“Tango closed,” wrote Mikami in a brief post on X. “Sad.”

Tango Gameworks joins other shuttered studios, including Redfall developer Arkane Austin, Alpha Dog Studios, and Roundhouse Games, as part of Microsoft’s larger attempts of “reprioritization of titles and resources,” according to Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty.

Mikami had departed from Tango Gameworks back in 2023, having worked with the studio on titles like The Evil Within and its sequel, Ghostwire: Tokyo, and Hi-Fi Rush.

In an interview earlier this year, Mikami revealed that one of the reasons for him leaving Tango Gameworks was because, along with wanting to distance himself from the survival horror genre, he wanted more opportunities for young creators and developers.

The last major release by Tango Gameworks was rhythm-based action game Hi-Fi Rush, which was released on PC and Xbox Series X/S back in January 2023. It has since also released for PS5.

Tango closed. Sad.

— 三上　真司 (@shinji_mikami) May 7, 2024

With very few exceptions, almost everyone’s life has been impacted in some way by the current pandemic of COVID-19. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost, many are still unemployed with real possibilities that their jobs are gone forever, and in genera,l how we interact with people is changing. Whether we ever get back to a ‘normal’ remains to be seen, but this type of event is one that influences art and entertainment for years to come. One creator who is thinking about that is the legendary Shinji Mikami.

Mikami was the creator of the Resident Evil series and the director for the first and fourth entries in the long running franchise. The series is all about a virus that turns people and animals into various monsters. The virus spreads to be a citywide epidemic, eventually becoming a global issue in later games, which is kind of eerie when you think about it. Mikami seems to think so, too, as in an interview with IGN, he says it’ll be impossible not to separate the struggles of the current real-world pandemic from current and future projects.

“In Resident Evil, I chose a virus as the reason humans turn into zombies. I remember feeling excited by the new idea that a virus—a real enemy that can’t be seen by humans—would cause tremendous fear in people,” he said. “Now, I think it will be difficult for my games not to be influenced by the struggles we are experiencing right now.”

Mikami is currently working on GhostWire: Tokyo in some capacity, though little is known about that game. No doubt, once things stabilize around the globe, we’ll see tons of different films, TV shows, and games that have some influence from the current situation. It certainly has been a defining moment in most of out lifetimes.

While Shinji Mikami’s year has been filled with working on The Evil Within, it appears as though he had a little bit of free time. It has been recently revealed that the director of Evil Within actually voiced a character in Fallout 4. The information was divulged by a concept artist working at Tango Gameworks on Twitter and he actually showed the spot where he was talking in the game, as well as a short video showing him going into the recording studio.

Turns out the famed video game director lends his voice to one of the many characters that live in and around Diamond City. Mikami voiced one of the many robots that have some very distinct personalities in the game. This one is called Takahashi and of course had a Japanese personality.  This is hardly the first time that there has been a personality from one game has made an appearance on another. There’s all kinds of crossover when it comes to the video game industry.

Mikami is one of those people who is considered a bit of a legend in the same industry so it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that Bethesda wanted him to be part of their massive game. Fallout 4 is available right now on the Xbox One, PS4 and PC.

The final DLC for Bethesda and Tango’s The Evil Within, the horror action game helmed by genre mastermind Shinji Mikami, is going to see the player slipping on an apron and putting on their best murderous psychopath impression, as it throws them into the role of The Keeper, returning to the Victoriano Estate to make life miserable for everyone.

It’s called The Executioner, and it looks about as violent and gruesomely disturbing as you would expect it to be- this is The Evil Within, after all. It also looks to be a bit more lighthearted (if indeed that word can be applied to something that repeatedly features people being shredded in a burst of blood and gore by a chainsaw), and generally is tonally a bit more campy than The Evil Within was, which attempted to take itself and its proceedings seriously, and treat them with gravitas.

The Executioner will be out May 26. Stay tuned.

Shinji Mikami’s newest horror game, The Evil Within, developed with Tango Softworks and Bethesda, may not have been the world changing revelation that, say, Resident Evil or Resident Evil 4 were at the time of their release, but it was still a damn good game. If you are already done with it, and want more, however, you are in luck, as Bethesda today announced the first bit of DLC for the game.

It is called ‘The Assignment,’ and it will be coming in early 2015. The Assignment sees a focus on Detective Castellanos’ mysterious partner, Juli Kidman. Her story will be continued and concluded in The Consequence and The Keeper, both of which are due to launch some time in 2015 as well.

The Evil Within launched earlier this year on the Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PC. Make sure you stay tuned to GamingBolt for more coverage, information, and news on this game.

Happy Halloween! If you were looking to buy and play a scary game today to go with the mood and spirit of the holiday, but aren’t sold on Shinji Mikami and Bethesda’s The Evil Within, they’ve released a brand new demo for you on PC to try and make your decision a little bit easier. And they seem to be very confident in their product too, since the demo will let you sample the first three chapters of the game. That’s a pretty good deal, and it should be enough to sell anyone on the game, personally speaking.

Save data from the demo carries over to the full version, meaning if you do like the demo enough to purchase the full game, you won’t have to start over. Plus, for some reason that I am not entirely sure of, you will also get a free copy of Call of Cthulhu. You also get Call of Cthulhu for free if you’ve already bought the game on PC.

… well, all right, then.

The Evil Within is a pretty swell and scary game, right? A large part of the atmosphere comes from the sheer blood and gore in the game, which is, well, bloody and gory. But in Japan, even though the game is rated Z- which essentially means PEGI 18, or ESRB AO- it’s still censored. The blood and gore is still not allowed in the game.

The problem is so bad that they are actually offering a Gore Mode DLC for the game, which, you would assume, lifts the gore filter and makes the game essentially identical to its western counterparts, right? Well, wrong. Hilariously enough, even the Gore Mode seems to be censored compared to how the game is in the west, although it is certainly less censored than the game by itself there.

Some of Japan’s censorship policies baffle me.

To see more on how this game is censored, including full comparison shots, head on over to Kotaku.

Bethesda has published instructions on how to access the debug console in the PC version of The Evil Within, Shinji Mikami’s newest horror game that launched today. For those of you not in the know, a debug console is what game developers use for testing the code of their software during development; it allows them to step outside the normal defined parameters of their games and lets them do all sorts of things that they wouldn’t be able to otherwise. It’s essentially a developer’s version of Gameshark, in a sense.

Well, Bethesda is now letting players access the console for The Evil Within, but they have published one caveat: the use of this console is not supported by the developers. This means that this might cause your game to behave in unexpected ways, and if something happens, Bethesda’s representatives cannot help you out, like they would be able to with normal problems.

Still interested? Okay, well, here’s you access it:

1. In Steam, right click on The Evil Within and select “properties” then under the General tab, hit “set launch options.”
2. Put this in to unlock the console: +com_allowconsole 1
3. Once the game has launched, hit the Insert key to bring down the developer console.

Once you’ve done this, you can do all sorts of crazy stuff. Here’s a list:

R_swapinterval <NUMBER>:

• • Sets the FPS lock. Note that the numbers below are negative.

• • -2: This is the default, set to 30 FPS. This is the officially supported frame rate

• • -1: This sets the FPS limit to 60. Fully playable, although there may be quirks (we’re going to fix these).

• 0: This fully unlocks the FPS. We do not recommend playing above 60. We will not fix any issues above 60

Noclip:

• Allows you to walk through walls

G_infiniteammo:

• Unlimited ammo (provided you have at least 1 bullet when you enable this)

G_stoptime 1:

• Stops time. Note there is a bug right now where using this command causes a UI element to appear on screen. We’re looking to fix that in the near future.
• Re enable time with g_stoptime 0

Toggledebugcamera:

• Separates the camera from Sebastian so you can freely move around the

R_forceaspectratio <NUMBER>:

• Sets the aspect ratio. Default is 2.5, which is our official aspect ratio.
• 0 is full screen, but not ideal. 1.8 or 2 is probably most comfortable for those who don’t want bars.

Com_showFPS:

• Turns on id’s native FPS counter

Startslowmotion2:

• Slows down time

Stopslowmotion:

• Disables slow motion

So… yeah, if you wanna mess around with your game, the Debug Console sounds like a good way to do it.

The Evil Within’s general revew embargo has not yet lifted, but we have some early reviews, and they appear to be positive on the whole, indicating that Shinji Mikami’s latest game might not be the kind of genre-redefining or paradigm shifting game that the original Resident Evil or Resident Evil 4 was, but is still a pretty damn good game.

The most high profile review seems to be the one from VideoGamer, which gave the game an 8/10, and said,

“One of the the most interesting things about famed Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikimi’s latest is how much it feels like Silent Hill. While the influence of past Capcom classics is obvious – it plays like a cross between Resi remake’s slow-burn horror and resource management while effortlessly slipping gears into the slasher-terror of Resi 4’s action – The Evil Within’s paranormal setting gives the director free reign to play with notions of reality in a way that resembles Team Silent’s best.”

Other reviews, mostly from foreign print publications, seem to be of a similar mind, and seem to have awarded the game a similar score as well.

The Evil Within’s review embargo lifts at midnight PT on October 14. Stay tuned to GamingBolt for more news on the game and its general reception.

Shinji Mikami is a legend when it comes to survival horror games. He practically created the genre with the original Resident Evil back on the PlayStation, and then he reinvented it with Resident Evil 4 on the Gamecube; now, it looks like he is trying to go for a hat-trick with his newest horror game project, The Evil Within, which he is publishing in collaboration with Bethesda, and which, we have learned, has just finished development and debugging and now officially gone gold, ahead of its launch next month.

The game will be releasing on five platforms- the Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PC- across all major territories, pretty much simultaneously (the release is actually staggered over the period of nine days, with Japan getting the game last on October 23).

Stay tuned to GamingBolt for more coverage and information of the game, as we bring you the lowdown on what we hope will become the next landmark title for the genre.