The Evil Within 2 Developer Talks Why Triple-A Horror is Hard

The Evil Within 2 seems to be doing quite well on the critical side of things, with most reviews leaning on the positive side due to an interesting new location and swell gameplay and monsters. But as Capcom recently learned with Resident Evil 7, even successful horror games struggle to start really raking in the cash. That, of course, means that it's getting increasingly rarer to see Triple-A horror games released.

In a chat with Game Watcher, The Evil Within 2's game director, John Johanas, went into some more detail about the horrifying truth of triple-A horror game development.

"It's certainly tricky to make a big horror. You realize when you make a AAA horror game that's big on graphics, you don't see it come together until the final moments. It's tricky to calculate things in an effective way, and more so with horror because it's so built on creating an experience that doesn't have gaps. The risk is higher. We have the experience so we can mitigate those risks a little, but it's a daunting task for anyone not familiar with the genre to create a AAA horror game."

That makes sense. Unfortunately, it seems as if The Evil Within 2, even with the risk mitigation, isn't doing so hot in sales right now. While we don't have any official numbers, but on the week of launch, it was noted that the second game shipped about a quarter of the number the first game did, and what's more, failed to even hit the top ten most-sold games that week. Considering how essential those debut weeks are to a game's ultimate success, it bodes very badly for this triple-A horror game.

Which is a shame, but hey, you can't tell people what to like or what to buy, even if the designer seems pretty cool.