The Evil Within Thread

[Fitz]

I’ve opted to play The Evil Within next, and I’m going to share what I find interesting, annoying, and so on. This is my first time playing it, and I’ve avoided spoilers as much as I could over the years—while also managing to forget them too.

I’ll drop some random related videos, info, or trivia as I play. Feel free to join me, but keep spoilers to a minimum and mark them with /spoiler.

Browsing the web, there are a lot of people throwing around the usual two-word contradictory compliments that are designed to pique your curiosity — and that have flooded review titles over the last few years: “a misunderstood masterpiece,” “a flawed gem,” “a beautiful mess,” and so on. Creativity is getting scarcer by the minute, folks.

That said, this game is giving off strong Resident Evil 4 vibes — and that’s not random, since it was made by the same creator, Shinji Mikami. Things get even more interesting because, when watching gameplay clips, you can not only see but also feel a certain amount of jank—but not so much that it becomes unbearable. On top of that, the game sits at a very sexy 68 on Metacritic, which is the perfect score for a so-called “misunderstood masterpiece.”

So, could the rumours be true? Could this game truly be a flawed gem?
I intend to find out and invite you all to join me in this adventure.

[Oyster Sauce]

Haven't played it but I like the ending song cover from the second game

► are songs spoilers?

The Evil Within 2 - Ending Song - \u0027\u0027The Ordinary World\u0027\u0027 Full Song

[Roguey]

I skipped the first one since I got the impression it's an incoherent mess of contradicting ideas. I liked the second one well enough, even though they had a budget downgrade and had to use a non-union VA cast.

\u0022There\u0027s EVIL WITHIN, TOO...\u0022

[DecadeRiptide]

I think I watched theradbrad play it, it seemed pretty good ig

[CheesusCrust]

the first game looked very promising, but the second one blew it with their "so his little girl is ACTUALLY alive yeah, and like she was used as a LITERAL core for our super-evil machine yeah, and- and- and like his WIFE is here and she's like all cool and m y s t e r i o u s and here's a cliche *** drama you DEFINITELY didn't see coming"

[Fitz]

The whole game consists of 15 Chapters and 3DLCs. I've finished up the first two, and they feel more like tutorials for the game and its mechanics.

Chapter 1: An Emergency Call introduces the characters and the plot—you are a detective that gets called right after a case to a mental hospital to investigate some murders. Simple enough. You go inside, see some video footage of some mental ward psychic guy busting heads with his mind, same mental guy (probably) sneaks up behind you while you watch the footage and drops you with a syringe, following that you wake up bleeding and dangling from your feet. So now you gotta sneak around and escape this big guy with a chainsaw that nips your calf, pretty much at the beginning of the level.

You get introduced to the sneak mechanic here and some pretty neat death animations if you **** up. I like the one where if the chainsaw guy finds you hiding under the bed he just shoves the chainsaw under it and makes Sebastian into red pudding. Neat-o. You also get to slide down some vent and drop into a big pool of blood and corpses. Neat-o x2. I've always wondered how that would smell. Probably slightly metallic and disgusting in some sense.

The RE4 influences are obvious here, but I thought—Man, what a cop out. Is the whole thing really going to be based in a mental institution? That's a bit cheap. I was guessing that the different levels would be somehow related to going deeper into Sebastian psyche—given that the name is The Evil Within. Well, maybe that will still be the case. It's too early to tell. The game got me hooked at the end of the level by not only letting me get out of the building, but also seeing how the whole city was falling apart. That's a third neat-o right here and a really strong start.

Anyway, you drive away in a police van with your purple eyed junior detective (you had a partner too when you started but now he is missing) some mental patient and a another cop that's just the driver—he isn't important you shoot him in the head once he turns into a zombie at the beginning of Chapter 2. Purple eyes, huh. They don't seem to shy away from the weeb ****. I'm hoping this won't affect the writing for the characters, but I can already tell that's too much too ask.

Chapter 2: Remnants is a total contrast to the previous chapter. Where Sebastian was mostly limping around and hiding there, here he gets a revolver and gets to shoot zombies in the head. Not only that but there is a pretty good sneak kill you can do if you are stealthy enough. You get introduced to more mechanics—matches to burn corpses, traps that you can disarm—as is tradition I walked right into the first one regardless of there being a cutscene right before it—you also get to see how to save the game and how to level up your character and weapons. You do that by sitting on a chair getting electrocuted directly in the head every time you decide on an upgrade. Awesome.

The scenery shifts to some forest and abandoned buildings—something like the outskirts of some castle almost. A big shift from the mental hospital earlier. There is also this lighthouse in the distance to which Sebastian is compelled to go to and it seems connected with all the zombies somehow.

So far so good. I really want to see how the difficulty amps up. There seem to be these sections where you sneak around buildings killing enemies and try to avoid patrols. And at other times you are just exploring and trying not to walk into traps, or just have to sneak behind big groups of enemies. Combine that with the gameplay from the first chapter where you can just run and hide, add some levels where you have to kill waves of enemies too, and I think that pretty much covers what I am expecting out of the gameplay. Overall not bad. I am expecting to get more into the meat and potatoes of the game with Chapter 3.

[Fitz]

I skipped the first one since I got the impression it's an incoherent mess of contradicting ideas. I liked the second one well enough, even though they had a budget downgrade and had to use a non-union VA cast.

\u0022There\u0027s EVIL WITHIN, TOO...\u0022

Yeah, from the reviews it seemed like 2 is the more competent game, but it lacks the RE4 vibe I saw in the first one. Also that Shinji guy wasn't that involved with the development of it too.

[Kolgrim]

The Evil Within is in my top 20. It's interesting that all the discourse around it though is people claiming it's **** or it's a flawed masterpiece. Not too many games are that divisive. I remember a good bulk of people were turned off on release because of performance issues and the fact you couldn't disable the letterboxing. Without talking spoilers the story requires the player read the collectables and go through the DLC to fully understand the narrative which is something that seemed to filter people as well. I'm glad to see more people try it out though. It's a special game imo.

Also this was a small thing but I found it funny that the devs put in a mechanic that makes Kidman's shirt partially transparent when she gets hit by water. Classic Japanese men of culture moment.

[Fitz]

HQ game design right there.

[wndrbr]

TEW1 had a troubled development cycle. The devs had multiple projects in the pipeline, one was a medieval slasher called Project Zwei, the other one was a scifi shooter, and i think there was also a third one. All of them got cancelled for a variety of reasons. After that one of Bethesda producers suggested Mikami to stop experimenting, and just work on something he's familiar with. So they took all the assets they've made for those cancelled projects, and quickly cobbled together a RE4 clone.

This is why the game just randomly shifts from one map to another without any proper transitions (you get teleported all the time and the environment changes), it's why there's so much clash between the different chapters (sometimes it's a medieval village or a castle or a dungeon, sometimes it's a modern city, then you visit some scifi lab, etc). It is also the reason why the story doesn't make much sense, and why most of it is told through collectable readables instead of actual dialogues.

Also most of the jank stems from the devs having to work with IdTech engine (it's a Rage/Wolfenstein the New Order version of idtech, the one with the notorious megatexture). Bethesda wanted all of their internal studios to work with the same tech to avoid paying the licensing fees.

[wndrbr]

I like how the devs, instead of coming up with a new story and setting from scratch, decided to understand their constraints and analyze what they have on hands first.

"Alright, we have medieval and scifi assets. How can we combine all of that stuff into one game without it looking like an incoherent ****** mess? Wait, let's make a game where we're inside a head of a schizophrenic".

They even leaned into the theme and gave the characters Spanish names (Castellanos, Jimenez, Victoriano, etc) even though there was no reason for them to do so, and gave all the policemen film noir 1950s outfits with nice shirts and vests.

Too bad there are no unlockable constumes, would've been sick to keep that gumshoe trenchcoat from the opening of the game.

[Fitz]

Chapter 3: Claws of The Horde is a solid chapter all around. You get stuck in some barn and have to clear the enemies before freeing the boss from the stables, kill him, and use his chainsaw to cut a chain that lets you advance to the next chapter. Lots of enemies here, some traps, tons of loot, and my weapon count has now increased to 3 (and I also got some grenades, I think, but I didn't end up using them). Detective Castellanos now wields a revolver, a shotgun, and a crossbow that has 3 different types of bolts. All around fun, I'd say. Some titbits about the plot get revealed, but nothing major by the looks of it. Oh yeah, and that doctor guy from Chapter 1 joins you for the next chapter. Sincerely hoping the next chapter isn't a stupid *** escort mission.

I got tons of upgrades here and am not feeling worried about my ammo at all. If anything, I thought I would have to be sneaking (which I do, but just not as much as I initially thought) and hiding more, but that's not the case at all. Generally, my expectations were that I'd have to rely on stealth kills, but I guess that sort of playstyle is reserved for the higher difficulties. Or the later chapters.

Also, having a big *** crossbow as your best weapon is a really strange choice. The only reason I could figure is that our detective seems to have hispanic roots.
Odd choice for a weapon, albeit a badass one.

[Algol]

I played this on my Sexbox many years ago. I remember it being "ok" but not to the point where I even remotely wanted to finish it.

[Fitz]

I'm past the refund time on Steam so nothing else to do but commit and finish it. I've been thinking about the hardest mode of the game where you get one shotted from anything, but that sounds like too much hassle and not so fun really.

[rusty_shackleford]

if you wanted to watch a normal person do a video on it and not a mentally insane man in a dress…
Examining The Evil Within Series

[Oyster Sauce]

Gross ****** discussion moved

viewtopic.php?p=359194-transexuality-ho ... es#p359194

[Breathe]

if you wanted to watch a normal person do a video on it and not a mentally insane man in a dress…
Examining The Evil Within Series

I don't like this new embed style. I preferred seeing the creator in the top left before playing a video.

[Fitz]

Chapter 4: The Patient was scary. You get to run around with the doctor, do some exploring, and then get lost in some crazy looping maze while trying to find Leslie, his patient that you saw at the end of Chapter 1 in the bus. You also meet the two of the big bads I would assume for the story—one of them is this big and creepy spider, walking lady thing (couldn't get that good of a look as I was running), and the other is the psyker from the beginning. You learn that his name is Ruvik and that him and Leslie are definitely connected. At one point in this chapter, Sebastian was also stuck in a room that was filled with blood and traps, making it hard to move around carelessly while being swarmed by tons of enemies. It felt really good blowing all those suckers up or making them burn like torches with a well timed match, or a shot at a barrel.

More of the plot gets explained by the collectibles, and the atmosphere is going up a notch. Even by more than a notch. Hopefully things keep amping up. Really loving the level design so far. You can't really tell what you are going to get next. Most levels so far are about 30-40 minutes to complete, which is also pretty refreshing.

[Fitz]

Chapter 5: Inner Recesses — more running around corridors and abandoned hospitals. Just one trap this chapter and no need to sneak around. Tons of shooting, and the game throws more than enough ammo at you. It’s fun, but where is the challenge? I’m already getting 3+ upgrades per level, so I’m expecting to reach demigod levels before we hit the halfway point of the game. There seems to be a pattern of getting closed in a room and swarmed by enemies, but it feels trivial when you’ve got grenades, two separate AoE bolts from the Agony Crossbow, and, on top of that, matches that can kill multiple enemies if timed right.

► Show Spoiler

You get to save both your partners this chapter. Joseph, whom you find in a tub, seems a bit distraught, judging by how he tries to choke the **** out of you at one point. But it’s all good, as you attribute his ****** moment to the place itself. He runs around with you, shooting zombies, drawing aggro, and generally making combat even easier. To top it off, you can heal him all the time without having to use any syringe items. **** is too easy.

You also get to save Kidman, your female junior detective. She’s stuck in a glass cage that’s slowly filling with water, but don’t worry—she can’t die until you clear all the zombies first. So you shoot around 20 zombies with Joseph backing you up, and only after that does a timer show up indicating that Kidman could drown if you don’t act. Missed opportunity here. Lots of tension and suspense are completely drained from the scene by making the timer appear only after you clear the zombies. Not to mention, if the timer showed up as soon as you entered the room, you’d be forced to take your shots faster, waste ammo, and the situation would feel more believable.

Anyway, you free Kidman, and you’ve got the whole gang together now. It looks like you and Joseph are slowly going insane, while Kidman isn’t taking it so badly. She seems to be the X-factor in some way, though I might be misreading things here. You go down to the basement, fight off a bunch of zombies in a tight room using grenades, explosive and lightning bolts, and then carry on to the next corridor. It’s cool to see your companions not being completely useless, but I wonder if that’s the right approach for a survival horror game. I mean, it’s fun—but is it horror enough to have two (almost three) capable characters on screen at the same time? Not really.

You walk down another corridor, hear that odd buzzing that makes your head hurt, and all three of you fall through the pool of blood you were stepping on. Sebastian, in particular, gets grabbed by the creepy spider lady’s hand while falling. So you, as the player, already know what time it is—it’s boss time. The Spider Lady seems vulnerable to fire, and luckily for you, the fight takes place in some sort of furnace area with torches lying around, fire barrels, and two giant rooms that you can flood with fire by pulling a lever.

Yet again, a missed opportunity here—the Spider Lady should have been chasing you throughout the entire level instead of just showing up for the last five minutes. You should have been running from her, slowly damaging her every time you narrowly escape. As it is, she feels like an afterthought, not part of the story but just part of the scenery. Even her weakness to fire is shown to the player only minutes before the fight in the room I mentioned. Maybe she comes back later and the idea I laid out is executed in future chapters. Though she did turn into goo and drop some upgrade points, so that feels counterintuitive. Alright, I kind of meta-spoiled myself because I wanted to see how much I missed—collectibles, achievements, that sort of thing—and saw that she does indeed show up later on.

There is also some story stuff happening, but it’s all so vague and disjointed so far that I don’t see the point in mentioning it yet.

Tons of awesome visuals are happening, and the atmosphere is solid, but the gameplay doesn’t put enough pressure on the player. There is a strange lack of urgency during fights and in general, which feels odd and anticlimactic. I’ll give you an example—when you throw matches at a corpse, you usually do it while other zombies are rushing at you. The idea is that you light the corpse on fire, the zombies run into the flames, and you get a breather. However, every time Sebastian throws a match, he takes his sweet time. It would add more immersion if he actually rushed the action when the player spams the button instead of clicking it once. In fact, most of the time I’m spamming the button near a corpse, but Sebastian always acts the same—slow and cool. And immersion-breaking.

One third of the campaign is behind me, and looking back, most of it feels like filler. Though, to be fair, the levels are short and action-packed, so it’s hard to notice if you don’t think about it. I’m waiting to get to the more substantial part of the story and am hoping it’s not all hidden behind collectibles—which I’m not going out of my way to find. So far everything is intriguing and it’s keeping me hooked, but I wonder if Shinji will be able to stick the landing.

[SoLong]

Both of the games are fairly well done (I say this as someone who usually dislikes both horror and shooters), but the second game made me roll my eyes by tying everything to the MC's wife and not-actually-dead kid. It could've worked but wasn't set up properly at all. It felt very much like no-one expected the first game to do so well sales-wise, so they rushed a sequel.

[Roguey]

Both of the games are fairly well done (I say this as someone who usually dislikes both horror and shooters), but the second game made me roll my eyes by tying everything to the MC's wife and not-actually-dead kid. It could've worked but wasn't set up properly at all. It felt very much like no-one expected the first game to do so well sales-wise, so they rushed a sequel.

It didn't do terrible, but it didn't do well either, which is why it didn't use SAG-AFTRA talent for the sequel. They pumped it out to try to get the series in the black. Didn't work out which is why there was no third one.

[Fitz]

Chapter 6: Losing Grip on Ourselves — is a bit of a mess. It’s the most gunfight-heavy chapter so far and has more than a few mini-bosses in it. Mind you, they aren’t hard, but are mostly annoying or even tedious to deal with.

► Show Spoiler

We start off strong with some kind of flashback of a guy jamming another syringe into our head. At this point, it’s a fair assumption that Sebastian is being experimented on—or at the very least has been recently. I find it funny that once he wakes up, he asks the nurse in the safe house area if they did something to his head. Hilarious, considering he’s been getting electric shocks to the dome every time he wants to purchase an upgrade.

Most of the chapter takes place outside, and for once it’s sunny. You find Joseph again and start moving toward a church in the distance. To get there, you need to pass through a few areas—one of which is some kind of fort crawling with enemies, a cemetery, and, right before the church, some tunnels. The fort section is where things get messy. To pass through the doors, you need to kill all the enemies, which is fine. However, the jank is starting to show here.

This section is a tonal mess compared to everything so far. The game has been leaning more and more into action as the chapters progress, but at this point I don’t feel under any real threat whatsoever. When I started this game, I expected low ammo and a constant sense of survival, but what I’m getting instead is punching zombie priests in the jaw and watching their heads explode (literally). Not bad—but not quite right either. To top it off, there seems to be a lack of attention to detail when it comes to combat. If you shoot a trap and an enemy is next to it, they take no damage. The stealth kill animation makes you unsheathe your knife again mid-action, and while the animation is slow and the enemy model stays still, you’re not invulnerable during it. I found that out by taking a bolt to the neck and dying.

In this chapter, you also get two more weapons—a sniper rifle and a freeze bolt. Self-explanatory. The sniper comes in handy, as the most annoying part of the fort is the three assholes hiding on platforms, shooting a barrage of arrows at you whenever you pass a specific section. So you have to bait them out and snipe them in the head while they’re firing volleys at you. After that, a door opens, a chainsaw guy shows up, you shoot him in the head too, and you’re able to progress.

Joseph is not handling the pressure very well. He even tries to shoot himself in the head, but gets interrupted by Seb. Afterwards, he says things like, “It would be better this way.” A tragic death would definitely raise the stakes and might push Sebastian further, but despite this being a psychological horror game, it doesn’t seem like those kinds of boundaries will be pushed. While the visuals and atmosphere are right, it feels like the studio didn’t have the grit to take things to the next level. It all feels a bit safe instead of aiming higher and setting a new standard for the genre. We also see a guy get his head chopped off with a guillotine, which was nice. It even happens seconds before Joseph tries to blow his brains out with Sebastian’s handgun. Actually, Joseph gets knocked out and dragged to the guillotine himself, and if you don’t snipe the two guys dragging him, he gets decapitated. I probably should have let that play out just to see the animation. Missed opportunity on my end.

We move on toward the cemetery, and even Joseph and Sebastian start commenting on how things in this place can’t be real—the architecture is medieval, yet there are elevators and electricity. Personally, I figured that out way earlier with the zombies, the spider lady, the pools of blood, and the random teleportation, but sure—architecture and electricity are the breaking point. Some parts of the story get revealed here. It turns out there was some accident that left Sebastian broken and slowly drowning his pain in alcohol. He even pulls out an empty flask from his pocket. Joseph reported him to internal affairs, but it seems that’s behind them now, and there’s no real tension left. It’s strange that our main character is a recovering alcoholic and this is the first time it’s brought up. If the game leaned into that alongside the asylum and zombie elements, things could have been much darker, especially from a psychological angle.

I’ve managed to get some of the collectibles, and if I had to guess, the accident likely involved Sebastian losing his wife and newborn child. More on that later, but that seems to be the direction.

I pass the cemetery, kill the two guardians of the church—Neun and Zehn—and later find a small laboratory with notes describing experiments on two twins injected with some kind of serum that caused abnormal growth. From there, I move on to the tunnels. I’m not sure if these fights were meant to be difficult, but they really weren’t. I was never cornered or pressured, and as usual, I had more than enough ammo. The game really suffers from not having a dodge—or even a parry—mechanic. Holding shift and running past enemies isn’t enough. Again, it’s just too easy. Bosses like these shouldn’t let you casually run past them unless it’s through tight mechanics or risky movement. I even got an achievement for killing them, but honestly, how could I not? I had a sniper with plenty of ammo, they were slow, and they approached from one direction. It felt like they were begging to be headshot repeatedly.

In the tunnels, you solve a simple puzzle, take an elevator, explore a small lab, and eventually encounter a caged, mutated dog. Later, you fight it—this is the third boss encounter in this chapter—while Joseph is knocked out. And again, it’s easy. The dog charges, you blast it in the face with a shotgun or stun it with a bolt, then spam headshots. Joseph eventually wakes up, you get him through a gate with a convenient hole in it—but wait, his glasses fall off, so you have to go back for them. It’s trivial. Just stun the dog, grab the glasses, and leave. Later, I found out you can actually kill the dog, which I regret not doing. My upgrade points…

And we march on toward the church for Chapter 7. We’ll probably run into Kidman and Leslie there, based on seeing them head inside earlier.

Lots of dated design choices here, and the number of missed opportunities is starting to pile up. A lack of attention to detail is also becoming more noticeable. There’s also a strange shift from horror to action, even as the story gets darker. I don’t remember Resident Evil 4 being quite like this. But whatever—let’s save the comparisons for later and enjoy the ride before it’s over.

[Fitz]

Chapter 7: The Keeper was boring. Up until the very end.

► Show Spoiler

This whole chapter felt like padding until the boss itself. You get into the church, Joseph starts going soft on you again, Ruvik shows up on a chandelier and does some psyker **** where everything starts floating, followed by slamming you down into the catacombs. What I got out of this—and from all the snippets so far—is that we are indeed traversing through Seb’s psyche in some way. Yet again, we are separated from our partner. Can’t wait to see what Ruvik has done to Joseph now that they’ve had the chance to be alone with each other. The guy was already suicidal and talking about feeling the urge to jump in front of a moving train all the time.

As for the catacombs—it’s a dull “get three tablets to proceed” kind of ordeal. The place is filled with very bullet-spongy enemies that you have to lure into these giant areas where huge spikes fall on them once you pull a lever. For the most part, I skipped that, just kited them around until they grouped up nicely and then spammed my grenades. I wasn’t using them much anyway, so this was the perfect occasion. The whole place is fairly dark, even with your lantern on, and combined with the various booby traps lying around, the atmosphere was great yet again. Though the whole thing felt out of place. I was in a church’s catacombs, yet this underground section looked more like an Aztec temple, especially with the tablets I was collecting. What happened to the creepy occult church vibe? It’s like the game forgot about it.

You gather the tablets, go even deeper, and find Leslie in a cage. You free him, he runs away screaming, and the boss for this chapter spawns. I’ve got to admit—this guy looks cool as **** and is the only real highlight of the chapter.




The boss fight itself is pretty good too. You can’t really kill the guy—he takes a few shots and “dies,” but keeps respawning. On top of that, the room fills with gas, which you have to vent by turning valves spread around the area, all while avoiding the Keeper. You kill him a few times (two sniper shots), turn a few valves, and the guy starts getting angry. He begins taking more hits, gets more aggressive, charges at you, and throws traps that tangle around your legs and stop you from moving. To top it all off, he destroys one of the valves, and you have to replace it with a spare from the next room. Then you go back, deal with the traps, dodge the Keeper, replace the valve, mash the button to turn it—which takes twice as much effort as the other ones —and do all of that while avoiding his attacks and the rising gas, which starts damaging you after a certain point.

Pressure and challenge done right. Great boss fight that actually makes you try. Not to mention, if you wasted your ammo on the bullet-spongy enemies earlier in the catacombs, you’d definitely be running low here.



You climb up some stairs, and the Keeper tries to eat your face like some kind of mimic, but Sebastian manages to throw him off the platform and crush him with a giant set of spikes. That ends him and clears the path forward, letting Seb descend even deeper into the catacombs—and possibly into his shattered psyche.

Awesome visuals, awesome atmosphere, and yet something was lacking for most of the chapter. A really mixed bag. But deeper we go, and we’re approaching the halfway point of the story. The last boss fight got me excited for what’s ahead. We haven’t had a stealth-heavy section in a while, so it wouldn’t be surprising if the upcoming chapters lean more into that again.

[Fitz]

It’s cool to see that my complaint about the matches that I brought up in my Chapter 5 comment is addressed in Chapter 7, specifically in how they handle the traps thrown by the Keeper and how turning the valves works. For both, you have to spam the spacebar, and you actually feel the pressure from the boss rushing at you and trying to end you. So you, as the player, really want to get that **** done as quickly as possible and end up spamming the button like crazy—and this time around, Seb actually acts like it.

[Fitz]

Chapter 8: A Planted Seed Will Grow — are you kidding me? This felt more like an intermission than a chapter. The whole thing was 15 minutes long and played out like a corridor walking simulator with a cutscene at the end, rather than what a proper chapter should be.

► Show Spoiler

After going down the ladder following Seb’s encounter with the Keeper, you end up in some kind of cave system. Being low on ammo here, combined with the area being packed with those double-headed, spongey enemies I mentioned in Chapter 7—which you can’t kill with a sneak attack—makes the obvious choice to play it quiet and move around them. You can also get an achievement if you make it through the whole section without firing a single shot. It’s manageable, but definitely not fun—just tedious. Especially since you get a pack of shotgun shells right before multiple crawling enemies spawn, which conveniently die in one shot. Killing those mutated freaks was the most fun I had in this level—if you can even call it a level.

You proceed through the cave system, kite the enemies guarding the door, or headshot them with your sniper rifle, place a tablet to open the door, and then get teleported to a laboratory where you meet the doctor from earlier chapters. He drops some lore on you. Turns out this is some kind of experiment where two brains are fully linked together, sharing everything on an electrochemical level—emotion, memory, perception. His research partner was Ruvik, and he’s the host of the experiment, meaning we’re all inside his psyche. But it’s not that simple—we’re all linked together and contributing to it, though Ruvik seems to be the only one with conscious control. And, being the psychopath that he is, he wants to kill us. Or at least that’s what the doctor says. Leslie seems to be an essential part of the puzzle, so I’m curious to see where his role goes.

Anyway, you get separated from the doctor after another teleportation and end up spending the last 20 seconds of the level running away from some two-headed monster you’ll probably fight in the next chapter. As usual, the boss monster design was great—but that’s about it.

Lazy gameplay for the whole 15-minute chapter. The pacing across the game is all over the place. Some chapters are too long and too gunfight-heavy, while others are too short and don't lean enough mechanics like stealth or hiding. It feels like different teams worked on each chapter, with content being randomly cut or moved around without considering how it would affect the overall flow of the game. Something messy was definitely happening during production.

[Fitz]

Wasting my ******* time by being ******* lazy game developers. ******* make it a tense running section with a cutscene at the end instead of forcing me to go down endless corridors.

[Fitz]

Chapter 9: The Cruelest Intentions — one of the longer chapters, this time not only filled with a decent amount of gunfighting, but also packed with a huge chunk of interesting lore.

► Show Spoiler

We start off the chapter vaguely enough, with a flashback of a sunflower field. A moment of happiness, it seems—but judging by how some dirt-covered civilian burns you with a torch, evil deeds have been committed here. A memory of great trauma and pain that will later be explained.

The level itself mostly takes place in a fragmented memory of the house Ruvik grew up in. You have to find three test subjects—essentially severed heads—scattered around the mansion, conduct the correct experiment on them by puncturing the right parts of their brains, and that allows the big, impossible-to-miss door to open so Sebastian can move forward. The formula from the Keeper chapter of collecting three different keys is repeated here, and the level once again ends with a solid boss fight. The main difference is that there’s a lot more plot exposition this time around. Ruvik also spawns at random locations, chasing you until you hide or let him crush your head with his psychic powers. The mansion itself is interesting to explore, with traps scattered around and a few zombies too. No special enemies, except for Ruvik.

A few jump scares happen, which in this case I found to be an excellent addition. At this point, I’m so strong that I don’t really care if I get hit once or twice. The power scaling has completely removed any real tension between gameplay and story—which is a real shame, given how strong the visuals and atmosphere have been throughout the game. There’s no real fear anymore. It doesn’t matter whether I take my time or kick every door open and charge in swinging. It starts to feel like going through the motions unless the game forces you to slow down with trap-heavy sections or cheap setups.

As for Ruvik—turns out he’s a sick little puppy. Going through the level and recreating his experiments triggers flashbacks that explain what’s wrong with him. First, we learn he was conducting gruesome experiments from a very early age and was approached by the same doctor handling Leslie since Chapter 1. The doctor seems supportive of his work, framing it as normal for scientists like them, encouraging Ruvik to ignore appearances and focus on his mind. The next flashback shows Ruvik, now deformed, standing over the corpses of his parents, whom he has just murdered. He’s bandaged up, though we don’t yet know why. He’s furious that his parents locked him away, possibly trying to erase him, but now that he’s back and has killed them, he believes he’s corrected their mistake. The final sequence returns to Ruvik and the doctor. The doctor is unhappy that the Victoriano family hasn’t completed their donation to the hospital and pressures Ruvik—whose real name is Ruben—by threatening to cut off his supply of test subjects. Ruben doesn’t take kindly to being threatened in his own house, but we haven’t yet seen how that conflict resolves.

We move through the big door, and what follows is pure visual spectacle—though it’s too short. Hopefully, later chapters expand on this, because it’s been teased multiple times without fully committing. I won’t go into every detail, but this is another strong boss sequence.



You don’t fight the boss directly—instead, you avoid it while traps spawn and gates fall around you, cutting off escape routes. All the while, the boss—a massive red spirit—phases through everything and hunts you down.

Then we’re back in the sunflower field, slowly approaching a barn. Inside, you see a flashback of Ruben playing with his sister Laura. It becomes clear that Laura is the spider lady from earlier chapters—you piece it together through her appearance and what follows. Some villagers, angry at the Victoriano family for buying their land, decide to burn the barn in retaliation. One of them points out that there are children inside, but the leader doesn’t care and throws a torch into the already fuel-soaked structure. You watch as the two children, who were just sharing a tender and innocent moment, suddenly fight for their lives. They climb to the second floor as the main exit is blocked by fire. Laura helps a badly burned Ruben climb through a window, while she remains trapped, screaming in agony. This explains Ruvik’s bandages and why Laura was vulnerable to fire earlier in the game.

Before the chapter ends, you face the red spirit again—clearly a manifestation of Rueb's trauma. You can’t harm it, so you instead kill the zombies it spawns, avoid the surrounding fire, and survive until the sequence ends. You escape the barn by lowering a platform, riding it up after shooting the lever you just used. You climb through the same window Ruben escaped from, get teleported back to the mansion, move through a corridor into a small library, and finally enter a hidden room behind a bookshelf, which closes behind you—ending the chapter in style.

The amount of effort put into this chapter is hard to miss. From the level design to the story and how it’s told, everything points to a much more focused and polished experience. However, it also makes some of the earlier chapters feel like filler and raises the question—why isn’t every chapter at this level of quality?

[asf]

thought it was gabriel knight for a moment

[Fitz]

I dunno if it was because it's midnight, or because I haven't played this in a month, but Chapter 10: The Craftman's Tools was very kino. Top notch atmosphere, some neat mini-bossess and a bad *** end level boss fight to finish things off. Even Laura makes an appearance again. I thought I already killed that *****?

► Show Spoiler

Anyway, as for the story - the Doc gets squished after experimenting on Leslie, Ruvik taunts us after Seb narrowly escapes Laura, and we keep talking to this crazy guy who seems to now a lot of what's going and maybe knows Ruvik. Look like we are getting closer to... whatever everything this is.

Tbh this whole chapter looked insanely creepy and cool from beginning to end so I couldn't be bothered with what's happening with the story.

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/the-e ... 0819064200

Idk how to download that gif, but it's an absolutely awesome death the boss from this level can deliver onto you.
Awesome. Lets see if the rest of the game is as good as this.

[Fitz]

Fellas, I haven't booted up TEW for some time now for more than 5 minutes, but unless something profoundly badass and at the same time insane happens from chapter 11 onwards I already got the answers to my questions if this game is a flawed masterpiece.

And the answer is no - it's a corridor game, with cool visuals, decent boss fights and lackluster story that relies more on cool visuals than logic, lore or story. This game would have been a true gem if it was played on an arcade cabinet or something like that, but as it is the game is simply mid pushing to the above average at times. Rusty got it right by not playing this and watching youtube of someone else playing it.

If I return to this thread in the distant future we will see if the last chapters of the game have the quality and power to change my opinion.