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Ethan Winters

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Ethan Winters
Resident Evil character
Promotional art of Ethan Winters for Resident Evil Village (2021)
First appearanceResident Evil 7: Biohazard (2017)
Voiced byEnglish: Todd Soley (RE7):[1] Japanese: Hidenobu Kiuchi (RE7)[2]
In-universe information
SpouseMia Winters

Ethan Winters (Japanese: イーサン・ウィンターズ, Hepburn: Īsan Wintāzu) is a fictional character in the Resident Evil survival horror video game series by Capcom. Ethan was introduced as one of the playable characters of the 2017 video game Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, in which he is depicted as an ordinary civilian searching for his missing wife within a dilapidated estate in Louisiana, United States. His latest appearance was as the main character of the 2021 video game Resident Evil Village, a direct sequel to Resident Evil 7.

Originally designed as an unseen everyman archetype to foster the player's identification with him as the main character of Resident Evil 7, Capcom intends to shape Ethan from a blank state into a more defined character for the sequel. The character is voiced by Hidenobu Kiuchi in Japanese, and by Todd Soley in English. The character has received a generally positive reception from video game publications, though some commentators have expressed a preference for a more expressive or properly developed personality as the player character.

Conception and creation

File:Ethan Winters.jpg
An Concept art of Ethan Winters and his backpack from Resident Evil Village.

In Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, players takes Ethan's viewpoint as an embodied presence as opposed to an on-screen avatar.[3] The game's goal for players is to advance the narrative while keeping him alive with limited resources.[4] According to Morimasa Sato, who was a writer for Resident Evil 7 and serves as the director of the upcoming Resident Evil Village, the development team initially thought of Ethan as merely "a camera for the player" and "transparent".[5] Towards the end of development for Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, its developers had begun planning for the next mainline Resident Evil game. A decision was made by the developers to set it as a direct continuation of Resident Evil 7 and Ethan's story arc, as they had developed an attachment to Ethan and saw potential in him as a character.[5][6]

Ethan's face is never seen in Resident Evil 7, which is played from a first-person perspective.[7] An unused version of Ethan's character model, hidden within the game's assets, has fully developed facial features.[8] The character's face continues to be concealed or obscured in all relevant marketing material for its sequel, Resident Evil Village.[8][7]

Producer Peter Fabiano said the team wanted players to experience Village from Ethan's perspective.[6] Sato described Village as the story of Ethan and "the entirety of who he is".[5] He also hinted at a major plot twist involving Ethan in the narrative of the upcoming game.[9]

Appearances

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

Ethan made his first appearance in the 2017 video game Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. He is an American systems engineer who worked in Los Angeles, California. Nearly three years after his wife Mia Winters' disappearance, Ethan receives a cryptic video message from Mia that leads him to a derelict plantation in Dulvey, Louisiana. He locates and rescues Mia, but she abruptly becomes hostile and attacks Ethan while attempting to flee, dismembering his hand with a chainsaw.[10] Ethan attacks her in self defense, landing a seemingly fatal blow on her before encountering Jack Baker, who incapacitates and abducts him.[11] Ethan wakes up to a dinner event where several members of the Baker family gather, but manages to escape his captors and receives assistance from Zoe Baker, a wayward member of the Baker family who had reattached Ethan's hand when he was still unconscious. She reveals that her family is under the control of Eveline, a powerful genetically engineered bio-weapon. Zoe reveals that Eveline can infect other humans, which grants them powerful regenerative abilities and super-human strength. Zoe advises Ethan to synthesize a serum from components across the plantation that can cure Mia and herself.[11]

Ethan's journey leads him to battle other members of the Baker family and the Molded, humanoid monstrosities created by Eveline. He ultimately cures Mia who successfully regains control of herself. Mia reveals she was employed by a criminal syndicate to act as Eveline's handler but succumbed to her influence. Ethan confronts Eveline and dispatches her with the assistance of a paramilitary company lead by Chris Redfield. Ethan and Mia escape the plantation.[11] Ethan makes a cameo appearance in the End of Zoe DLC through a phone call.

The amount of blood and gore players as Ethan are exposed to in the Japanese version of the game, Biohazard 7: Resident Evil,[12] is substantially less compared to the international release.[13] On the other hand, smaller changes made to Ethan's dismemberment, such as black blood flowing from his severed limbs, alludes to an important plot point which suggests that he may have been infected with the mold generated by Eveline.[13]

Resident Evil Village

Ethan returns in Resident Evil Village and is set to be its central character.[5][14] Set a few years after the events of the previous game, it shows Ethan stranded in a mysterious village full of dangers after Mia is shot dead in front of him by Chris, for unknown reasons.[15] Ethan sets out to rescue his daughter from Chris, forcing him to search through the village for her where he finds himself struggling to discern fact from fiction.[16][9]

Promotion and merchandise

To promote Village, Capcom released a developer diary titled “The Making of Resident Evil Village: Winter Comes for Ethan” in September 2020, where staff members discuss Ethan's role within the game.[17]

The Resident Evil Village Deluxe Edition is bundled with an art book titled "The Tragedy of Ethan Winters".[18]

Reception

Ethan has received a mostly positive reception. Some video game journalists, such as Chris Moyse from Destructoid or Liana Ruppert from Game Informer, credit the character's role in Resident Evil 7 as a factor behind the video game's popularity and ongoing commercial success.[19][20][6] Josh West from GamesRadar suggested that Ethan's return to headline a direct sequel to Resident Evil 7 is unprecedented, and claimed that Capcom had never entrusted a single protagonist with back-to-back installments of the mainline Resident Evil series.[9] Epic Games included Ethan along with Jill Valentine and Lady Dimitrescu in a list of characters and brands as part of a 2021 survey it distributed to Fortnite players in order to gauge interest in future crossover promotions.[21]

Some commentators have positively reviewed Ethan as a relatable protagonist. Ray Porreca suggested that the unsightly environment that surrounds the sharply dressed Ethan "delineates what a modern hero can look like".[19] Porreca noted Ethan is at odds of what constitutes a conventional Resident Evil protagonist, as the franchise had usually offered highly competent police officers and military operatives as player characters for much of its history.[19] An unskilled everyman who survives against seemingly insurmountable odds subverts player expectations of Resident Evil 7, "a game that upsets tradition to restore some glory to its name" in Porreca's view.[19] Audric Figueroa from The Escapist agreed that Ethan is very different compared to previous protagonists who are portrayed as heroic law enforcement agents fighting evil corporations, as he is motivated by his personal relationship with Mia instead.[11] Figueroa suggested that a mundane family man who is eager to rescue his wife is the "perfect protagonist" for the story, where domestic violence both "literal and metaphorical" forms the core of the game's "encounter philosophy".[11]

Andrew Reiner from Game Informer described Ethan's personality to be "as transparent as the specters he encounters", and that Ethan himself is reduced into the background as "a pair of hands holding a gun" by the end of the game, having done little to "establish a connection to the world around him".[22] Reiner noted the incongruency between the character's occasional reactions to inconsequential environment details and his mostly silent nature in the face of danger, to the point where Reiner was under the mistaken impression that a substantial amount of dialogue and exposition was missing, or that Ethan's lack of reaction to a major event during the first hour of Resident Evil 7 was the result of a software bug.[22] Reiner linked his criticism of the character to his overall criticism of Capcom's storytelling approach for Resident Evil 7, and claimed that its narrative unravels into a "voyeuristic" exploration of the estate's inhabitants instead of its protagonist's personal stake in it.[22] Hannes Rossow from German publication GamePro was highly critical of the character and called him boring, sleep-inducing, and lacking in personality. He claimed that Ethan's prominence in Village had dampened his enthusiasm for the game and expressed a preference for another protagonist who is a properly developed character.[8] On the other hand, Andy Kelly from PC Gamer and Jade King from TheGamer opined that being boring is Ethan's most positive contribution to the gameplay experience of ''Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil Village from the player's perspective, given the context of the dangerous or inexplicable situations he finds himself in and the larger-then-life villains he faces.[23][24]

Ian Walker from Kotaku was amused by Capcom's persistent attempts to hide his face behind the weapons he wields within promotional art,[7] while Rossow called Capcom's attempts to maintain the illusion of Ethan as a faceless character to be absurd as the character's actual face is known to exist within the game assets of Resident Evil 7 .[8] As a result of his faceless presentation and lack of background information provided by Capcom, the character is often discussed in fan theories about his true nature.[7][25]

Analysis

In her discussion of allusions between Resident Evil 7 and horror cinema as part of the former's use of intertextuality, Dawn Stobbart described multiple instances where Ethan's journey mirror that of specific scenes from the 1974 film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Ethan's predicament during the dinner table scene with the Baker family is analyzed as the most overt example: like recurring franchise character Sally Hardesty, Ethan is seated at the foot of the table as he awakens to a grotesque feast seemingly made from human entrails, while the other characters present almost identically mirror the characters Sally encounters at the table.[26]

References

  1. ^ "Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (2017 Video Game)". Behind The Voice Actors. Retrieved 25 January 2021.
  2. ^ "Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (2017 Video Game) Japanese Cast". Behind The Voice Actors. Retrieved 25 January 2021.
  3. ^ McGreevy, Fawcett & Ouellette 2020, p. 256.
  4. ^ Stobbart 2019, pp. 30–31.
  5. ^ a b c d Feit, Diamond (September 25, 2020). "Resident Evil Village Will Focus More on Exploration than Resi 7". IGN. Retrieved March 19, 2021.
  6. ^ a b c Ruppert, Liana (12 February 2021). "Capcom Opens Up About The Decision To Bring Back Ethan Winters In Resident Evil Village". Game Informer. Retrieved April 7, 2021.
  7. ^ a b c d Ian Walker (January 23, 2021). "Capcom Is Still Hiding Ethan's Face In Resident Evil Village". Kotaku. Retrieved April 7, 2021.
  8. ^ a b c d Hannes Rossow (26 January 2021). "Sorry, Resident Evil 8: Warum muss Ethan Winters so langweilig sein?" (in German). GamePro. Retrieved April 7, 2021.
  9. ^ a b c West, Josh. "Inside Resident Evil Village, Capcom's attempt to create "the best survival horror game to date"". GamesRadar. Retrieved April 7, 2021.
  10. ^ Faulkner, Jason (January 26, 2017). "Resident Evil 7: So You Got Your Hand Cut Off". Shacknews. Retrieved April 7, 2021.
  11. ^ a b c d e Figueroa, Audric (2019-10-05). "Resident Evil 7's Focus on Family Made Its Horror Personal". The Escapist. Retrieved April 7, 2021.
  12. ^ 小笠原光 (June 21, 2016). "VRデモ「KITCHEN」ロゴでひそかに予告されていた「バイオハザード7」". IGN Japan (in Japanese). Retrieved April 7, 2021.
  13. ^ a b Heather Alexandra (February 13, 2017). "Resident Evil 7 Is Way Less Bloody In Japan". Kotaku. Retrieved April 7, 2021.
  14. ^ Ruppert, Liana (April 2, 2021). "New Resident Evil Village Promo Art Reveals A New Masked Figure". Game Informer. Retrieved April 7, 2021.
  15. ^ Marshall, Cass (2020-06-16). "Resident Evil fans can't help but notice Village's big Chris Redfield". Polygon. Retrieved 2020-06-19.
  16. ^ West, Josh (January 21, 2021). "Resident Evil 8 gameplay breakdown: 20 new details we spotted in the Resident Evil Village Showcase". GamesRadar. Retrieved April 7, 2021.
  17. ^ Yang, George (September 25, 2020). "Resident Evil Village Is Next-Gen, but Capcom Is 'Looking into' Making a PS4/XB1 Version". The Escapist. Retrieved April 7, 2021.
  18. ^ Reed, Chris (March 9, 2021). "Resident Evil Village: What Comes in Each Edition". IGN. Retrieved April 7, 2021.
  19. ^ a b c d Porreca, Ray (9 February 2017). "How Ethan's sleeves saved Resident Evil". Destructoid. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
  20. ^ Moyse, Chris (23 March 2021). "Resident Evil 7: Biohazard still shipping one million copies a year". Destructoid. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
  21. ^ Dustin Bailey (March 23, 2021). "Fortnite devs gauge interest in Lady Dimitrescu". PCGamesN. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
  22. ^ a b c Reiner, Andrew (January 23, 2017). "A Familiar Taste of Blood – Resident Evil 7: Biohazard – PlayStation 4". Retrieved April 7, 2021.
  23. ^ Dustin Bailey (May 6, 2021). "Resident Evil Village's hero Ethan Winters is painfully boring, and I love him for it". PC Gamer. Retrieved May 6, 2021.
  24. ^ Jade King (April 19, 2021). "The Best Thing About Resident Evil Village's Ethan Winters Is How Boring He Is". TheGamer. Retrieved May 6, 2021.
  25. ^ Chris Werian (January 24, 2021). "Resident Evil 7: Ethan Winters ist vielleicht doch nicht so unscheinbar, wie ihr denkt" (in German). GamePro. Retrieved April 7, 2021.
  26. ^ Stobbart 2019, pp. 81–83.

Bibliography

  • Stobbart, Dawn (2019). Videogames and Horror: From Amnesia to Zombies, Run!. University of Wales Press. ISBN 978-1-786-83437-9.
  • McGreevy, Alan; Fawcett, Christina; Ouellette, Marc (2020). Arno Görgen; Stefan Heinrich Simond (eds.). Krankheit in Digitalen Spielen: Interdisziplinäre Betrachtungen. transcript-Verlag. The House and the Infected Body: The Metonymy of RESIDENT EVIL 7. ISBN 978-3-8376-5328-1.
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