At Long Last, You Can Play The Evil Within in Fullscreen

A new patch for The Evil Within allows players to do away with what a number of fans have been complaining about since launch: letterboxing.

Up until now, The Evil Within had to be played with a 2:35:1 aspect ratio. What this meant is that you're playing the game with black bars at the top and bottom of the screen, similar to when you watch a movie in its native resolution. While this lends the experience a somewhat cinematic feel, many wished there were a way to disable the effect and play the game in fullscreen.

Following the release of a new patch today, letterboxing has finally become an option. Bethesda announced the latest patch allows you to do away with letterboxing and rebalances the Casual difficulty setting, promising more ammo and some kind of "adjustments to the game's health bar."

PC players were already able to play in fullscreen, first with a console command and then with a proper option in the settings menu. But up until now, console players were forced into the letterbox experience whether they liked it or not.

Bethesda explained last year that the unusual (for a game) aspect ratio is "used for gameplay purposes, as certain elements display in the black areas of the screen."

Developer Tango Gameworks also imposed a 30 frames per second cap on the game's framerate. This, too, was something that ultimately became an option in the PC version, though Bethesda describes the 30fps/letterbox setup as the way The Evil Within is meant to be played.

The patch tweaking difficulty and offering a fullscreen option is now available on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC.