the evil within
Latest
The Evil Within runs through darkened hallways at TGS 2013
The Evil Within makes an appearance at this year's Tokyo Game Show with trailer that is fittingly reminiscent of Japanese horror movies like The Grudge. While investigating a gruesome massacre, Detective Sebastian Castellanos makes a number of important discoveries. First, backup isn't coming. Second, there's almost always something behind you, and third, this building has way too many darkened, forgotten corridors for its own good. Horror fans will have a chance to discover what The Evil Within might be in 2014, when the game is expected to release on the Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, and PC.
Wii U not on Bethesda's short-term radar
Wii U owners hoping for a little Bethesda-brand steampunk/open world/pseudo-historical/massively multiplayer whatever may want to start grazing other pastures, as Nintendo's console is nowhere to be seen on the publisher's horizon. "None of the game's we've announced are being developed for the Wii U, so it's guaranteed that none of those games are coming to Wii U," Bethesda VP of PR and marketing Pete Hines told us at QuakeCon, with regards to The Elder Scrolls Online, Wolfenstein: The New Order and The Evil Within. "Will any future ones come out? I can't say for sure, in our near-term focus it's not on our radar." "It's largely a hardware thing," Hines said, explaining that Bethesda's mantra is to "make the games that we want to make, on whatever platforms will support them as developed." Giving an example, he said that The Elder Scrolls Online "likely would have" been released on Xbox 360, but that it "just wasn't possible" due to hardware limitations. Specifically referencing future announcements for the Wii U, Hines said that "it remains to be seen what the future holds." This differs from the Wii U publishing reservations we've heard of from other companies, in that Bethesda's decision is based on hardware limitations, rather than the Wii U's lackluster performance at retail. EA, for instance, isn't bringing this year's installments of FIFA or Madden to Nintendo's platform due to the limited size of the console's installed user base. Similarly, Ubisoft was so confident that the Wii U would be unable to support the kind of sales it needed for Rayman Legends, that it delayed the game's release and extended its availability to other platforms.
Seen@E3: The Evil Within's terrifying blockhead
Pyramids don't have a monopoly on terrifying head shapes, at least not if The Evil Within has anything to say about it. You might be wondering what's inside this fellow's safe-head. We got as close as we dared to take a few pictures and, frankly, we're not sure we want to know.%Gallery-191539%
The (Resident) Evil Within
Shinji Mikami's creative influence on The Evil Within is immediately apparent. Mechanically, my brief hands-off E3 demo had a lot in common with Mikami's survival horror milestone, Resident Evil 4. The over-the-shoulder camera, slow pacing and pulse-quickening enemies were all there. That The Evil Within shares so much with Resident Evil 4 is a two-sided proposition. Resident Evil 4 was one of the greatest games of its day, but its ground has been retread many times by subsequent survival horror games over the years, and even by Mikami himself in Shadows of the Damned. Where The Evil Within seems to stake its greatest claim is in its visual and thematic elements. The game stars a detective named Sebastian – Seb to his friends – who is sent to investigate a disturbance at a mental hospital. An unknown event has claimed the lives of several patients and possibly a few police officers.%Gallery-191139%
The Evil Within protagonist makes do without 'extraordinary powers'
The Evil Within won't empower the player beyond "appropriate" weaponry and a delicate dearth of ammunition, claims Director Shinji Mikami."We're not giving the player really any extraordinary powers," he told IGN, "but we don't want to go in the opposite direction and not give them any means of fighting back – that would violate the rules of survival horror. So we're looking at appropriate types of weapons with a limited amount of ammunition in order to get them through ... if they're good."The Evil Within follows a detective named Sebastian, an unfortunate soul summoned to a distorted, labyrinthine asylum crawling with creepy things. Mikami sees the premise as a source of proper scares, and frames it in an overtly cinematic way – right down to the survival-horror game's wider aspect ratio of 2.35:1. (As with some films, this means you'll see black bars above and below the image on HDTVs, which are typically in 16:9 ratio.)Mikami's approach is reflected, arguably to a fault, in a live-action trailer for The Evil Within. If you have trouble stomaching the more grotesque parts, just substitute the gore for gourmet foods. The gnarled corpse becomes chicken, and the final shot is spaghetti escaping confinement in a microwave.
'The Evil Within,' Mikami's new survival horror game, announced
Bethesda has announced The Evil Within, the new name for Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami's Zwei. The game will launch on Xbox 360, PS3, PC and "next generation consoles" in 2014.Mikami's Tango Gameworks studio was purchased by Bethesda Softworks parent company Zenimax Media back in 2010. Project Zwei was announced in April of last year.
