[The Evil Within] Bethesda's new game from RE creator Shinji Mikami (AKA Project Zwei)

initiatefailure

I found out this had a sequel when i saw it in the store a couple of days ago.

Man, I've gotten really bad at keeping track of games.

metaghost

initiatefailure wrote: »

I found out this had a sequel when i saw it in the store a couple of days ago.

Man, I've gotten really bad at keeping track of games.

And it's excellent!

I feel kinda bad for Bethesda (as bad as one can feel for a publisher), as this and Prey are both great games that are seemingly overshadowed by the much bigger titles released in the same time frame, not to mentioned being attached to brands that weren't very well received previously.

initiatefailure

metaghost wrote: »

initiatefailure wrote: »

I found out this had a sequel when i saw it in the store a couple of days ago.

Man, I've gotten really bad at keeping track of games.

And it's excellent!

I feel kinda bad for Bethesda (as bad as one can feel for a publisher), as this and Prey are both great games that are seemingly overshadowed by the much bigger titles released in the same time frame, not to mentioned being attached to brands that weren't very well received previously.

so maybe it's not just me that wasn't aware?

It's definitely on my list now, especially since thread comments seem to be that it's better than the first, which I was already in to

Heir

Just picked this up. I never played the first. Any idea if I need to play the first to understand what's going on?

metaghost

Heir wrote: »

Just picked this up. I never played the first. Any idea if I need to play the first to understand what's going on?

No. Just know some crazy, largely incomprehensible shit happened in a Matrix-like virtual environment and now it's happening again.

Genji-Gloves

So gave in and nabbed the game at full retail. Chapter 3 must have taken me so many hours just killing everything on the map and looting as much as possible.

This has been a delightful surprise so far.

Lucascraft

Does stuff stay dead? I haven't given up on this game yet, but I have set it aside for the time being in favor of Assassin's Creed and Mordor.

I fully plan to come back tho, and that's good info right there.

SyphonBlue

Lucascraft wrote: »

Does stuff stay dead? I haven't given up on this game yet, but I have set it aside for the time being in favor of Assassin's Creed and Mordor.

I fully plan to come back tho, and that's good info right there.

Yes, stuff stays dead. But between chapters, stuff happens that may bring them back/form new monsters.

Skull2185

Yeah, you don't have to burn bodies anymore.

SyphonBlue

Boy my interest in this game waned considerably after

you kill Stefano. Father Theodore is not at all a good replacement for him (what with him not being in it at all after his introduction cutscene), and the fire zombies are not scary in the least. They are very annoying to fight, however. So, there's that.

And the immortal ghost lady is gone now, too.

I was very into this game for the first half, but this second half is boring and not very good at all. It's completely lost its horror, and therefore appeal. But I'm on the next to last chapter, so I may as well finish.

Ninja Snarl P

SyphonBlue wrote: »

Boy my interest in this game waned considerably after

you kill Stefano. Father Theodore is not at all a good replacement for him (what with him not being in it at all after his introduction cutscene), and the fire zombies are not scary in the least. They are very annoying to fight, however. So, there's that.

And the immortal ghost lady is gone now, too.

I was very into this game for the first half, but this second half is boring and not very good at all. It's completely lost its horror, and therefore appeal. But I'm on the next to last chapter, so I may as well finish.

I completely agree.

The ghost lady was terrible overall, and then suddenly she's just... gone. I have no idea why she was even in the game, other than to be aggravating.

Once the game abandons the open-world-ish parts and replaces them with a pile of linear, crappy, boring corridor crawls, I don't there's anything of quality left in the game design. It's like somebody reached back to the late 90s to dredge up some truly ancient and terribly outdated map design.

I feel like they ran out of game about halfway through, and everything following that is just recycled or they were winging it.

Dark Raven X

Skull2185 wrote: »

Yeah, you don't have to burn bodies anymore.

I never saw any bodies come back in the first one, to be honest! That mechanic was more of a tricky splash damage type thing than a Crimson Head scenario

Genji-Gloves

Up to chapter 13 I'm still enjoying the game but interested to see where it's all going to end up.

Been drinking so much coffee....I've got 70 + herbs in my back pocket.

Absalon

The health upgrades that increase your minimum or hastens your return to the minimum after falling below it are utterly useless compared to the ones that boost your health regain from syringes, but herbs and syringes are still so plentiful in this game that damage mitigation/avoidance and combat improvement are even higher priorities.

Genji-Gloves

Well it's done, 24 ish hours. I'm overall actually quite happy with the game.

While the story has it's ups and downs the ending fits well. There was some nice moments and I enjoyed all the boss fights especially the final boss.

Thing is after playing it, I kinda want to jump straight back into New-Game + which is very rare for me these days.

Ninja Snarl P

No way could I have trudged through this game for 24 hours. I feel like I took a really long time going through the portions of the game that were worth anything, clocked in at about 18 hours, and still felt like the game was a good 6 hours longer than it actually had content for. The game should've either stopped before it turned into an utterly mediocre corridor crawl broken up by fight rooms, or else they should've actually matched the content of the first half with the content of the second half.

lionheart_m

I didn't enjoy the second half as much as the first but overall it was pretty good. Horror games are so rare these days that maybe I'm a bit more forgiving.

Genji-Gloves

Ninja Snarl P wrote: »

No way could I have trudged through this game for 24 hours. I feel like I took a really long time going through the portions of the game that were worth anything, clocked in at about 18 hours, and still felt like the game was a good 6 hours longer than it actually had content for. The game should've either stopped before it turned into an utterly mediocre corridor crawl broken up by fight rooms, or else they should've actually matched the content of the first half with the content of the second half.

Yeah I can see what your saying, the second half was definitely no where near as good as the first but I wouldn't have said I trudged through it. The open world areas I spent a huge amount of time exploring and stealth killing nearly every enemy.

Enjoyed the game a lot more than thought was possible and think I totally be open to another game if they lean into more of the open world environment as it made it a refreshing change.

lionheart_m

Man I miss the Industry Thread but I don't know if I should feel happy/sad that apparently TEW2 sold more than Wolf 2. Especially since it seemed that TEW2 had basically no marketing. Guys, I just want TEW3.

Blain

According to steamdb, The Evil Within 2 sold a little over half as much as Wolf 2. TEW2 did beat Wolf 2 in the October NPDs, but Wolf 2 came out on the 26th and TEW2 came out on the 12th, and TEW2 was only one place higher on the list.

My numerical nitpicking aside, I enjoyed TEW and TEW2. I could imagine a third game about taking the fight to Mobius that I'd be interested in seeing.

Dac

Finally sat down to play through this over the last few days.

I can see what people say about the second half taking a more linear tack, but I liked it about the same. Open-world survival horror is a weird concept in general - you can't balance the game around completionists that will clear out the whole map, but on the flip side that means that those that do will be swimming in resources. By the end of the game I was carting around hundreds of gunpowder and it turned from survival horror into a shooting gallery.

Guess it's time to see how I do on Nightmare... I get the feeling I will not be ending the game with 100+ powder again.

I'm curious, now, mechanically, about the differences in the modes. Grabbing the melee damage upgrades was dubious after the first area, it felt like - even though I did enjoy being able to melee kill sleepers in that area for free resources. If the harder difficulty jacks up hitpoint values, though, may be on the 'avoid' list... I'm not sure how useful Kick is, as well. It definitely does damage, but I don't know how much, or whether I should just be using my time to go for headshots.

Reynolds

I have heard that Nightmare completely remixes encounters, adding in more/harder enemies in almost every situation, on top of making enemies tougher and resources more scarce.

Classic mode sounds totally ridiculous.

Dac

So yeah, just as an example of Nightmare. You know the first enemy you encounter? The mother with her head blown half off? As soon as you kill her, there's an enemy pounding on the front door. Advised to run up to the second floor to get a few more bullets because fuck enemies hit hard.

This is gonna be the worst.

OnTheLastCastle

Nightmare is fine. You can almost always stealth kill or run away if you fail. It is fine.

Casually Hardcore

Okay, so I'm telling to finish the first game because I'm 10 hours in and I can kind of see the end. The level design is all over the place. I feel like an improve actor with an audience shouting scenarios at me (you're in a mansion! Now you're in a barn! Now you're in a torture house!)

Also, this game has a freaking instant death fetish that makes progressing tedious. Every few minutes there's an instant death trap and I have to redo it all.

Please tell me I'm almost done. And which dlc should I play before EW2?

Reynolds

I think there's two story DLC where you play as Kidman. The other is a weird challenge mode thing that is unrelated to the story.

mxmarks

Im halfway through the 2nd DLC in Evil Within 1 and holy shit I like this DLC better than the entire first game.

The 2nd part has been wild and is a ton of fun. The story actually makes some (SOME) sense now!

Dac

Completed EW2 on Nightmare mode.

Overall, a much slower experience, with more of a focus on stealth kills. As a consequence I had something like 550 gunpowder going into the second, boss-heavy half of the game. The Cabin and Walk Through Fire sequences were about as bad as I was expecting them to be, and thank christ I picked up one of the headshot upgrades for the pistol for the latter, or that would have been awful.

I eventually had so much gel that I ended up picking up the Matrix Time ability in combat for the final two bosses, and holy shit does that ability ever trivialize combat.

Brass knuckoos unlocked.

I'm side-eyeing Classic, but the more I hear about it, the less it appeals. Nightmare+ difficulty with no character/gun upgrades and limited saves sound like bollocks to me.

Casually Hardcore

I finished the first game the other day. What a mess. What a big mess of a game. Somewhere between zombies shooting at be with a machine gun or seeing that I died 76 times and every single one of them was due to instant deaths.....I just wanted the game to be over

mxmarks

I finished the DLC for the first game and absolutely loved it. The stuff in it was 2000 times more interesting than the stuff in the main game, and knowing the basics of the plot for Evil Within 2 I'm now excited to start it to see how it all comes together.

Mai-Kero

I stopped a few hours into the first game, but I'm at chapter seven or so in the second and loving it except for two things:

1) After playing all recent shooters on PC I'm really, really bad at aiming with a controller.
2)it is infuriating that you can't sneak kill or stomp enemies that are lying down before they 'wake up.' like man, I see you, I know you're going to spring into action as soon as I pick up this ammo.

Reynolds

Try harpooning them in the head.

Dac

Bit the bullet, am doing a Classic playthrough. Saved at Stefano, have four saves left.

Blew one at the beginning. I really wish, at the very least, the game let you skip the intro/tutorial section. There's like ~20 minutes of unskippable crap before you get to the Hungry Boy cabin. You should have the option to just start there...

From guides I've seen, looks like remaining saves will be:

Just before the Cabin Fight
Just before the Fire Walk
Just before the Retro Fight
And one just before the final boss.

Cabin Fight to Fire Walk is going to be a fucking bitch and a half. If only I hadn't used that save at the beginning...

Unknown

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mxmarks

Im in Chapter 7ish of Evil Within 2 and it's such a massive improvement.

It's actually kind of my perfect Resident Evil...?

RE5 is my favorite Resident Evil and I'm a huge baby so I hate being scared, and EW2 is just the perfect blend of terrifying but also enough running and gunning and action that I'm incredibly enjoying this.

mxmarks

Just finished Evil Within 2 and it's probably my most surprising game of the year, and now one of my favorite franchises.

It's so much better than the first one it's insane. The story was batshit in all the right ways. Sebastian is one of my favorite protagonists now. His story arc was really fantastic.

It's what I always wanted from a Resident Evil. I'm a huge baby - so it was scary enough at the beginning I was terrified and felt powerless. By the end I just wanted my family and was going through hell to get them.

The part towards the end

where you revisit his fears from Beacon, and he literally says FUCK THIS and chainsaws the dude

made the entire 1st game worth playing through.

I really, really hope we get some DLC or a 3rd game. It's fantastic.

shoeboxjeddy

Yeah I watched a playthrough of 2 and it was shockingly good to the point where I had to buy it as well. Watching a 1 playthrough... does not create the same feeling

Skull2185

Looks like The Evil Within 2 will be getting a free update sometime soon that adds a first person mode to the game. That's neat.

Skull2185

Tried out the first person mode. It's kinda neat, but I feel like it makes combat harder somehow. Though, it could be because I started a new game to try it out and didn't have any upgrades. Dunno if it's a PS4 Pro/X1X (I assume PC could always do this) only option, but the update also allows you to uncap the framerate so it's not locked at 30 anymore.