The Evil Within: The Consequence (Video Game DLC)
Ted Hentschke
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Available on PC (reviewed), Playstation 4, Playstation 3, Xbox One, Xbox 360
Rated M for Mature
Distributed by Bethesda Softworks
Back in March, I reviewed the first part of The Evil Within’s DLC trilogy, titled The Assignment, and basically crowned it as the second coming of horror Christ. I won’t retread why, as you can easily read it here (hyperlink remember), and double site traffic gets me all giddy. Picking up where the first part left off, The Consequence follows Julie Kidman as she seeks to not only stop Ruvik, but also the mysterious Mobius overseer invading her mind. It is a thrilling conclusion to the two part story, and heralds a bright future for the third piece, The Keeper.
The Consequence follows in its predecessor’s footsteps of offering tense stealth/puzzle horror with a more concrete narrative. Fun story: when my editor first beat The Evil Within, he texted me, “So, what the fuck was going on in that game.” After taking a few minutes to try and piece together a coherent response, I realized that I too had no clue. One of my problems with The Evil Within was the array of plot holes, and this episode does a good job of filling them up and paving them over. By the time the credits role, the game basically all makes sense, which is an astounding feat considering what they were working with. Best of all, it doesn’t feel contrived, leading me to wonder if this was all planned as the plot from the get go or if just a seriously talented writer was in charge of the DLC story.
More than that, the episode does a great job of expanding the world and creating a unique dilemma for Julie to tackle. The shadowy Mobius director doesn’t feel like just a Christmas special villain, but an extension of a large and unexplored entity in the original world. His presence and power is well explained, but doesn’t ever over explain. The sense of mystery integral to good horror is still there, but without the under-explanation that is so commonly supplanted for real intrigue.
As with the previous chapter, most of the time outside of purely expository segments is spent sneaking around, but there is a distinct focus on dispatching enemies this time around. A new mechanic allows you to push enemies off of roofs, and there always seemed to be enough axes to provide instant stealth kills this time around. It was a bit disappointing that there weren’t as many creative options, but the faster tone worked well with the streamlined narrative focus.
This time around, you also get to partake in some gunplay. The Assignment’s pre-scripted shooting gallery disguised as a shooting segment was fun, but didn’t reflect the tense combat that made the base game so popular. This time around, you actually get a gun for a good quarter of the DLC. At first you find a pistol in a construction yard, and theoretically shoot barrels to tactically dispatch groups. Practically, you just shoot everything because ammo is abundant. After this short sequence, you get to fight the spotlight headed boss from the previous episode, which stood out as being both intuitive and satisfying. A bit easy, perhaps, but with some decent mechanical challenge that takes some learning.
After that, you trip over a rock and lose your pistol, and are unarmed until you get a double barreled shotgun. The clunky and powerful handcannon fits the DLC well, as each blast counts as one shot and must be reloaded. You can only hold 6 shots total, and reload times are killer, so grouping is crucial if you want to survive. Ammo is satisfyingly scarce, but if you play smart it’s never an issue.
Along with the gunplay is a new glow-stick portion, which I wish played a larger part. You have unlimited sticks, but can only have three active at a time, making the game a dangerous mix of leapfrog and trying to check at a distance. Unfortunately, they never come back into play after the segment. I was really hoping that they would fit into the light puzzles that made the previous chapter so unique, but unfortunately those are largely absent as well. You still use your flashlight to reveal pathways and hidden numbers, but they didn’t evolve on the concept at all and it plays a much smaller part. It works well in the pacing of this chapter, so don’t take it as a huge criticism, but I do feel that it was a missed opportunity.
It all adds up to a truly epic multi-stage boss fight that caps off the two part series on a high note. The fight reflects the nature of the antagonist, is unique in design, feels natural despite its extra-narrative nature, and most importantly feels like an accomplishment. It’s a lesson in good boss design, something that has been largely missing from the action/horror game genre for some time now.
All the positives aside, The Consequence suffers from an overall lack of variety. There are fewer enemy types than The Assignment, and combat situations are less diverse, generally boiling down to either shooting or walking up behind the thing you want to kill. There are a couple of moments where you have the option of trapping zombies in locked rooms, but is too complicated given the available “axe-to-the-head” plan. Likewise, enemies aren’t used as creatively. The exploding corpse enemies didn’t serve as a complex puzzle, with their scant few appearances being little more than bottle toss games of fetch. If The Assignment felt like an obstacle course, this is like an obstacle course you can cheat at by walking around it.
As much as I liked this episode, it is clear that far more care went into the story side than the gameplay. It feels like a straight line from story segment to story segment, with brief puzzle/combat to just remind you that this is a video game and not a visual novel. It doesn’t feel like the challenge segments are part of a natural world. This is especially apparent during a segment where Ruvik is attempting to mind control Leslie using paintings that shoot out blood. It takes a moment to burn them, so you have to be careful to only burn them when the patrolling enemies are looking the other way. You would think that the imminent possession would offer some kind of time constraint or that the screaming paintings you light on fire would alert enemies, but no, the whole thing is just a glorified switch flip. It could just as easily been you rummaging through a drawer for a keycard or turning a valve, and the segments would have been basically the same.
When I break it down, there are more things that I disliked about The Consequence than I did with The Assignment, so it does beg the question of why I liked The Consequence more. Narrative is very important to me, so crafting a well thought out and attentive story makes up for a lot of missing light puzzles and traps to lure things into. The Consequence’s greatest accomplishment is wrapping up the previous story while creating new and most importantly natural plot points to be covered in the future. It doesn’t ask questions for the sake of asking them, but instead expands the world.
Let me explain a bit what I mean by this. Around Saw 4, the movies began answering questions I didn’t have. They were trying to keep the series going, so introduced Hoffman as the new antagonist. They gave the vague explanation of “Amanda and John couldn’t have moved all these bodies by themselves, they were a woman and a sickly old man! They must have had a large male to help them.” This was something I had never considered, because of course I didn’t, it’s totally irrelevant. That’s kind of how most video games expand on their stories. For example, explaining Albert Wesker’s motivation by saying he was actually a failed experiment of a superweapon program is all fine and dandy if it’s the first game, but explaining it 7 games in after already explaining 3 other times why he is doing what he is doing feels like bullshit.
The Consequence doesn’t do that. It answers questions that were not already answered, and creates new intrigue in areas that reasonably matter, but weren’t previously explored. It gives new life to the series in a way it didn’t have before, but without losing the core of what gave the game personality. It’s a tough act to accomplish, but it cements it as a solid and unskippable installment to the series. At the price of just $20 for both episodes, the real consequence would be missing it.
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Categorized:Horror Gaming Reviews
