The Evil Within 2 | Interview with director John Johanas on working with Mikami, making a horror sequel and the future of the series
When The Evil Within was released in 2014, many people were excited because of one name on the box: Shinji Mikami. A major hand in the Resident Evil series' beginnings, Mikami is seen by many as a legend in horror video games. The Evil Within was a critical and commercial success, and this was year got its sequel: The Evil Within 2. Mikami was still on the project, but no longer as the game director, replaced by a man named John Johanas. Without the legendary status of Mikami, without decades of experience, he led the team and we thought The Evil Within 2 was a brave and brilliant game.
We spoke to Johanas about what it's like taking over Mikami's role, the making of The Evil Within 2 and, of course, what's next.
What's the story behind you being approached for the role of game director on The Evil Within 2, over Shinji Mikami last time?
It kind of just happened! I was pulled into a room, and they said "you do it!" It wasn't a question, it wasn't an offer, it was more like a finger point. After The Evil Within 1 was wrapping up I was given the opportunity to write a game design document for a series of DLCs [downloadable content, add-ons to the game] that we had planned to do for the original and I had made this sort of game concept for it. While we were still finishing up the game, Mikami-san asked me to write the script for that in the meantime, because that way it would go well with the game design if one person is handling it, and then after I did that he said "Well, since you already wrote and script and did the game design, you might as well just direct it and make sure it reaches that goal."
I did that for two out out of three DLCs that we put out and they wound up being well-received, which we're thankful for. Because of that he saw it as a good opportunity to work on a larger-scale project.
How intimidating was that, moving from directing smaller DLC to the full game?
I'm thankful I had the experience of the smaller project because it put everything in perspective a little bit, of how complicated things can get, but of course, when you're being given that position, half of your mind is going "Oh s---, oh s---, oh s---," and the other half is like "this is really cool, we can do super cool stuff with it". So it's a double edged sword of lots of pressure and things to think about, but also lots of opportunities. The goal for me was to get a balance so you don't get overwhelmed by the potential for disaster, but more get excited over the potential things we can do.
What's the relationship like between you and Mikami-san?
I like to think it's pretty good! We always just chat about game design ideas, if I have a problem with something or I can't wrap my head around some ideas we'll talk it out. And maybe there's something he thinks might be going in the wrong direction or he has some issues with so he'll pull me in and we'll talk about it. Of course there are things we argue about, but it's not a confrontational relationship, it's a very good, creative working relationship. Obviously he has tonnes of insight because he's a legend in this industry and he's been through it all, so anything he says has an enormous weight to it. It's good for me, because everything is sort of a learning opportunity.
Speaking of learning from him, what's the learning curve been like going to a game director role so quickly?
It's sort of like jumping into the fire, you know? I would say that it's extreme, that's why I'm thankful for having the DLC work that prepared me in a sense for that. When we did the DLCs, the team was a little bit smaller, and the scope was smaller, so it was easier for me to look over everything, even minute details like placement of certain items and things like that.
When the scale gets bigger, like for example this project, which is at least 15 hours long, with variance in these huge maps that we're doing, probably one of the hardest things was jumping to that position where you have to push yourself back a little bit, and leave it up to your team and trust in them that they'll get the work done.
As it's taking shape, that's when you smoothly jump in and if there's anything that needs to be tweaked or readjusted that's when you get to do it. So, for me, the tricky thing was letting go a little bit, letting the team grab on to those ideas and go with it, look from a distance and jump in when things are getting rough or when they're good to push things even further, ask how we can take lessons learned in one place and use them somewhere else. That's another balancing act, but I would say, yeah, it's tricky, the learning curve was rather high, but you just can't give up!
Did you have any misconceptions about the role before working at Tango Gameworks?
This is my first industry job, to be honest, I've never worked at another studio, so I didn't really have any conceptions about what a director does. All I knew was when I joined the company and I was watching Mikami-san work on the first game, he takes a very active role. Now I know that in some companies, the director has his office, and if you need to speak to him you make an appointment, but when we made the first game, I was sat right next to him, he was on the floor with everyone else. He was in the battlefield.
So my impression is that the director is just another team member, obviously they have a lot of weight behind their decisions but they need to be involved in the project. So that's what I tried to do when I took over that position, I thought for a little bit before about removing myself, but I never want to remove myself so far that I'm some sort of overseer that doesn't do anything, I like to be as hands on as possible.
Since you mentioned things that might not have happened - is there anything that was done in development that was considered too scary for the final game?
The "too scary" thing is a hard line to draw, because when you're making something, you never think it's too scary. I think if something is so scary that the person stops playing, that's not necessarily a bad thing! But the goal this time was a little different in its agenda to the first game, where it had what you would now classify as 'non-stop tension and terror', there was never any relief from the oppressive environment that we put you in.
We felt like it was a bit of a negative, a good horror game has an ebb and flow, things level out and you have a moment to take a breather, and then you can go dive back in to these scenarios that we've provided for you. This time we actually tried to focus a little bit on pulling back, we wanted some places not to be not scary, but to lower the tension and find a better balance than the last game.
So it was a little bit tricky because we focus our energy on the scary parts, and then we say "Okay, with this part, let's not make it dark, let's make this light, and have some of these elements like just drinking coffee, and things like that, just ways to cool off between tense moments.
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What would you say you're most proud of with The Evil Within 2 as a game or in development?
That it came out! I'm sure if you've spoken to people who make games, it's a very trying process. When you make games, there's multiple points where you think "Will it come together? Is this going to work? It's not working!" and then somehow you manage to get everything to fit into a box that winds up being the game that you play. It's the director's job to see through all of these problems and see the final picture and say that, even if something isn't working now, at the end it will be fine.
You've got to hold on to that, because it's easy for team members who will just focus on one area to only see that one part, to only see the faults in it. And now that it's out and we're seeing people say that they really like the pacing, and the new things that we're doing with the game, it's just even more satisfying to see people enjoy it.
Speaking of the changes to this over the first The Evil Within game, this one pushed towards more of a psychological kind of horror, can you go into why?
Early on in the process we knew we wanted to have Sebastian come back as the main character, but fix the faults that we had with him being a blank slate character and go into more of a personal journey. For most games, a psychological horror piece is mostly related to the trauma of a protagonist or the characters in a story, so we wanted to try have everything fit within that mould, so making things connect with the player character, Sebastian, and make it feel like it's more that you're going into his mind rather than just, like the first game, putting these imposing visuals on you that are almost supposed to gross you out.
From a horror perspective too, the first game had that gore horror thematic to it, and we already did that so if we retreaded the same ground I don't think it would be as interesting for people as if we tried something new in that respect, so there are elements of psychological horror in the first one, but we said let's try to push that to the front this time, and almost make it a flipped version of the original game, with the other side of the coin.
Another change is the open-world format for much of the game, what was the motivation for that and what sort of challenges did it pose in designing a survival horror game?
It was a big challenge, in general, but the impetus of the idea actually goes back to the first game. We had some stages that were fairly large to encourage exploration. Some of those levels were actually bigger but ended up getting cut down and we came back to the idea and asked "What if we can make these bigger levels?"
Personally I like the feeling of exploration, to me that was the big element of survival horror games that I've played in the past, and I wanted to bring that back in some fashion, encouraging exploration and wanting you to explore these dark corners of the maps that you probably wouldn't go to if you were just following the story.
We kind of settled on these sort of free-form stages, but we knew we didn't want it to be a full open world, just a period where you can take your time and explore things at your own pace.
There are lots of complexities that come with that; if you don't create that feeling where something could happen it gets a little boring, but if there are too many enemies it's just chaos and you can't explore.
Realistically it's just trial and error, adjusting art assets and lighting to make it not feel too daunting to run around and explore, but just enough that you can feel that sort of tension in the air. I wish I could be cool and say "Yeah, we just did it," but it was a lot of hard work, trial and error and testing lots of ideas.
That's always the way isn't it? You might assume something was easy but every developer says that no, actually it's really hard?
Yeah, I find solace in reading other reports people making stuff and they're like "Yeah, we didn't know what we were doing, and at the end it worked!" It feels kind of irresponsible but in a way that's true, because it's all about the feel of it when you put it together, and if it just isn't working you have to go back and reapproach it.
Was there any other media - like films, games, or books - that inspired aspects of The Evil Within 2?
From a visual standpoint some of the levels have a very surreal, dreamlike quality. There was a movie called The Cell in the early 2000s which was a nice inspiration for the art team to approach a gruesome beauty in the insane parts of the mind.
Any time a Stephen King adaptation is made, they always do a good job of portraying the sort of Americana feel. In this game we have a sort of American town as a large level to explore and we looked at works that stem from Stephen King to get that feeling as you're walking through the town.
Without spoiling too much, given the ending of The Evil Within 2, what's next for The Evil Within?
Hopefully we can get a vacation! You don't know how daunting this is, we've just finished it and then people ask what's next, and we're like "What?!" I don't know! We need to think about what will happen next. It's not something that will happen right away, but we'll see. I've got to be vague, how do you word that as vague as possible without being like "We have nothing to announce at this time."
At least you gave it as a full sentence!
Yeah, you can write it down and put in parentheses "Gets violently angry, it's like we just finished this can't you give me a break?!"
Speaking of the office, what's it been like in the Tango Gameworks office since release?
People are finally able to take some time off, so we're getting some people who are finally getting back to their normal lives, reapproaching humanity, getting used to the things that have changed in the world. But there's a lot of relief the game is out, we're watching people play it and obviously there's lots of let's plays and things like that, seeing people enjoy it, seeing the user reviews, we're all super satisfied with how people are liking it, so in a sense it's like that feeling when you're just leaning back in your chair and exhaling slowly, saying it was worth it.