Alan Wake 2is a wonderful game, officially one of the best this year, so it’s no surprise that lots of players are hungry for more.Remedysecured wins for Best Game Direction, Best Art Direction, and Best Narrative at TGA 2023, further proving how standout this sequel turned out. The devs also announced that the New Game Plus mode is dropping on December 11, including new content, more clues for the twisted spiral story, and a brand-new ending.
But for those itching for something fresh yet reminiscent of Alan Wake 2, let me throw in a mention of a somewhat overlooked horror gem —The Evil Within 2. While it has its own vibe,Tango Gameworks' (the studio behindHi-Fi Rush) creation shares enough similarities to satisfy that lingering Alan Wake 2 craving. So, if the NG+ mode isn’t enough for you, give The Evil Within 2 a shot.
Setting Absolutely Matters
Replaying The Evil Within 2 shortly after Alan Wake 2, I couldn’t help but notice the striking similarities between the two. They share themes and ideas, and they mirror each other in significant elements and small details. At times, The Evil Within 2 almost felt like a part of the Remedy Connected Universe, echoing vibes from both Alan Wake 2 andControl. However, the Tango team lacks that distinct Remedy touch a bit and leans more heavily intoborrowing from the Resident Evil series.
Take Saga’s gripping story (which many liked more than Alan’s). In The Evil Within 2, you step into the shoes of detective Sebastian Castellanos, who has his own version of Saga’s Mind Place, allowing you to check on clues in his ‘office’, upgrade weapons or perks, and browse through collectibles.
Like Saga, Castellanos finds himself in a quiet American town, the Union, filled with monsters and weird things of all kinds. you may freely explore it at your own pace, gradually clearing its parts for valuable resources and dealing with enemies. The Union is, of course, no less extraordinary than Alan Wake 2’s seemingly unremarkable towns of Bright Falls and Watery, heavily influenced by the supernatural Cauldron Lake nearby, giving rise to creatures known as Taken all around. The Union surely could use the Federal Bureau of Control’s oversight.
But it’s not just the setting of quiet American towns being turned upside down that draws these games closer. There’s also a layer of being trapped in an unreal reality. Playing as Alan, you find yourself in the Dark Place, operating on dream logic, shifting and looping, creating inexplicable places and unimaginable horrors. The same holds true for The Evil Within 2, where Sebastian is held inside the STEM system, essentially a simulation of reality influenced by the minds of people connected to it.
As a result, many episodes of The Evil Within 2 are just as surreal as those you can find in Alan Wake 2. From largely similar locations like big hotels or theaters, full of locked doors and secrets behind them, to out-of-this-world scenes like navigating a maze while a giant eye watches you, Sebastian’s story is full of unexpected twists, elevating your experience and throwing in many memorable episodes.
Art Creators And Creations
While certainly not as entangled as Remedy’s meta-narrative that weaves real-life people and fictional characters they play into the mix, The Evil Within 2 also delves deeply into themes of the nature of art and its creators. It puts the photographer Stefano Valentini in the spotlight, exploring his twisted vision of reality and art. Similar to Alan Wake himself, Valentini has the power to directly alter reality within the simulation, aiming to shape it into his violent masterpiece, almost like Mr. Scratch.
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It’s the perfect blend of open-ended and conclusive, and I couldn’t be more excited for the future.
Finally, both The Evil Within 2 and Alan Wake 2 employ almost identical visual tricks to emphasize the ‘unreal’ reality around you. From overlaying different places together to projections with clues on how to progress the story, and even visually spectacular monster design, both titles stand out as remarkable representatives of the action-horror genre. They are as visually appealing as they are inventive in their range of scares.
Regarding the parallels to Control that I mentioned earlier, you’re likely to notice them when exploring the secret concrete tunnels of the Marrow that connect parts of the falling-apart Union. These ‘wormholes’ act as shortcuts between various regions of the map and bear an almost identical look and feel to some parts of Control’s Oldest House — especially those large shelters concealed behind massive blast doors. There’s also a general feeling of an unstable, constantly shifting environment around Sebastian at all times, which is very familiar to Remedy fans.
Last, but definitely not least, there’s a coffee obsession. Brief but impossible-to-miss coffee-drinking scenes are becoming one of the signature touches of the Remedy team, and Alan Wake 2 is no exception, taking it to the next level by saving your game using coffee thermoses. Before that, The Evil Within 2 essentially employed the same concept, with Sebastian Castellanos also able to drink hot coffee to restore health before saving.
A More Resident Evil-ish Second Half
Despite many parallels between both titles, there are, of course, plenty of differences too, preventing you from entirely categorizing them in one box. From obvious things like having two playable characters instead of one,to different pacing and even combat dynamics, with The Evil Within 2 emphasizing setting traps and relying on your surroundings much more, it still serves as a nice complement to Alan Wake 2 if you want to extend your survival-action experience.
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Tour guides, chirpy locals, defenders of the Realm.
The Evil Within 2’s premise feels like a B-movie, making the game a far less ‘cerebral’ version of Remedy’s game. This could be an advantage for some players and quite the opposite for others. If you prefer a more traditional narrative with a pretty straightforward story, Tango has got you covered. Sure, there are a couple of surprising twists and mind-bending episodes as well, but the title is nowhere near as tangled and meta-commentary as Alan Wake’s sequel. Keep that in mind when approaching your adventure in Tango’s game.
Moreover, the majority of similarities to Alan Wake 2 hold true mainly for the first half of The Evil Within 2, until you wrap up the Stefano Valentini storyline and encounter other major villains like Father Theodore. From that point onward, it becomes much more reminiscent of the first entry and, even more so, of Shinji Mikami’s masterpiece,Resident Evil 4. Sebastian literally has to go through a burning hell, tormented by his past experiences with STEM, and players are thrust into very different, linear locations like medieval catacombs and pitch-black dungeons.
