When Sebastian attacked The Sadist, he learned, finally, how to foil a trap. Rather than fight back with brute force, he used his pursuer's zeal against him. We execute Sebastian's anti-trap strategy ourselves against his next challenger, The Keeper. In the process, The Evil Within 2 reinforces the association between gameplay changes and Sebastian's growth, turning his cutscene attack on The Sadist into sound strategy against The Keeper.

The transition to The Keeper's crypt makes us keenly aware of traps. Barbed wire snares Sebastian's legs and pulls him through an "impossible space" transition, recalling The Keeper's wire mines. Sebastian often saw The Keeper retrieving corpses from his traps in The Evil Within, and triggering one made Sebastian an easy target for his tenderizer.

Like The Sadist, The Keeper will kill at close range, yet Sebastian creates more problems for himself if he runs. Running weakens and disorients him. Flight puts him on constant defense, depletes stamina, and makes him easier to catch. The level's corners also make The Keeper easy to lose, opening Sebastian to a surprise attack.

The Keeper, by contrast, soaks up damage and never tires. Critical hits will stagger him, but they land unreliably. The player can attack from afar with a sniper rifle or Explosive Bolt, but The Keeper's aggression usually prohibits ranged combat. Eventually, Sebastian will need to deal with The Keeper up close without running away.

Tactical evasion works in place of escape. Sebastian can beat The Keeper by standing in place, as though stuck in a wire mine, to bait an attack. Whether The Keeper charges like a football player or swings his bag of heads, he enters a cooldown period after each attack. Sebastian can wear The Keeper down if he feints before contact and attacks at close range.

The strategy was nigh useless in the crypt in The Evil Within. The player won, not by killing The Keeper, but by stalling long enough to escape the level. The Evil Within 2 narrates Sebastian's strength, along the archetype's course, when it overturns the first game's weakness by building his present victory on the lessons he just learned.

The feint tactic also develops the metanarrative. Previously, the player gifted Sebastian strategies for evading the stalkers. Now, Sebastian gives the player a strategy to take down an old fear.