Is The Evil Within Getting A Sequel? Here's What We Know

Shinji Mikami, the father of Resident Evil, managed to get a second wind at horror with the Evil Within series. The first game was received with lukewarm results, but some new information seems to point to a new game being in the works and here's what we know.

Destructoid is reporting that someone over on the NeoGaf forums spotted a job application for Tango Gameworks. By the way, for those of you who don't know, when Mikami left Capcom he joined Platinum Games and then later started up Tango Gameworks.

The job listing was for translating and quality assurance at the Japanese branch in Tokyo, Japan. They mention that it can be reached through the Tamachi train station.

One thing that stands out is that the QA and report translation position is being listed for a title under the name of Psychobreak 2. In Japan, The Evil Within was known as Psychobreak.

The position is being listed for the platforms Xbox One and PlayStation 4, meaning that this won't be a cross-generational release like the original game, which came out for the PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One. The additional seventh gen platforms likely added a lot of unnecessary restrictions and costs due to having to keep the game and assets downgraded to work well within their resource budgets. The developers would be granted a lot more leniency and freedom to explore the boundaries of horror by focusing more on just the Xbox One and PS4.

The Evil Within also originally launched on PC as well, but it's likely that if there really is a sequel in the works that this would mean that some other studio might be handling the port given that the job description only lists for the quality assurance to have experience with the Xbox One and the PS4. If Tango Gameworks happened to be working on The Evil Within 2 or Psychobreak 2 for PC then surely it would have been listed.

A lot of Japanese game development studios aren't always that familiar working with all the different PC variations, so their ports usually don't turn out so great when they first launch on PC, as evident with the launch day woes suffered by gamers who picked up Dark Souls day-one on PC, or the people who have recently been complaining about the resolution issues and the 30fps pre-rendered movie hiccups with Nier: Automata, and plenty of Koei Tecmo games that used to launch rather broken on PC. To their credit, though, Koei Tecmo has really stepped it up with their PC launch titles, along with Bandai Namco.

And speaking of publishing houses... Destructoid notes that perhaps Bethesda -- the original publisher of the first game -- are giving Mikami a second chance with the game. The Evil Within definitely has the potential to be a big franchise if it's marketed and positioned correctly with a sequel.

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard saw a huge surge thanks to its implementation of VR for the PlayStation VR and going back to the old-school survival horror roots. So maybe that kind of simplicity could serve Mikami well? That's assuming a sequel is in the works and that the job application is more than just a rumor.