The Evil Within: The Assignment and Consequence of Subpar Gameplay

I never get into a particular game with the expectation of not liking it.

With films and TV shows I can afford being less strict in what I spend my time consuming, as services like Netflix help make it relatively cheap and convenient.

But video games are expensive. Sure, you have stuff like the XBOX Game Pass and the new Playstation Plus, but you generally still pay individually for most titles on the market. As such, naturally I’d want to get my money’s worth, so I tend to think over and look stuff up before deciding to pull the trigger on a purchase.

Survival-horror is a genre I’ve more recently begun to sink my teeth into, with Resident Evil 4 being the title to properly kick off my interest.

The Evil Within was one such particular title that had more of a mixed reception from what I’ve gathered online.

Still, its similar gameplay style to RE4 and its devoted fanbase, along with a sizeable discount, got me to try it out for myself. And I’m glad I did.

I already went over the game in an older post, but in short, it’s a solid survival-horror experience with an intriguing if slightly confusing story, satisfying combat and great atmosphere. The sequel seemed to have gone into a bit of a different direction though, which divided some of the first game’s fans.

I was more than willing to take the plunge, so I ended up snagging the sequel on sale as well.

But then I remembered the DLC that came out shortly after the first game, made to fill in the gaps and address the questions left unanswered by the main plot. I already knew about it beforehand, and while getting to experience a side of the story we didn’t see previously was a tempting offer, I was on the fence about buying it, as the core gameplay was apparently heavily focused on stealth.

What I like about survival-horror is that you’re not totally helpless, you have the means to defend yourself, but you’ve got to think things through first before acting. You have to make sure that each bullet counts, and your success in battle depends greatly on your careful resource management.

The choice to fight, sneak or run is one that you are given to make based off your own assessment of the situation, deciding for yourself the ideal course of action to survive until the very end.

Stripping that out for the one simple method of sneaking around limits your approach in gameplay significantly.

Yeah, I wasn’t the most optimistic coming into this, and I really only reluctantly decided to buy the DLC due to it supposedly tying into the second game. So off I go downloading the first game again, then the two separate parts of the DLC, and press play.

This add-on stars Juli Kidman, one of the important side characters from the first game. As I’ve explained earlier, this is her side of the story we’re experiencing, the stuff she went through when she wasn’t with Sebastian.

In regards to expanding the story of The Evil Within and providing further insight into what really went on behind the scenes, this package is a success.

Sure, a lot of it you could have just inferred on your own, but seeing it all unfold from the eyes of Kidman makes the events of the story click better in my mind. Kidman herself is also significantly fleshed out here, her motives, her past, her struggles, all of it is on full display and helps us finally get to know her character on a deeper personal level.

The gameplay is, unsurprisingly, where my issues lie.

Making the campaign all about stealth is not bad in of itself, there’s pure stealth games I’ve enjoyed quite a lot. The problem comes when the stealth is executed in the most basic fashion.

The stealth aspect in the main game wasn’t the greatest, but it worked perfectly fine as an alternative way to safely dispatch enemies.

Aside from a few sections early on, stealth was completely optional.

Here it’s mandatory, and it hasn’t evolved a bit from how it worked in the main game. That’s a problem when you’re expected to carry on through 5–6 hours of the same slow sneaking sections through barren corridors with barely any complexity or variety to be had.

I know there’s people that like the tension such a helpless situation elicits in them, but for me it does nothing but wait for it to end.

First time meeting a monstrous creature that hunts you down as you carefully try to avoid being caught is truly nerve wracking, yes. But when that same setup gets repeated multiple times over, it quickly loses its fear factor.

The first encounter with that weird high-heel wearing light-head is genuinely tense and memorable, as you have no idea what manner of creature you’re up against and if you even stand a chance against it.

Then you go through the exact same thing three more times and an underwhelming boss fight to cap it off.

I wasn’t scared of that creature anymore, I was more so annoyed having to deal with it again and again in the exact same manner.

Even the fight where you finally get the chance to put it down for good turns into just another stealth segment, as directly facing an aggro’d light-head will cause its bright light to semi-stun you, making you unable to shoot and slowing down your moving speed.

Making the strategy of hiding behind cover and waiting for it to turn around, to then take a few pot shots before running to hide again the optimal play.

To put it bluntly, it’s fucking boring.

It’s not simply me being impatient, though I’d admit it definitely played a part in my built up frustration with this DLC, it’s more so the fact that nothing substantial was added on top of the existing base from the main game to make the stealth stand on its own as the core gameplay loop.

The changes that were made are.. less than satisfactory, and at worst actively detrimental.

The reworked flashlight had the most untapped potential, as apart from functioning like a standard flashlight would, it was given the ability to unravel hidden doors, passages and items by focusing the light on a specific identifiable sign. It’s a neat feature, but it isn’t really taken advantage of in actual gameplay, aside from revealing hidden ammo caches during the final boss.

Imagine if you could use the flashlight to temporarily stun an enemy that manages to detect you, sort of a quick getaway card like the consumable knives in classic Resident Evil. You could balance it by needing a certain amount of batteries to activate, which you would be able to collect throughout your journey, and have upgrades available down the line for perks like a longer stun period and reducing battery cost for use.

That alone would help differentiate this DLC from the the main game and further flesh out the stealth.

You have the option to take cover being buffed to a silly degree, as if you get detected you can just run back for cover and the pea-brained enemy AI suddenly loses sight of you. This gets especially goofy in the encounters with light-head and the boss fight against Joseph.

The AI in the main game wasn’t necessarily the smartest, but here it’s put on a magnifying glass with the greater emphasis on stealth and the “improved” cover system.

Lastly, this might seem like an odd nitpick, but I have to point it out because it genuinely bothers me. Like in the main game, you can initiate a stealth kill on an unsuspecting enemy, only here it’s limited by melee weapons scattered around which you can only use once each. I’m fine with that, as obviously if you were given unlimited stealth kills, it would kinda break the challenge and structure of the these gameplay segments.

What bothers me, is the weapon they chose for this particular purpose, which is an axe. You can use an axe in the main game as well, it’s also one-use only as it completely breaks once you hit anyone with it (doesn’t make much sense, but whatever), yet it’s treated as a powerful melee weapon, one that can instantly down a weaker enemy and significantly damage a stronger one or a boss. In this DLC, you can only use the axe for a stealth kill.

Let me repeat that, only for a stealth kill.

I probably don’t need to tell you, but an axe can be a pretty damn fine weapon, especially against slow moving undead.

The Evil Within treats it like so, while having it break on contact is questionable, it’s a design choice that was made to balance how powerful it actually is when you use it. In The Assignment and The Consequence though, you need to have the enemy’s back turned in order to make use of it.

Why? Does Kidman not know how to swing an axe at an enemy directly facing her? There’s no reason for her to not be able to take the opportunity to immediately chop some heads off.

If the developers wanted a temporary weapon that is stealth-only, how about a knife? You know, like the one Sebastian uses for stealth kills in the main game? Just make that a consumable item instead of the axe and it would make much more sense. A small knife is much riskier to pull out in combat, as you need to be closer and more precise, leaving you wide open for grabs and other attacks. It being restricted to stealth kills would fit, unlike a fucking axe.

I apologize if I came off unnecessarily agitated here, but there’s no better way of expressing my time with this DLC.

On the few occasions I legitimately enjoyed myself, I was handed a gun, of course only to be taken away from me shortly thereafter.

I appreciate what it was going for, it wanted to be something more unique than a simple extension of the full game, but for that it needed to put much more work into properly fleshing out the stealth gameplay.

Seeing the untold side of the story unfold was nice, it was the one aspect keeping me going through this slog, but I wish I enjoyed the actual ride a whole lot more.

Despite what you may assume, I don’t regret playing through the two parts of this DLC. But I’m also damn glad it’s over and done with.