I've seen all the footage of this game that there is, and I'm not entirely sure what makes it less action-packed than RE4 or Dead Space. Those games both have extended periods of exploration and non-combat. What is it about this game that makes people see it as less action-packed? As a return to something that was lost? Is it the scenes where crazy stuff happens and Sebastian runs through it? Is it being chased by a big dude with a rusty pointy thing? Puzzles? An aesthetic that sometimes reminds us of Silent Hill? Is it simply the scarcity of ammo?
I've played the demo at least 6 times for a collective over 3 hours, I can answer this.
Game plays more differently than I think you're expecting. I've played RE4 and Dead Space on their hardest difficulties and beat both. However, Evil Within is a a lot different than I think you're expecting it to feel like those games. Before I played it, I expected something like RE4 or Dead Space, but was surprised how different it was when playing.
The first most obvious thing is you can't stealth in either, but that exclusively doesn't make it not an action game, as countless examples will show.
The key here is execution, design, atmosphere, threat, uncertainty. RE4 and Dead Space are a lot more predictable than Evil Within is. I can't speak of the whole game of Evil Within, but in RE4 and DS encounters remain the same, so if you lose you just face the same encounter again. In Evil Within, the encounters can change dramatically, or they may suddenly be no encounter at all, and where there was none previously there now is one.
The sound design in Evil Within is brilliant. I don't think this will be fully appreciated until people play it themselves. It is seriously one of the best horror game sound designs I have experienced in a long while. The audio has great attention to detail, is really creepy, great distance and 3D sound ambiance with good dissonance, echo, reverb, etc., and can be unnerving to hear a sound and not sure what it belongs too. Music was undertoned but effective in the demo area, and unlike RE4 or Dead Space music doesn't suddenly start playing when an enemy is alerted and tones down when they're not, you just have natural ambient sounds making it a lot more tense.
The enemies I find more unsettling, especially in practice. They sound creepy, but they look normal (basic Haunted), but off. Not in a zombie way, they're creepy to me in the same way Shibito in the Forbidden Siren series are creepy to me. They seem human, but they're off, visually, in how they move, how they sound. And they seem like they can't die at times and will get back up if left unintended. Matched with the stealth there were definite Forbidden Siren feels I was getting from the game. But the enemies can be surprisingly intelligent, and their animations make them a bit nerve wrecking to try and sneak up in as they sway and stutter and suddenly do things. They're tough and due to a variety of elements, are much harder for me to kill than Ganados or Necromorphs, it is saying something I find the Haunted more difficult on nomal than I find Ganados or Necromorphs on the hardest difficulties in their games. They also will infinitely reanimate unless you meet one of three kill conditions, two of which are challenging by the game's mechanics and design (headshots and stealth kills), one uses a limited resource (matches).
A part of this too is that Sebastian is an unreliable main character. On lower level stats at least, he can only run for about 5-10 seconds before he tires out. His aim is not that great, he doesn't shoot in the middle, the reticle is basically his 'shot range' and he can shoot over a foot or two away from where you aimed in a different direction. Enemies have smaller hitboxes for their weakpoints on-top of this, and thus makes shooting them much more challenging and less reliant on your testy aim. They also take a fair amount to take down in bullets, and ammo is scarce, plus if you 'kill' them as then don't get a headshot or burn them in time, they'll get back up, making it feel you wasted ammunition on them, making their risk and thought into just shooting them. And the other mechanics make other things have to be thought-out, such as running from them,
stealthing past them, or hiding from them.
There's more, but a bit tired as 1 AM here and think I made some good points.
Hoping for the best. Yet it's a game I'm willing to play!
