I unscrewed a nearby fire hydrant, waited till the group was ankle-high in water, and blasted the pool with a Shock Bolt, taking down six enemies at once. One failed attack saw me hightailing it from a horde of The Haunted. Variety in your means of attack is important, as your environment can often be manipulated to suit your circumstances. Graphics settings Motion Blur, Depth of Field, SSAO, Screen-Space Reflections, Volumetric Lighting, Shadows, Anti-Aliasing, Chromatic Aberration and Film Grain (can be disabled), FOV slider, LOD, Bloom, Object Motion Blur, Camera Motion Blur. The Evil Within 2 runs on a customised version of the id Tech 5 Engine, named the STEM Engine. NB-The original Evil Within game ran on the id Tech 5 Engine. The Evil Within 2 ran without any problems at ultra settings/1080p on my GTX 980/8GB RAM/Intel i5-6600K PC. The loot was often well guarded, which forced me to engage with the game's new cover system: two modes that allow Castellanos to hug surfaces when crouched, and portray him as a greyed-out silhouette when hiding in long grass. During the game's earlier chapters, I regularly found myself abandoning the main story arc, instead trekking to the furthest corners of the urban sprawl in search of loot and ammo. This presents a more thoughtful approach to progression.
Early on, you pick up a communications device that allows you to track Lily's whereabouts, as well as a host of optional side ventures, such as the locations of weapon parts and caches, and bits of additional storytelling. It's here that the game first experiments with an open world structure, as you make your way back and forth across a handful of well-sized maps, each of which is filled with accessible buildings and collectible items.
The Evil Within 2 drops protagonist Sebastian Castellanos into the simulated world of Union-a corrupted, monster-ridden town that's thought to contain your (presumed dead) daughter, Lily.