'The Evil Within 2' could be the scariest game revealed at E3 2017

By Brad Jones Published June 12, 2017

The Evil Within 2 – Offizieller E3-Ankündigungs-Trailer

Bethesda announced a sequel to Shinji Mikami’s 2014 horror game The Evil Within at E3. Rumors about the project have been circulating for several weeks prior, after a related job description was posted to the internet, but now the title has been officially confirmed via a chilling reveal trailer.

The trailer reintroduced the character of Sebastian Castellanos from the first game, as well as the shadowy Mobius organization. Soon enough, Castellanos is forced to return to STEM, a machine that’s capable of merging several minds into one — with some pretty unsettling effects.

Castellanos’ journey starts off with a recreation of the fire that killed his daughter, and things only get worse from there. He is trapped in a depraved art gallery where corpses hang from the ceiling in bags, and a mechanical monster begins scuttling up and down the walls, no doubt with malicious intent.

The clip then returns to another scene featuring Castellanos’ daughter, who finds herself among a group of horribly mutated humans. A man standing at the head of the group summons flames that engulf her body. The trailer ends with quick cuts of some of the monsters players will face in the game — and they’re as varied as they are horrible.

Horror games are back in vogue at the minute, thanks in no small part to the refreshing first-person action of Resident Evil 7. Mikami has played a huge role in the success of the Resident Evil franchise, so it’ll certainly be interesting to see how The Evil Within 2 develops some of the ideas at play in the first game.

The Evil Within 2 is set to make its debut on October 13, 2017 — which just so happens to be Friday the 13th. Mikami’s latest slice of nightmarish horror action is set to be made available across PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

Keep up to date with the latest E3 announcements and reveals here.

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Former Digital Trends Contributor

Brad is an English-born writer currently splitting his time between Edinburgh and Pennsylvania. You can find him on Twitter…

Gaming

Ubisoft will not attend E3 2023, but it will still host a summer live stream

Basim showing off his hidden blade in front of the Bagdad cityscape.

Ubisoft will no longer be attending E3 2023, even though it said it would participate in February. Instead, the game publisher behind Assassin's Creed and Far Cry plans to hold its own Ubisoft Forward Live event in Los Angeles this June.
Ubisoft confirmed its change in plans to Video Games Chronicle today, with a spokesperson saying that while Ubisoft "initially intended to have an official E3 presence, we've made the subsequent decision to move in a different direction." This is a change in messaging from just over a month ago when Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said, "If E3 happens, we will be there, and we will have a lot of things to show."
What caused this change of heart in Ubisoft is unclear. However, it seems like the company found that it could still successfully promote its game lineup without being attached to the Entertainment Software Association's event. We don't know much about the Ubisoft Forward Live event other than it'll take place on June 12 in Los Angeles, but Ubisoft tells VGC that "we look forward to sharing more details with our players very soon."
This puts E3 2023 in a weird overall spot, as we currently know more about the companies that won't be at the event -- like Microsoft, Ubisoft, and Nintendo -- than we do about the publishers that will actually be there. After being canceled in 2020 and 2022 and being digital-only in 2021, E3 2023 was supposed to be the annual gaming trade show's grand return. Right now, though, the relevance and viability of E3 2023 are questionable.
ReedPop has not yet commented on the fact that Ubisoft is no longer attending E3 2023.

Gaming

Nintendo confirms that it won’t be part of E3 2023

Pikmin and Bulborb in Pikmin 4.

Nintendo has confirmed reports that it won't be participating in E3 2023, meaning the gaming trade show will be missing one of its key vendors when it returns in-person this June.
"We approach our involvement in any event on a case-by-case basis and are always considering various ways to engage with our fans," a Nintendo spokesperson said in a statement to The Verge. "Since this year’s E3 show didn’t fit into our plans, we have made the decision to not participate. However, we have been and continue to be a strong supporter of the ESA [Entertainment Software Association] and E3."
After taking 2020 and 2022 off and being digital-only in 2021, this year was supposed to mark the grand return of E3, which was once a dominant game industry trade show that attracted every big video game company. Although Sony hasn't participated since 2019, it still came as a shock in January when IGN reported that both Nintendo and Microsoft would not be attending E3 this year as well. It appears that the report is true, as Microsoft has not confirmed any E3-related events outside of its independently run Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase.
Nintendo skipping E3 2023 not only takes away a vendor that dominated the show floor in previous years, but also raises questions about whether or not the company will hold an exciting Nintendo Direct around then. While Nintendo typically holds a big showcase with lots of first-party game announcements around June every year, in 2022 it only held a third-party driven Partner Showcase in June. Now that we know it won't be at E3 2023, we're left to wonder when exactly then next big Nintendo Direct will be.
E3 2023 will take place between June 13 and June 16, but don't expect Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft to have a big presence there.

Gaming

Here’s what E3 2023 could look like without Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft

Playstation character wall at E3 2018

Let's start with the good news: E3 2023 will be held in its in-person format once again after three long years of digital events necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, this time with ReedPop at the helm. The bad news is that Sony, Xbox, and Nintendo -- gaming's "Big 3" -- may not show up at the industry’s biggest convention this summer.

This is according to a report from IGN citing multiple sources, who claimed the companies won’t be a part of the show or make appearances on the floor at the Los Angeles Convention Center in any way. Their absence from this year’s E3, especially Nintendo’s, may come as a shock to the gaming community, but it's not such a surprise when looking at the past few iterations of E3. Even before the pandemic locked everyone down in 2020, Sony and Xbox had been hosting their own E3-style livestreams, so it was more likely they would do it again this year anyway. Nintendo, on the other hand, managed to show off its upcoming games via Nintendo Direct streams and at its booth, console kiosks and all.