I'm unfortunately one of the few hardcore fans of this game and ultimately think it's kind of a masterpiece and a real successor to RE4 dismissed way too easily because of the technical issues it launched with and the bad first impression it makes with its walking sim-lite opening. Well, and the fact that it never should've been cross gen. But the technical issues are mostly gone on a modern PC, barring some possible minor issues that can be remedied with simple config file edits or videocard overrides. Yeah, I'm a fanboy, but bear with me while I talk about the lighting. I'll go more into why I cherish the game design after.
The lighting in this game still feels like something of an inheritor of the sixth generation unified light and shadow in Doom 3, Butcher Bay, F.E.A.R., Prey and seventh gen Dead Space 1/2/3, Dark Athena, The Darkness and the Metro series. It's still very impressive to me and about its only flaw is some minor shadow acne and overall shadow resolution. Let me explain: here's a game that goes all in on shadowcasters and receivers. Hell, even the wonderful and frequent cloth physics are shadowcasters and receivers. There might be some baked occlusion in outdoor areas at a distance and maybe otherwise, but from my rough estimate it's all virtually realtime with indoor areas and outdoor areas alike making clever use of deep shadows, SSAO, post effects and dynamically shifting ambient light values to render truly dark corners without relying on baked occlusion. The subtle indirect specular in dark areas is also remarkable for how well it works and how subtle it is instead of the overkill indirect specular of a game like Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty (Wo Long would've benefited vastly from more subtlety there and elsewhere, but I'll get into that). Back to the shadowcasting: The Evil Within is not limited to one pass, single gradient shadowcasting, either. Like Doom 3 and F.E.A.R. before it, it supports various gradients depending on the light source settings along with additive blending of shadows and light sources alike. And it's not just your lantern that contributes to this, it's other light sources in the game. Admittedly it's sometimes rarer than you'd see in Doom 3 or Riddick, but it's there and it adds a lot, especially after playing too many current games with single gradient shadows. Couple that with ID Tech 5's wonderful cinematic bloom, sublime cinematography in terms of light placement and wonderfully directional lighting in the vein of film noir/chiaroscuro and IMO it's a masterpiece of videogame lighting. The character lighting is so damned good too. The whole game has killer art direction, though, at least for me.
And, well, I think the game is wonderful. There was a big deal made of how much the sequel was a step up and while I find it similarly wonderful and a brilliant excursion into semi-open survival horror, it's just the slightest bit the lesser game to me. Outside the forced walking sections in service of some hilariously bad psychological horror, the design of the first is this killer and even prescient blend of classic resident evil and RE4 with many of its own inventions. The traps, man, they're wild. Not only do they present you with a ton of emergent gameplay but they also trip you up when shit goes sideways and you're expecting it. And I live for that kind of game design. They're a pretty perfect evolution of similar ideas in RE4. That carousel room late in the game with the central spinning blade is a clinic in game design and good reminder of what makes Mikami's games frequently special. The slow burn toward unhinged chaos in that room is brilliant, plain and simple. And the game is full of moments like this. And it flaws really aren't that many. The mutated dog boss is pretty mid. The end boss is a cakewalk power fantasy but also consistent with Mikami's RE games, which almost all end on similarly power fantasy fights as a kind of reward. Its real last boss is a room of enemies just before it, anyway. The movement is infamously derided and the stiff animation doesn't help but the latter feels like a byproduct of constant tweaking and you can upgrade it. And I feel like the movement is just right for its blend of classic RE and action RE, but that's me. I honestly can't think of any other complaints offhand outside of technical ones, like megatexture pop-in. But that reminds me that this game makes such good use of megatextures in combination with dynamic lighting that I feel like it's arguably the visual presentation lots of us wanted and/or expected from RAGE until ID decided on consoles and 60fps on those machines at that. I still wish some theoretical PC only version of RAGE existed because to go against the grain again I adore that game for what it is - it's got killer AI and encounter design and striking art direction, half baked as the whole package might be.
As an aside, TEW has some sublime physics too. I still don't know that there's anything else that really touches its IV carts for the convincing weight and interactivity of a rolling cart with low center of gravity, something that is so rarely simulated in games. Maybe Condemned's office chairs, but they lack the wonderful IV bags hanging loose. Maybe some stuff in Teardown too.
But there really feels like little that touches it in the 8th or 9th gens in terms of lighting unity, even some raytraced titles. But I'll qualify that by saying that I mean some lightly ray traced stuff, not all in raytracing like some UE5 titles or the Metro Exodus update (as impressive as that is, though, I honestly prefer the original exodus lighting because the game was better art directed for it. Introducing raytracing for all the same lights has some unfortunate consequences for its art direction. But it qualifies regardless). Other 8th and 9th gen games that most come to mind WRT similarly whole lighting are the Dead Space remake, Ghostwire Tokyo, Jusant, Hunt: Showdown, Alan Wake 2, Control, Last of Us Part 2, the Hitman reboots, RE7 (RE8 kinda stumbles), RE2/3makes, RE4make to some extent, Dishonored 2, the new Prey, the Tomb Raider remakes and Ratchet and Clank. I went off on Ratchet and Clank in a pretty misguided rant on here a few years ago but after playing the game more it definitely changed my mind. I still got issues with some of the art direction WRT the lighting but what are you gonna do.
I realize that's a pretty large list of games, it's just that as much as I like the lighting in all of them some don't quite hit for me quite the way the first Evil Within does. Which is very subjective on my part, of course. 75% of the reason I'm so drawn to this game's lighting is its art direction, where lights are placed, the varied shadowpuppetry - the vibes in other words. But that it's as interactive as it is on top of that is really something to me, and I love interactive lighting for all the ways it places me within a space the way an immersive sim full of sandbox interaction does. And I miss this kind of interactive lighting. Certainly we're going to be entering a new dawn of interactive lighting shortly via UE5 and more raytracing in general but clearly there are also ways to get these results without raytracing and its a shame so much "cheaper" lighting has devolved into what I was complaining about with respect to Wo Long. Which has some rather good lighting and some of the worst I've ever seen in almost equal measure. And it's not just the overkill of indirect specular but an increasingly prevalent problem of pairing instanced and kit-bashed scenery with its individual specular and rim lighting on each instanced object not playing nicely with the overall shadowcasting. And that's killing me lately because it's cropping up more and more lately and seems like the easiest fix were devs to just tweak the ways those instanced pieces receive light and shadow. Correct me if I'm wrong, there. And there's too little nuance in some realtime lighting these days. Too many hard-lit splotches of nuclear Red and Purple for my tastes, and I adore not only red and purple lighting but neon lighting. I'd just prefer it if it leaned more Blade Runner than MOR synthwave, I guess.
And, honestly, as good as Evil Within 2's lighting can be, it's got almost nothing on the first game's lighting. It's clear they scaled it back and switched to a different technique in the sequel for performance reasons and it shows. The lighting isn't nearly as "whole", with various elements receiving light differently based on what I figure is optimization but maybe is also the fault of some imperfect PBR. I don't think the first game uses any PBR, but it might as well for how good it looks and how carefully tweaked it is, I think.
I still haven't checked out the supposed remaster of TEW1 that is the Windows store/gamepass port, so maybe it fulfills some of this, but I'd almost kill for a remaster of the first game that included uncompressed versions of those megatextures, assuming they're archived, higher res lighting, no megatexture pop-in and perhaps even more light sources/nuance.
Anyway, this post is way too long but add any obvious or not obvious absences to my list of current 8th and 9th gen games with similarly interesting lighting, baked occlusion or not, if you want. Always on the lookout for cool, interactive lighting that's well art directed. Really looking forward to the next evil within in any case.
edit: despite the baked occlusion and occasional baked shadowmaps of Dead Space 2 - and again I don't know that TEW1 is free of either - that game really hits all the same boxes for me. That and the remake of the first have some of the coolest and most varied lighting. The original Dead Space is no slouch, either.
The lighting in this game still feels like something of an inheritor of the sixth generation unified light and shadow in Doom 3, Butcher Bay, F.E.A.R., Prey and seventh gen Dead Space 1/2/3, Dark Athena, The Darkness and the Metro series. It's still very impressive to me and about its only flaw is some minor shadow acne and overall shadow resolution. Let me explain: here's a game that goes all in on shadowcasters and receivers. Hell, even the wonderful and frequent cloth physics are shadowcasters and receivers. There might be some baked occlusion in outdoor areas at a distance and maybe otherwise, but from my rough estimate it's all virtually realtime with indoor areas and outdoor areas alike making clever use of deep shadows, SSAO, post effects and dynamically shifting ambient light values to render truly dark corners without relying on baked occlusion. The subtle indirect specular in dark areas is also remarkable for how well it works and how subtle it is instead of the overkill indirect specular of a game like Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty (Wo Long would've benefited vastly from more subtlety there and elsewhere, but I'll get into that). Back to the shadowcasting: The Evil Within is not limited to one pass, single gradient shadowcasting, either. Like Doom 3 and F.E.A.R. before it, it supports various gradients depending on the light source settings along with additive blending of shadows and light sources alike. And it's not just your lantern that contributes to this, it's other light sources in the game. Admittedly it's sometimes rarer than you'd see in Doom 3 or Riddick, but it's there and it adds a lot, especially after playing too many current games with single gradient shadows. Couple that with ID Tech 5's wonderful cinematic bloom, sublime cinematography in terms of light placement and wonderfully directional lighting in the vein of film noir/chiaroscuro and IMO it's a masterpiece of videogame lighting. The character lighting is so damned good too. The whole game has killer art direction, though, at least for me.
And, well, I think the game is wonderful. There was a big deal made of how much the sequel was a step up and while I find it similarly wonderful and a brilliant excursion into semi-open survival horror, it's just the slightest bit the lesser game to me. Outside the forced walking sections in service of some hilariously bad psychological horror, the design of the first is this killer and even prescient blend of classic resident evil and RE4 with many of its own inventions. The traps, man, they're wild. Not only do they present you with a ton of emergent gameplay but they also trip you up when shit goes sideways and you're expecting it. And I live for that kind of game design. They're a pretty perfect evolution of similar ideas in RE4. That carousel room late in the game with the central spinning blade is a clinic in game design and good reminder of what makes Mikami's games frequently special. The slow burn toward unhinged chaos in that room is brilliant, plain and simple. And the game is full of moments like this. And it flaws really aren't that many. The mutated dog boss is pretty mid. The end boss is a cakewalk power fantasy but also consistent with Mikami's RE games, which almost all end on similarly power fantasy fights as a kind of reward. Its real last boss is a room of enemies just before it, anyway. The movement is infamously derided and the stiff animation doesn't help but the latter feels like a byproduct of constant tweaking and you can upgrade it. And I feel like the movement is just right for its blend of classic RE and action RE, but that's me. I honestly can't think of any other complaints offhand outside of technical ones, like megatexture pop-in. But that reminds me that this game makes such good use of megatextures in combination with dynamic lighting that I feel like it's arguably the visual presentation lots of us wanted and/or expected from RAGE until ID decided on consoles and 60fps on those machines at that. I still wish some theoretical PC only version of RAGE existed because to go against the grain again I adore that game for what it is - it's got killer AI and encounter design and striking art direction, half baked as the whole package might be.
As an aside, TEW has some sublime physics too. I still don't know that there's anything else that really touches its IV carts for the convincing weight and interactivity of a rolling cart with low center of gravity, something that is so rarely simulated in games. Maybe Condemned's office chairs, but they lack the wonderful IV bags hanging loose. Maybe some stuff in Teardown too.
But there really feels like little that touches it in the 8th or 9th gens in terms of lighting unity, even some raytraced titles. But I'll qualify that by saying that I mean some lightly ray traced stuff, not all in raytracing like some UE5 titles or the Metro Exodus update (as impressive as that is, though, I honestly prefer the original exodus lighting because the game was better art directed for it. Introducing raytracing for all the same lights has some unfortunate consequences for its art direction. But it qualifies regardless). Other 8th and 9th gen games that most come to mind WRT similarly whole lighting are the Dead Space remake, Ghostwire Tokyo, Jusant, Hunt: Showdown, Alan Wake 2, Control, Last of Us Part 2, the Hitman reboots, RE7 (RE8 kinda stumbles), RE2/3makes, RE4make to some extent, Dishonored 2, the new Prey, the Tomb Raider remakes and Ratchet and Clank. I went off on Ratchet and Clank in a pretty misguided rant on here a few years ago but after playing the game more it definitely changed my mind. I still got issues with some of the art direction WRT the lighting but what are you gonna do.
I realize that's a pretty large list of games, it's just that as much as I like the lighting in all of them some don't quite hit for me quite the way the first Evil Within does. Which is very subjective on my part, of course. 75% of the reason I'm so drawn to this game's lighting is its art direction, where lights are placed, the varied shadowpuppetry - the vibes in other words. But that it's as interactive as it is on top of that is really something to me, and I love interactive lighting for all the ways it places me within a space the way an immersive sim full of sandbox interaction does. And I miss this kind of interactive lighting. Certainly we're going to be entering a new dawn of interactive lighting shortly via UE5 and more raytracing in general but clearly there are also ways to get these results without raytracing and its a shame so much "cheaper" lighting has devolved into what I was complaining about with respect to Wo Long. Which has some rather good lighting and some of the worst I've ever seen in almost equal measure. And it's not just the overkill of indirect specular but an increasingly prevalent problem of pairing instanced and kit-bashed scenery with its individual specular and rim lighting on each instanced object not playing nicely with the overall shadowcasting. And that's killing me lately because it's cropping up more and more lately and seems like the easiest fix were devs to just tweak the ways those instanced pieces receive light and shadow. Correct me if I'm wrong, there. And there's too little nuance in some realtime lighting these days. Too many hard-lit splotches of nuclear Red and Purple for my tastes, and I adore not only red and purple lighting but neon lighting. I'd just prefer it if it leaned more Blade Runner than MOR synthwave, I guess.
And, honestly, as good as Evil Within 2's lighting can be, it's got almost nothing on the first game's lighting. It's clear they scaled it back and switched to a different technique in the sequel for performance reasons and it shows. The lighting isn't nearly as "whole", with various elements receiving light differently based on what I figure is optimization but maybe is also the fault of some imperfect PBR. I don't think the first game uses any PBR, but it might as well for how good it looks and how carefully tweaked it is, I think.
I still haven't checked out the supposed remaster of TEW1 that is the Windows store/gamepass port, so maybe it fulfills some of this, but I'd almost kill for a remaster of the first game that included uncompressed versions of those megatextures, assuming they're archived, higher res lighting, no megatexture pop-in and perhaps even more light sources/nuance.
Anyway, this post is way too long but add any obvious or not obvious absences to my list of current 8th and 9th gen games with similarly interesting lighting, baked occlusion or not, if you want. Always on the lookout for cool, interactive lighting that's well art directed. Really looking forward to the next evil within in any case.
edit: despite the baked occlusion and occasional baked shadowmaps of Dead Space 2 - and again I don't know that TEW1 is free of either - that game really hits all the same boxes for me. That and the remake of the first have some of the coolest and most varied lighting. The original Dead Space is no slouch, either.
