Ever since the first Silent Hill game, I’ve always loved opening up an in-game map. There’s something about having it on a separate screen that makes you look at it harder, trying to remember your directions. Was it two lefts, then right or the other way around? Can’t remember, better check again. It gave me a second way to get to know the world. Not only was I navigating the space, but I was ingraining it in my memory by studying the maps over and over.
I was not expecting The Evil Within 2 to have a map. Having only played the beginning few chapters of the first one, I was under the impression that the series was a lot more linear. It was a fine game, but never really sunk its teeth in more or elevated itself from other horror games, especially when compared to director Shinji Mikami’s other famous work, Resident Evil 4.
Within the first few chapters of Evil Within 2 I said to myself, “This is just a modern Silent Hill.” Not necessarily in story or creativity, but in structure. The game takes place in a city set up in a subconscious realm called Union. This acts as an open world area that you traverse through, finding your way into interior sections. These levels of the game never end up being quite as memorable as the ones in Silent Hill, but the open world sections evolve the feeling of exploring the town of Silent Hill into a modern era.
When you hear open world, you often think of the UbiSoft model of having a mini-map that is littered with icons, giving the player an overwhelming number of things to check off their to-do list as they move between objectives. Like Silent Hill, Evil Within 2 smartly doesn’t give you a mini-map, instead forcing you to go to the map screen. Even on this map screen, you aren’t bombarded with symbols. In order to place side quests on your map, you have to get close enough to an objective to be able to “pick up its signal.” These can range from corpses with items to memory echoes that give you story details.
You will definitely need to be exploring the open world, because Evil Within 2 definitely has a “count your bullets” old school survival horror feeling. This forces you to explore as much as possible to find these signals and hunt down all the extra ammo and upgrades you can. Often, the game will have you do some risk-reward analysis as to whether it’s even worth getting past enemies to grab an ammo cache. There were several occasions where I decided to hunt down some shotgun ammo, only to use an equivalent amount of a different ammo type in order to fight my way to the point on the map.
Enemies can soak up a lot of damage, and the game limits how much ammo you can hold, so you have to approach your encounters wisely or avoid them altogether. I found myself opening up that map and carefully planning the route of least resistance to attempt to avoid a firefight that would both waste my ammo and draw more enemies to my location. The maps do not show locations of enemies, so there’s only so much planning you can do. You’ll still have to do a lot of improvisation as you sneak out of the bushes to stealthily take out a monster, only to get surprised by the other creature crawling on the ground right behind it.
My favorite part of the open world sections were the wayside stories and optional content popped up throughout. Triggering certain events can throw off all your carefully planned sneaking, forcing you into a full-on panic.
For example, at one point I was sneaking around, successfully avoiding the monsters patrolling the town, only to trigger a side quest that summoned a giant beast. Having never seen anything like it, I decided to try to run and assess my options.
After ducking into a nearby cafe, I inadvertently triggered ANOTHER side quest. This time I was teleported into an entirely different setting where I had to avoid an unkillable ghost while sneaking through a facility. After completing that section, I was sent right back to that cafe, where I had to worry whether or not that giant creature was still roaming. Stories like this that play out organically can be so much more interesting than strictly scripted content, making the game world feel more alive.
Since horror relies so much more on using pacing to control tension and release, developers often have a tendency to build more of a linear funhouse in order to control the player’s experience more thoroughly. Given how death in horror games comes frequently, players may have to play the same section over and over again, taking away the tension, replacing it with tedium. The more open and you can make your horror, the more unpredictability you can inject into your game, providing the user different experiences each time they play.