The Sadist forces Sebastian, panicked, back into the player's hands. He has an opportunity to reject the player's assumption of his weakness, but he wavers. Just as he reflexively blamed himself for Torres's death, believed his words of self-defeat, and put fire in Lily's footsteps, Sebastian initially falls back on the player's judgment.

A refresher can help us understand how The Evil Within 2 uses its source material. When Sebastian first entered STEM, he awoke in The Sadist's butcher shop. The Sadist gave chase with a chainsaw and severed a tendon in Sebastian's right leg, hobbling him. After a stealth sequence, Sebastian fled through one final hall. He rolled pathetically over a gurney and stumbled into an open elevator, barely surviving.

The Sadist was Sebastian's first fright, but his scenario means more in the context of the game's presentation (which the player, not Sebastian, would know). Sebastian's slump in the elevator led to the game's title sequence. The game breaks the fourth wall, putting Sebastian back in our hands at the entrance to The Evil Within, the game, when we first taught him to flee.

The environment responds to Sebastian's unconscious mind, changing as it plays out as 345 Cedar had. We need to remember that, in The Evil Within 2 Sebastian does not meet The Sadist. He meets his memory of The Sadist. Sebastian's memories change when recalled, so memory makes the environment malleable. The details of The Sadist's encounter transform in motion.

Because he defaults to the player's judgment, Sebastian remembers an environment that plays to our memory of his weakness. However, like his memory of the house fire, Sebastian portrays The Sadist's encounter as worse than it was. In the same way that Sebastian put himself (and himself alone) at the house fire, his anxiety places The Sadist in front of his only escape.

Trusting the player becomes Sebastian's greatest danger. We were his engine of escape when the path was clear in The Evil Within. Now, our instincts will deliver him straight to his death.

Sebastian overcomes his waver. He takes control of the action away from us, which The Evil Within 2 communicates by shifting from controllable play to a cutscene. Separated from Sebastian by our television screen, we watch him subdue our old foe without us.

The player's star declines, but the game's theme is "healing." Just as we received the revolver after Sebastian's rejection, we grow now by following his lead.