The Evil Within Remake: Is Tango Gameworks Bringing Back The Horror Gem?

Almost a decade later, Tango Gameworks' flawed horror gem still begs for redemption; now is the perfect time to reawaken its nightmare with The Evil Within remake.

Opinion by Placid on May 05, 2025

The Evil Within, which came out in 2014, is still one of the most interesting and frustrating survival horror games out there. It was a really smart, ambitious, and deeply flawed mess. When it came out, it was at a time when horror entries, both movies and games, were starting to become popular again, and its history immediately raised expectations.

In any case, this was the first game made by Tango Gameworks, which was led by Shinji Mikami, the person who directed Resident Evil and pretty much produced the survival horror genre with Resident Evil 4. All eyes were on him to change things again.

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And The Evil Within did well in many ways. It showed something completely horrifying and disturbing to the mind. The story took you on a crazy, bloody ride through a world that didn't make any sense, and that was the point. However, it was held back by serious technical problems, bad design choices, and poor performance that prevented it from being truly great. And that's exactly why it still deserves a second chance after ten years.

The Evil Within was never just a monster-shooting game. It wanted to get inside your head and stay there for a while. Detective Sebastian Castellanos was the main character of the game. He went down into a broken nightmare world called STEM, which was a shared, twisted consciousness that turned people's minds into a strange, hostile maze.

The idea was very creative; it mixed science fiction and psychological horror in a way that not many games had done before. It was like the rules of physics didn't exist at all; rooms would move around, and hallways would collapse in on themselves. It was confusing, disorganized, and beautifully crazy.

The settings, which included bloody hospitals, torn-down mansions, and cathedrals that were falling apart, were made to feel unstable. Unease was always there, not just from the scary enemies hiding in the shadows. It was also from the environment itself. There were times when doors would disappear, and floors would appear under your feet. The game would often surprise you. It was a master class in mood and the unexpected.

All of that couldn't hide the problems that made the game hard, though.

Even though The Evil Within had a big idea, it came out with some technical problems. The game was tough to play on older consoles, for instance, the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3. There was a lot of input lag, frame rates dropped often, and load times were too long to keep you interested.

Even worse was the well-known letterboxing. The game wasn't full-screen; instead, it was locked to a cinematic aspect ratio, which cut off a big part of the screen. It's possible that this was done on purpose to make the players feel more trapped, but in the end, it made them more angry than scared.

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The PC version did a little better, with tweaks and the ability to turn off the letterbox format. But stability was still a worry even there. There were a lot of crashes and bugs that could mess up whole sequences. To be fair, the game often felt like it was about to fall apart, which fit with its theme but didn't improve the experience for the players.

Even with all of this, people still loved it. Why?

The Evil Within had a surprisingly interesting gameplay loop that didn't show how bad it was. It took a lot of ideas from Resident Evil 4 for its combat system but made it darker and deadlier. It was hard to get ammunition, enemies were relentless, and death could happen quickly.

The shooting and moving were purposefully awkward, and there was a calculated tension, making every encounter feel important. You could use traps to your advantage, or they could go horribly wrong. More than in Mikami's other games, stealth was important, and smart players could come up with many ways to stay alive.

Another great thing was the boss fights. From Laura, who had long hair and looked like a spider, to the huge Keeper, who had a safe for a head, the game's horrifying characters became famous. These were the kinds of encounters that players remembered, not just because of how they were set up but also because they made them so scared.

But for every brilliant moment, there were frustrating ones, like when the checkpoints were bad, the stealth mechanics didn't work right, or the aiming was so bad that it ruined your best plans.

Because of all this, The Evil Within would be great as a modern remake, not a complete reimagining, but more like Metro Redux. That is a careful, from-the-ground-up improvement that keeps the game's personality while fixing the big problems that were holding it back. A Redux version could fix the framerate, eliminate the letterboxing, improve the graphics, make the controls smoother, and change how the inventory is managed and how the user interface looks.

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Why now? Because there are so many great horror remakes out there right now. Dead Space, Resident Evil 2, and the soon-to-be-released remake of Silent Hill 2 have all shown how much people want better versions of old horror games. These games didn't rely on nostalgia; they used new technology to improve the old experiences, which made new fans happy and kept old ones coming back.

People would be just as excited about a remake of The Evil Within. Giving Tango Gameworks's first game the treatment it always deserved and letting a new generation of horror fans play it without having to deal with how it looks now would be great.

Of course, there is a big problem: Tango Gameworks no longer owns the IP. It turned out that only a few IPs, like the hit rhythm-action game Hi-Fi Rush, made the jump after being surprisingly bought by Krafton in 2024. The Evil Within, on the other hand, stayed with Bethesda, which is now part of Microsoft.

Tango no longer has creative control over the series, and since the studio's future is uncertain, it's unlikely that the original team will be involved if the series is ever brought back to life. That's a tough one to take, especially since Shinji Mikami is so deeply merged with the game.

Still, the fact that Microsoft kept the IP tells us something. They had a reason for keeping it. That could mean there's still a chance, either because a sequel was once planned or because they thought the name would be useful in the long run. And with Game Pass, there's no better place for an old horror movie to start over. The Evil Within would do very well on the service if it were remastered or remade, especially if it were put next to other big names in the genre.

In spite of everything, The Evil Within is still a very popular game. It does have flaws, but it also has a personality. It doesn't seem like a product that was made to fit market trends. It looks like the dream of a crazy scientist—a twisted experiment that sometimes went wrong. It was brave, strange, violent, and not at all afraid to turn players off in order to try something new.

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This is the kind of game that would benefit the most from being remade. It's not a cash grab or a nostalgia play but a fix-up. With a little more work, help, and power behind the engine, this is your chance to show what the game could have been.

Many times, horror works best when it's hard to guess what will happen next. Even though the game sometimes broke under the weight of all that chaos, The Evil Within did very well in it. But that spark is still there, along with the creative madness, the constant fear, and the making of strange worlds. It only needs a second try and a cleaner background.

It would be a shame for The Evil Within to be forgotten now that so many other horror games are being redone with care for new players. It was a risky game that gave players scary moments they'll never forget and hinted at something much bigger than what technology could do at the time. After ten years, the tools are now available to make that original vision come true.

A remake would do more than fix bugs and improve the graphics. It would bring back a game that was ahead of its time but couldn't be played because of the technology available at the time. It would be like going back to one of the scariest worlds in video games, but it would be better—more powerful, better stable.

Also, it would work great for Game Pass. It would be the weird, dark, and beloved kind of experience that players love to find again and again. I'm not sure if it would be called The Evil Within: Re-Evil'd, The Evil Redux, or something even stranger, but this game deserves to rise from the depths again.

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