A serious discussion of why EW2 is bad (also long like hell)

[cheshire.panther]

My oh my there is so much wrong with this game.

I know this review will frustrate and offend some people, so let's start with a disclaimer: you may like this game.
It's perfectly fine. Sometimes people love bad games. I can even say that the fist Evil Within might be arguably bad game that I really liked.
I would not mind people highlighting the flaws in EW1, because, boy, did this game have a lot of them.

I don't see much of the same critique of the EW2.
So before you would start downvoting this review without even reading it, let me note that the goal of this review is not to criticize whether you should like EW2 or not, but to highlight all of the stuff that is wrong with it.

Disclaimer 2: there was always a certain trend of common opinion about games, a certain consensus of what is good or what is bad driven by a game journalism and media.
For example EW2 is considered as a good game, while, say, Dead Space 3 was considered as a bad game. Why do I think there is a trend and it is relevant?
Because, honestly, EW2 and DS3 have almost identical set of gameplay problems and narrative issues.

It is very difficult to go against this kind of trends. It's very difficult to say, that, let's say RE6 was good or RE7 was bad because pretty much everyone arround you saying exactly the opposite and fueling this self-sustaing loop of self-conviction and conformity.

I don't mind going against common consensus, because, frankly, I don't really care what other people think and Bethesda is not paying me.

===============
This review assume that you played the first game and liked it, or at least tolerated it.

Q: I did not play the first game and I don't care, second one is good.
A: It is incredibly tricky situation. The big problem about EW2 is that it is not a standalone game. It's not even a reboot like RE7 was. A lot of stuff in EW2 or gameplay elements will make you scratch your head if you did not play the first one. The whole cast of characters and their motivations would make no sense to you if you did not play original.

1. Introduction

Let me repeat that EW1 was not a perfect game. It was incredibly difficult and frustrating and suffered from a huge pacing issues. However if it could not be the only thing, than it was not DULL.
Secondary, the game was made by a Shinji Mikami, a guy who designed almost all clasic Resident Evils (RE1, RE2, RE4). While he is listed as a producer and supervisor of EW2, I think he was about as much of a supervisor as Hideo Kojima was a supervisor for Castlevania. I.e. not related to game at all.

This fact is important because EW1 was a game made in a genre that the creator of the game established in a first place. EW1 is not just a Survivor Horror, it's Mikami Survival Horror.
Imagine watching George Romero movie and discovering it's a documentary war drama. Or magine playing Silent Hill 3 and discovering it is a flight simulator. This is a kind of thinks you usually don't do and for a reason, continuity of the genre is really important.

So we have a flaved game with a lot of good ideas. All what Studio Tango should've done is to take it and to fix the problems and iterate on them. So basically do what RE2 did to RE1. Fix what is broken, keep what is working.

What a♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥it turned into.

2. Story and setting.

How did it happened? EW2 is directed by John Johanas, the guy who directed EW1 Kidman DLC. It was not perfect, not quite EW1, but an interesting and refreshing derivation from the original. I was not happy of him being director of the sequel, but I hoped that at least he can immitate the style of Mikami. I can imagine him sitting at night full of hatred to the original work. "I will make the thing that will mock and humilate your work, Shinji, that will destroy the very spirit of it, and, worst, people will *love* it".

What is a first word that comes to your mind when you think of EW1? *Nightmare*

The world of EW1 is essentially the collective uncontiosness of different people merged in a single reality that is slowly transforming into a horror world.
We don't know what is happening in the game. For the 75% of the story we don't even suspect that the world around us is not even /real/.

This is a nightmare that does not have rules and structure, that is formed and shaped in a dreamscape panorama by deep fears and desires of game characters. Why do we stuck in land of decaying villages and abandoned mansions? Because this was a kind of chilhood Kidman had. Why there are pieces of almost mundane clarity where everything looks normal and stable? Becasue this is the kind of reality Sebastian and Leslie would expect. Why everything is getting corrupted and destroyed? Because the main antoganist is an incredibly psychotic and unstable person.

The is nothing like this in EW2.

What is a first word you would use to discribe EW2? "A videogame". Or "a virtual reality".
I think the only biggest crime EW1 did is to introdeuce the concept of STEM. Maybe they though the story would be too confusing for people, so they did give some explanation that there is a machine that link minds together. EW2 is all about trying to explain how STEM works and establish it rules.

The nightmare turned into a huge hollow predictable open world, where monsters respawn in animated cuscenes and game points exactly where and when it happens.
Every item is glowing, no GLOWING so you wont miss it. Every active zone is highlighted or marked with icon. The game constantly breaks the immersion with cutscenes or intermissions, the first enemy in this game is not even _introduced_, it's just "Hey, look, there are zombies, go hit them with knife or something".

(I found it peculiar that the story, in a nutshell, is a tale of soulles burecrats lackign any imagination who turned the world of endless possibilities and incredible depths into a hollow formalistic husk that falls apart around the seams, which, is, if you think about it a bit, ironically what happened to the game itself.

I don't know if it is a clever shoutout of the game aware of this meta nature, or just a random act of divine serendipity.)

-

3. Design and writing

The problem with setting is hugely reinforced by a design.
EW1 was released in 2014. EW2 three years later. You would never guess by the game graphics, EW2 looks at least five years older than the original.

Every single location in EW1 was very detailed, unique and beautifully crafted. EW2, now facing the challenges of the open world, replaced it with a bunch of empty tunnels and boxes connected together.

Evil Within 1 monsters were unusual and interesting. The first zombie you met are glitchy and corrupted humans with missing limbs and barberd wire coils growing from their faces.
Ewil Within 2 mosters are zombies with glowing eyes. Just zombies.

The boss designs of EW2 are either lazy or just a copy from the other games. Laura in EW1 was a Grade A nightmare fuel. EW2 replaced here with a ghost lady that just sings and floats, because, ghosts are apparently shpooky. Camera lady is a weak copy of Warden.

Characters have no story or motivation or any depth around it.

Existing characters were turned into completely opposite versions of themself. Sebastian is now a whiny ♥♥♥♥♥. Kidman is not a naive Jill Valentine-style newcomer, but an edgy teen listenign to the nightcore. (Also she seems never washing her head or sleeping in the last 3 month).

New characters are so generic that I don't even remember their names and roles. They are either shown for 2 seconds in some cutscene as a plot device to completely disappear for the rest of the game, or just keep annoying you as an NPC in a safe zone. (But they don't have anything interesting to say or give you).

Their dialogs are also very badly written. Speaking of dialogs, I found the game to be very badly written. It's not even bad videogame level of writing, it's Twilight or anime fanfiction level of writing. The writing is full of cliches. Characters do not speek like a human beings. They don't have human personality or motivation. You, technically speacking, don't even have a single living human in this game. Instead you have Concerned Mother, Covardly Medic or Tough Lady (x2) who are trying to Heroically Sacrifice themself of Tragically Die.

The game breaks the rule "Show, don't tell" every single second. Why do we know that Myra or Sebastian worries about Lily? Because the game never shuts up about it. Every single dialog is either about Lili missing or how guilty everyone are or how they want to save her. Mind you, no character evern ACTS or display any EMOTION of a concern, they just SAY it. Hell, _Lily is not even really shown or say a single word_ in this game.

The villain of EW1 was replaced with two lesser vilians. You would think that the game about serial killer a villain would be interesting? Well, sucks to be you, because the serial killer villain would be killed in a first quarter of the game. I'm not even consider it as a spoiler, given how lazy half♥♥♥♥♥♥♥dissapinting pretence of a plot twist this is.
Instead we are given another character who is also very EVIL. Why is he evil? I guess you can figure out, it's because game NPC keep mention this all the time, just in case, because the actual character does not have any development or significant role in the game at all.

The end game scenes were so boring it was a literal phisical pain to listen to them. You could not even alt-tab from them because the game will pause, to the only remedy for me was to open steam overlay and browse reddit. I find it very sad, because I genuinly enjoyed the story and characters of the EW1.

4. General problems.

So here is a general motive in the game. Game does not know what and why it is doing.
You have a assault rifle in this game. Why? Because fisrt game had it. Who cares that the first game was about *twice* as big and second half contained a non-stop combat. In EW2 you don't even have the ammo for the assault rifle. You have upgrade path for it, but in my game I never really used it.

Why this game have a broken mirrors that act as a save points in the same room that has *ANOTHER* save point? There is literally no gameplay or thematic reason to do this, it's just the same stuff that was in the first game.

Why Myra's boss have no eyes? No one knows. Who is a ghost lady? No one knows, we just need a monster. Why Mobius scientists perform scientific and biological experimetns in a world that technically have no *physical laws*? Why did Mobius decided to build the world of "absolute freedom where are no wars or pain" if in EW2 lore it is just a virtual simulation with exactly the same people having the same psychology? How exactly you can program a phusical reality in someone's imagination?

The game doesn't even try to answer this or pretend it's trying.

I have not found this whole openworld gameplay so interesting or compelling. Mostly because it was never fully developed or utilized. You could achieve the same gameplay with a hand-crafted locations minus the abysmal level design.
The setting is much less of the EW1 and more of a Sileng Hill 1/2-style (to the point of some bosses like Flamethrower Guy being almost a carbon copy of SH2 bosses in terms of combat and design), but it does not have nearly a yota of the SH2 atmosphere and mystery with all this dead seriousness and Call of Duty'ish NPCs.
There are some MGS-style open world stealth sections, but if I want a modern combat stealth I would rather play metal gear than EW2.

The game is basically a mess of the half-finished and not really working ideas mixed together in hopes they would work. I wish they would be eithere cut or game would develop them more, but then, on the other hand, EW2 would be twice as longer, lord save us all from this.

[Lt.Col. Anon Xer0]

make a youtube video.

[Lt.Col. Anon Xer0]

Also, TEW was good, complicated, but good. There is no mystery or adventure in tying up the loose ends of sebastian's story. I'd assume that if Shinji got back in the saddle, he'd muddle(in a good way) a large amount of the plot to leave us with more questions than answers.

TEW2 finished almost very cleanly. upside and downsides to that. We get answers, we get closure, yet it ends up being underwhelming.

If anything, I'd assume that the devs were trying to tie up as many loose ends as they could in regards to Sebastian's story, expecting that they would not make enough sales to warrant TEW3.

[djcarey]

The First Evil Within was too serious.

[Spectre]

I finished it today, I really enjoyed the game. ( liked the first too )

[TEAM SALTY]

tl;dr. Reported to GabeN for rambling.

[Muffin]

First game was clunky to play and the story cryptic and convoluted. If it wasnt made by Mikami nobody would care. But because he did it must be good right? TEW1 was mediocre, TEW2 is better but still just okay. This series as a whole is just meh. Mikami should forget about making another re4 and try some new ideas like Vanquish.

[Justinyl]

I think TEW 2 has lesser budget than the first game. (For eg. voice of screaming o'neal running away from the lost at the start of the game sounds exactly like leslie (Maybe resued voice asset?) ). Same ID tech 5 engine.

Myra boss have eyes. ( Without veil is normal blue eyes, with veil, its red multiple beady eyes, giant form is red eyes)

Ghost lady name is anima, how she came to be wasn't explained and maybe in future DLC?

[cheshire.panther]

Nooblet, I'm talking about this one: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/GwFUXvWQkPQ/maxresdefault.jpg

I agree about the budget, I got the same vibe from the voice acting.

[Lu2]

game is good. tbh

[Dirty Hippy]

Originally posted by cheshire.panther:

Nooblet, I'm talking about this one: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/GwFUXvWQkPQ/maxresdefault.jpg

I agree about the budget, I got the same vibe from the voice acting.

Why is Myra a glue monster at all? Themes are a problem in both EWs. It seems like they think of something creepy and shoehorn it in without thinking about why it should be there or be that way.
One part that really got me was the gas leak in the marrow. It's a simulation and in an area specifically for people who know they're in a simulation. Why would there need to be gas at all? Also, why couldn't I use the crossbow in that section?

Still, I had fun. Mostly when I was sneaking through horror town to horror objectives and trying not to think about it all too much.

[Dirty Hippy]

Oh, but wandering into a house and getting locked in until I get appropriately scared or find some lore got kind of old. Especially when it comes to one specific door unlocking an I just ended up wandering from door to door trying to figure out witch one unlocked.

And while I like impossible space, I think they really overused it. Go into a hallway, door locks behind you. Door at the other end of the hallway is also locked. Try first door again. OH MY GOD! It's a completely different place! Again! Doorways seem to be pretty loosely connected to locations here in Horror Town(tm)

It started getting pretty predictable for me and a big part of horror is NOT knowing what's coming. Once you know, no matter how scary the thing is it's less scary than not knowing.

[Justinyl]

Originally posted by Dirty Hippy:

Originally posted by cheshire.panther:

Nooblet, I'm talking about this one: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/GwFUXvWQkPQ/maxresdefault.jpg

I agree about the budget, I got the same vibe from the voice acting.

Why is Myra a glue monster at all? Themes are a problem in both EWs. It seems like they think of something creepy and shoehorn it in without thinking about why it should be there or be that way.
One part that really got me was the gas leak in the marrow. It's a simulation and in an area specifically for people who know they're in a simulation. Why would there need to be gas at all? Also, why couldn't I use the crossbow in that section?

Still, I had fun. Mostly when I was sneaking through horror town to horror objectives and trying not to think about it all too much.

In the first game, there was flammable gas area, and we could use all weapons ( e.g. using weapons with gunpowerd results in explosion & gameover, while using frostbolt is safe).

[DarkJuda On Deck]

I very much agree to most you (OP) said.

TEW1 is a good and scary survival horror.
Laura and Keeper had such an atmosphere, setting, music and intensity that I couldn't not be terrified. It was a nightmare for me.

TEW2 is a cool action game with an horror theme, nothing more. Even if it has a better gameplay and nice ideas, it has nothing scary. His bosses have no relevance to the story (unlike TEW1 bosses) and will be easily forgotten. Oh I still had fun with it, but I don't think I will replay it a lot. I don't think I will learn something more by playing it twice.
Unlike the first that you HAD to replay in order to fully understand the story, now.that you know all of this is a dream and the locations, enemies and bosses mean something.

[Metalraiser]

Let's have a serious discussion about something you already made up my mind about?

Honestly you write tons of text, to proof your point, but you don't leave any room for any doubt. So why even start a discussion? You leave everyone with a heavily subjective speach, that you treat as a manifest.

You do not like the game for your own reasons and want a discussion. But in the same moment you try to make your opinion the only right one. That is hardly the case, nor a proper way to start a discussion.

The point of a game is to entertain and that, in my humble opinion, is given by TEW 2. Games, as well as movies or music do not have the main point of being factual, in all possible ways of reasoning consistent or perfect. If that was the case, nobody would have played any RPG, nobody would have watched a horror movie nor would anybody listen to Punk.

For whatever reason you felt urged to write a wall of text about something you do not appreciate riddles me more than what you are actually saying.

[cheshire.panther]

@The Metal, discussion is when you are providing arguments and listening to feedback.
That's what I did and I found feedback really interesting so far.

Your response? "Hurr durr you arh stupid".
Riiiight.