It's subjective really. I mean that the whole black bars thing might be a design choice that opens up extra power to be used elsewhere. I'm not even sure what the promblem with that is but from it's very first reveal it had black bars top and bottom. If they added it in at a later date then I might be suspicous that they added it in to meet visual targets but it was a design choice from the start.

Having beaten The Evil Within twice on console, one of those in Akumu Mode, and going for the third walkthrough now, I can honestly say that those black bars are annoying ten minutes in, then your eyes get completely used to it.

It was, though, weird switching games and then having the whole screen. But that's the price to pay.

I live in a country that has no widescreen support for cable, even having a widescreen tv all chanels will get black bars at the bottorm and top, so nothing pisses me off more than that. I could get this game but way latter in the year for at least half the price.

Very easy solution. Dont buy the game. Vote with your wallet.

I thought everyone knew this was the excuse for the devs to get the game to 1080p. In video games, I can't think of any positives for not utilizing the entire screen.

Seriously, there's no reason to have black bars other than hiding pixels so you get a performance boost. Saying it's for cinematic purposes is a marketing ploy and people eat it up. Marketing departments choose their words for a reason... that's where MS failed in 2013.

I loved The Evil Within! Preorder confirmed!

You're not wrong in disliking it, it's just a matter of preference after all (i'm personally undecided right now).

That said, the whole reason they extended the horizontal FOV was to account for the vertical view that they cut. Like i did here (not perfectly to scale):

Could they have extended the FOV and removed the black bars? Sure, but that would require other trades off. Currently they've basically traded the vertical space for horizontal space, and the resources saved from the lower total pixel count were likely what allowed them to implement 4xMSAA. Essentially, both trades looped back into the the IQ/video space, which makes it appear it was a genuine artistic choice. If perhaps a slightly questionable one :p

Edit: Added better image

well you should use some tv settings, maybe your tvs can remove them using subtitle aspect ratio modes or something.

You didn't realize that removing the bars above and below wouldn't take away any of the horizontal view and just increase the vertical view?