The Evil Within is one of those horror games that goes for a cinematic vibe, which can be irritating for some gamers who feel restricted by its field of view. The good news is that modders have already rigged up several solutions to this problem. The bad news is they only work on PCs for the time being.
The video above comes from a modder who goes by the handle Unreal on YouTube, and is probably best known for his breathtaking customizations for Skyrim. The changes made to The Evil Within aren't quite as snazzy in comparison, but they address some fundamental problems with the new game's display on PCs by adjusting things like its aspect ratio and frame rate. So if you don't like having your view of all the evilness within The Evil Within shuttered by its default appearance, Unreal provides a download for a plugin for the game that puts it in "flawless widescreen" mode and some additional instructions for how to tweak the game's settings:
***How to remove Black bars***
-Select the game from Steam library, right click on it and select properties.
-Add "+com_allowconsole 1" (without quotes) to Launch Options.
-Run the game and open the console with "insert" key.
-"r_forceaspectratio 0" (without quotes) if you want to completely disable the black bars.
-"r_forceaspectratio 2.5" if you want to get the black bars again with the default size.
***How to remove the 30fps cap***
-Select the game from Steam library, right click on it and select properties.
-Add "+com_allowconsole 1" (without quotes) to Launch Options from General tab.
-Run the game and open the console with "insert" key.
-"r_swapinterval 0" (without quotes) for fully unlock the fps.
-"r_swapinterval -1" (without quotes) for 60fps cap.
-"r_swapinterval -2" (without quotes) for 30fps cap, this is the default value.
As you can see in the Unreal video, removing the black bars chops off a bit of the game's display on the left and right sides of the screen, so you might want to go back and forth a few times before settling on your ideal display for the game.
Also, just as a reminder, Evil Within publisher Bethesda Softworks made these sorts of customizations available for PC gamers in a post outlining the debug console commands they can apply to the game. You can review that whole list here.
To contact the author of this post, write to yannick.lejacq@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter at @YannickLeJacq.