The Evil Within 2
Intense overall intensityWhat's in it
The player fights mutated human enemies with guns and melee, producing heavy blood spray, gunshot wounds and bodies that remain in the environment.
The story centres on the presumed death of the protagonist's child, grief, alcoholism and a serial killer, with abduction and murder depicted on screen.
The player's weapons and explosives dismember and destroy enemy bodies, and grotesquely mutilated corpses and body-horror creatures are shown as set dressing throughout.
The game's scripted dialogue includes strong profanity such as 'fuck'.
Sebastian is written as an alcoholic and is shown drinking in a bar as the story opens; alcohol is present in the world.
This is a survival-horror game built around continuous threat, stalking enemies, jump scares and a nightmare dread that runs throughout.
Antagonists inflict cruelty on captives, including people shown being burned alive; the player does not perform torture.
A serial killer murders victims within the story; the player does not carry out these crimes.
Who can reach your kid
What it is
The Evil Within 2 is a single-player survival-horror game in which detective Sebastian Castellanos enters a collapsing virtual world called Union to find his daughter. Play is a mix of stealth, gunfights and resource scavenging against mutated human enemies, and it is heavy on graphic violence: bloody combat, dismemberment from the player's weapons, and mutilated corpses and body-horror creatures used as environmental horror. The tone is bleak throughout, dealing with the loss of a child, alcoholism and a serial killer who murders people to photograph the moment of death, with torture and cruelty carried out by the antagonists shown on screen. Strong profanity appears in the dialogue, and alcohol features in the story. There are no microtransactions, and the game is played entirely offline with no chat or multiplayer.
How it's framed
The game frames its horror and violence as the ordeal of a grieving father fighting to rescue his daughter, positioning the player as a survivor resisting monsters and human killers rather than a perpetrator of cruelty; the antagonists' murders and torture are presented as atrocities to be stopped, and the bleak subject matter of loss and trauma drives the narrative rather than being incidental.
Details
- Developer
- Tango Gameworks
- Publisher
- Bethesda Softworks
- Released
- Oct 12, 2017
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