the mind-bending world of Stem, but this time, Sebastian dives back into the horror to find and save his daughter, Lily. She is the core of the Stem system that Mobius has created, and the world they are in is called Union. The story is more personal this time around. It allows for better character development and it lets the player connect with Sebastian and relate to him. I like this change. And if done well, we might get awesome development for Sebastian, which would definitely round out his character.
All in all, I absolutely love what I've seen. The game looks scary as hell, and fun to play. I hope they keep the balance between action and horror to retain that true survival horror aspect. Other than that, Tango Gameworks seems to be on the right tracks. By the way, this game is being directed by John Johanas (who directed the Kidman dlcs for the first game), and Shinji Mikami is the executive producer.
Can't wait for this to drop on Friday the 13th this year!
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