THE STRANGE CASE OF THE EVIL WITHIN 2
*This thread is carefully written to avoid ruining the experience for new players.*
"If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite." - William Blake
"Some keys open doors of perception. But this isn't one of them." - Tatiana, The Evil Within 2
"The doors of perception." An evocative phrase from Blake, and the title of Aldous Huxley's legendary documentation of his transcendental experiences using the drug Mescalin in the 1950s.
The Evil Within is in large part a series about ways of seeing, so the reference is appropriate. And indeed, how the player chooses to see the series may in large part structure their level of appreciation for it. At first glance, it can seem a jumble of horror cliches, a retro throwback, a melodrama, a disorienting mishmash. At first glance...
Let's look a little closer.
The Evil Within 2 is a Jungian journey
"Your perception will become clear only when you can look into your soul." - Carl Jung
The Evil WIthin series is explicit about the fact that the characters are inhabiting a "collective unconscious." This is a psychoanalytic idea that refers to collectively held imagination and archetypes that lurk beneath the surface of all human beings. The Evil Within series literalizes this idea by placing the player in a world that is a collective creation, generated and sustained by the minds of the character involved.
The Evil Within 1 is a Freudian nightmare, inhabiting the malformed mind of one painfully stuck in perverse infantile obsession. The player is tasked with escaping the disorienting horrorshow they've fallen into.
The Evil Within 2 is something quite different, it is a Jungian journey towards maturation and integration.
"We carry our past with us, the primitive and inferior man with his desires and emotions, and it is only with an enormous effort that we can detach ourselves from this burden. If it comes to a neurosis, we invariably have to deal with a considerably intensified shadow. And if such a person wants to be cured it is necessary to find a way in which his conscious personality and his shadow can live together." - Carl Jung
The world of the Evil Within is one inhabited by many for whom the Jungian "shadow" has completely taken hold. Characters are enslaved to their fears and obsessions, losing themselves in darkness. The lead character of the game, Sebastian Castellanos, is halfway there when the game begins. He is desperate with grief and self-hatred, blaming himself for his inability to protect his daughter from the fate that has befallen her. The game slowly forces Sebastian to come to terms with his own unresolved issues and fears.
Jung believed you had to integrate the shadow, in some sense to become the monster in order to control it. This idea is explicitly mirrored in The Evil Within 2 in a brilliant sequence that harks back to a memorable encounter from the first game in which Sebastian appeared as a hunted animal. In the Evil Within 2 he has to embrace the part of himself that is a predator in order to avoid ever being prey again. Very Jung.
Sebastian also encounters many mysterious feminine forces that seem to evoke (and in fact explicitly reference) the Jungian idea of the Anima. These forces are represented in both positive and negative representations, and Sebastian must ultimately vanquish the negative force while developing his relationship with the positive.
The negative force is represented by a ghostly creature that bedevils Sebastian and pulls him back into his traumatic experiences from the first game. This character is explicitely titled "Anima." The positive force is found in the character of Tatiana, who subtly helps (and judges) Sebastian and urges him towards improvement. Late in the game, Tatiana describes her own function in a way that perfectly matches Jung's idea of the positive Anima. You can see that scene here.
Ultimately, the game tells a deeply redemptive story in a surreal and idiosyncratic way. The game doesn't simply convey Sebastian's story, it attempts to convey his experiences at the level of his own personal perception. The concept allows for that perception to manifest itself with a literalism most stories wouldn't allow. It's a unique kind of character development, as much experienced as explicated.
Comparisons to The Last of Us are simple-minded and wrong. The Last of Us is a harsh, dystopic, Cormac McCarthy inspired take on the zombie genre. It strives to create realistically (and perhaps fatally) flawed characters, and a cruel world of realpolitik.
The Evil Within 2 is quite different. It is a mythic and romantically surreal story of sacrifice and redemption. It is not subtle, the acting is noirish and heightened. Sebastian is a rugged, masculine hero, and he really is a hero. He is not the trendy anti-hero of much of contemporary media. Sebastian is a good man, one striving to overcome his trauma, and always motivated by deep love for his family.
Survival + Horror
The Evil Within 2 is a survival horror game. It means both of these words, but it is not always both at the same time. I'll explain.
The game alternates between large, open hub locations, and highly focused linear sections. Much of the early part of the game is spent in several hub locations. You quickly learn to be careful with resources and that every bullet matters. Each encounter is tense because you are aware that resources are scarce, and you can quickly run through them all if you're not judicious in choosing your approach. These portions of the game tend to make the player feel more and more empowered as they come to master their surroundings and learn how to hunt down enemies and scrounge valuable materials.
The materials you scrounge, and the upgrades you make to your character, will then directly impact how you approach the more linear, horror-focused scenarios. You learn to save up your resources for major enemies, but also to avoid being so conservative that you are unable to pick up those rare bolts or bullets that you may find strewn about. Massaging that balance is a big part of the true pleasure of the game. The open world "survival" oriented portions of the game ready the player for the onslaught that the more linear horror sections will unleash.
Sebastian's character growth mirrors the growth that the player is undergoing as they master the game and gain confidence. Each upgrade feels truly meaningful, each weapon is genuinely useful. Resources are scarce enough that you will find yourself relying on an unexpected weapon in a pinch, and then falling in love with its unique utility. No wasted inventory space, every item earns its place.
The latter half of the game is much heavier on story, character, and emotion. This feels appropriate, because the player has been carefully taught the ropes and gradually readied themselves for the harrowing pace of the game's final chapters.
This Game Enhances its Predecessor
The Evil Within 2 neither ignores, nor relies on the first game. It expands and deepens it. The game manages to remain approachable to those who didn't play the first, while also frequently circling around the themes and events of the first game in a way that actually makes the first game deeper and more meaningful. The surprisingly intimate examination of the aftermath of Sebastian's experiences at Beacon lends the first game greater weight and coherence. Surprisingly, the game is also an excellent follow-up to the Kidman DLC for the first game. Her character arc from the DLC is very much taken into account, and is well paid off in The Evil Within 2.
No Dystopian Business Practices
No loot boxes, no pay to win, no digital deluxe edition, no overpriced pewter statue edition, no "games as a service" features, no season pass. Pre-order customers get like one special item that's completely unnecessary. That is as bad as it gets.
The game is full of crafting, but the economy of things to be found in the world is carefully thought out to keep you on your toes. You don't go online to spend real world money to upgrade your guns. Nope, everything in the game is simply designed to make sense within the context of the game environment. No "social" features, no psychological "gamification" designed to rob your pocketbook. It's a one way relationship between you and the experience.
It's a well made, full featured single-player game that provides a great ride and asks nothing more of the player than the initial buy in. In twenty years, when the PSNs and Xbox Lives are offline and irrelevant... this particular game from 2017 will still work and still make sense.
This Franchise is Ready for its Closeup
Beautiful art design, gorgeously directed cutscenes, a lush and surprisingly emotional score. This is a beautiful game in many respects. The Evil Within 1 had an incredible sense of gritty mood, but it was fairly criticized for a fair amount of jank and retro roughness. The Evil Within 2 is significantly more polished. It feels much more modern, much more "AAA," and yet it has lost none of its unique personality. I was continually surprised by the high quality of the visual and aural presentation, particularly in the latter half of the game. It all builds to the most explosively satisfying final chapters I've experienced from a game in a long time.
2017 is an exceptional year for gaming, with many strong titles. But there is nothing else quite like The Evil Within 2. It stands alone, resolutely old-fashioned in its devotion to survival horror ideals, and yet strikingly modern in much of its design and presentation.
It would be a tragedy if a game this well crafted was lost in the shuffle.
