Sebastian Castellanos is returning this October in a new adventure to find his lost daughter Lilly, believed dead, in what is becoming a highly anticipated sequel. While the game took less time to make than the first, the developer is boasting a larger game with a more open experience. In a recent interview producer, Shinji Mikami and director John Johanas opened up about The Evil Within 2‘s horror elements. Here is what Mikami had to say on the matter:

The last game was completely linear, and this time was more open feeling, which for a horror game was quite a challenge to create.”

According to Mikami, it is difficult to make games that are original any longer. Higher stakes and larger budgets make it easy for companies to go big while playing it safe. It would seem they want to take The Evil Within 2’s horror elements and story and make it more about the player becoming immersed in the world than just experiencing jump scares. Here is what Johanas had to say about it:

Scale is one thing; it’s really easy to make something big–you just make it big. But [you have] to find the right density. One of the things we wanted to make sure this time is that it’s not too suffocating in terms of how we presented horror elements compared to the first game. We want it to be open, so you can explore at your own place, and have a sort of ebb and flow to horror experiences and downtime. That just takes trial and error, going back and forth. But because the trial-and-error period was very quick, we made things, we adjusted based on feedback, very quickly.”

Despite the obvious scale of The Evil Within 2’s horror elements and the world, it would seem the producer is interested in doing something smaller too. In the interview, Mikami noted that he was interested in going that route, but wasn’t sure if it was okay given the grandiose nature of games these days. For those looking to dig into this game, it will be available for PC Xbox One and PS4 October 13th.

Is it possible that pacing the Evil Within 2’s horror elements out more could make for a better experience for the genre? Join in on the conversation in the comment section below! Don’t forget to follow DFTG on Twitter for live gaming and entertainment news 24/7!