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Ethan Winters
Resident Evil character
Ethan as he appears in Resident Evil Village
First appearance	Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (2017)
Last appearance	Resident Evil Village (2021)
Created by	Capcom
Voiced by	English Todd Soley Japanese Hidenobu Kiuchi
In-universe information
Spouse	Mia Winters
Children	Rosemary Winters

Ethan Winters (Japanese: イーサン・ウィンターズ, Hepburn: Īsan Wintāzu) is a character in the Resident Evil survival horror video game series created by the Japanese company Capcom. Ethan was introduced as one of the playable characters in 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. He is also the protagonist of the 2021 sequel Resident Evil Village, where he is forced to locate his kidnapped daughter who was taken by a cult leader in a mysterious European village.

Originally designed as an unseen everyman to foster the player's identification with him as the protagonist of Resident Evil 7, Capcom intended to shape Ethan from a blank state into a more defined character in Village. He is voiced by Hidenobu Kiuchi in Japanese and Todd Soley in English.

Ethan has received a mixed reception from video game publications, with some praising his relatability, while others have criticized him for a lack of emotional range and character development.

Conception and creation

"It's a balancing act between giving Ethan his own personality, but also helping the player imagine that it could be them, reacting in the same way."

In Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (2017), players take Ethan's viewpoint as an embodied presence as opposed to an on-screen avatar. The game's goal for players is to advance the narrative while keeping him alive with limited resources. According to Morimasa Sato, who was a writer for Resident Evil 7 and the director of Resident Evil Village (2021), the development team initially thought of Ethan as merely "a camera for the player" and "transparent".

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. Producer Peter Fabiano stated that the team wanted players to experience Village from Ethan's perspective, with Sato describing Village as the story of Ethan and "the entirety of who he is".

Ethan's face is never shown within the gameplay for Resident Evil 7 or Resident Evil Village due to players controlling Ethan from a first-person perspective. An unused version of Ethan's character model, hidden within the game's assets, has fully developed facial features. In the expansion "Shadows of Rose" for Resident Evil Village, Ethan appears in a third-person mode and despite attempts to obscure his face, players could see it by performing certain actions.

Portrayal

In Resident Evil 7: Biohazard and Resident Evil Village, Ethan was voiced by American actor Todd Soley. In Japanese, he was voiced by Hidenobu Kiuchi. The character model was based on the Tunisian model, Yaya Chamki.

Appearances

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

Ethan made his first appearance in Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (2017). Ethan is looking for his wife, Mia Winters, who is missing. He located Mia from Louisiana after being kidnapped by the Baker family. He locates and attempts to rescue Mia, but she abruptly becomes hostile and attacks Ethan while attempting to flee, dismembering his hand with a chainsaw. He was later captured by Jack Baker and was forced to join a family dinner. He later escapes and kills Jack and his wife, Marguerite Baker, and then finds Mia after being contacted by the daughter of the family, Zoe Baker, to make a serum after being infected to cure them. Ethan later discovered that the Baker family was under the control of Eveline, a powerful genetically engineered bio-weapon. He later crafted a necrotoxin and then stabbed it into Eveline before she mutated into a giant monster. After the final confrontation with Ethan and the assistance of a paramilitary company led by Chris Redfield, Eveline has been destroyed. Ethan and Mia then escape the plantation.

The amount of blood and gore players as Ethan are exposed to in the Japanese version of the game, Biohazard 7: Resident Evil, is substantially less compared to the international release. 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.

Resident Evil Village

Ethan returns in Resident Evil Village (2021) as its central character. Set three years after the events of the previous event, Ethan lives in Europe with Mia and their newborn daughter, Rosemary. Chris Redfield storms the house and kills Mia while taking him and Rosemary under custody. Ethan ended up in the village after looking for her daughter. Ethan eventually discovers that the person Chris shot was not Mia, but antagonist Mother Miranda disguised as Mia. As Ethan defeats the Four Lords of the village, Miranda appears and kills him, telling him that she plans to use Rose to resurrect her daughter, Eva, who died of the Spanish Flu. Later, Ethan found out he had died in the first encounter with Jack Baker in Resident Evil 7, but that the mold, a type of fungus used in creating humanoid creatures, had given him the ability to regenerate. As Ethan regains consciousness, he kills Miranda and rescues his daughter. As Ethan's body begins to deteriorate, he sacrifices himself and gives Rose to Chris, who makes it to a helicopter before Ethan denotes a bomb that destroys the village.

In the Shadows of Rose DLC chapter, set sixteen years after the events of Resident Evil Village, a teenage Rose visits Ethan's grave on his birthday before heading off in a car with an unnamed organization.

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. The Resident Evil Village Deluxe Edition is bundled with an art book titled "The Tragedy of Ethan Winters". In addition, 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.

Critical reception

Ethan has received a mixed reception. Some video game journalists, such as Chris Moyse from Destructoid and 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. Josh West from GamesRadar+ suggested that Ethan's return to headline a direct sequel to Resident Evil 7 is unprecedented and noted that Capcom had never entrusted a single protagonist with back-to-back installments of the mainline Resident Evil series. Other critics also have positively reviewed Ethan as a relatable protagonist. Ray Porreca of Destructoid thought that the "murky" environments of Resident Evil 7 conflicted with Ethan's slightly formal attire, delineating him as "what a modern hero can look like". Porreca noted Ethan is at odds of what constitutes a conventional Resident Evil protagonist, and felt an unskilled everyman who survives against overwhelming odds, subverting player's expectations of "a game that upsets tradition to restore some glory to its name". The Escapist's Audric Figueroa agreed that Ethan is very different compared to previous Resident Evil protagonists, who are portrayed as heroic law enforcement agents fighting against corporations, as he is motivated by his personal relationship with Mia. 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".

Ethan's characterization has received criticism for lacking personality or character development. Game Informer's Andrew Reiner described Ethan's personality to be "as transparent as the specters he encounters". He noted an incongruency between the character's occasional reactions to inconsequential details but mostly silent nature in the face of danger, and thought that its narrative unravels into a "voyeuristic" exploration of the estate's inhabitants instead of its protagonist's personal stake in it. Hannes Rossow from German publication GamePro was highly critical of the character's perceived lack of personality in Resident Evil 7. He wrote 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, while Gene Park of The Washington Post called Ethan an "idiot" for how he reacted to events during Resident Evil Village. He criticized that Ethan "has no character arc" and "isn't likely to enter the pantheon of great video game characters." Others have cited Ethan as one of the worst protagonists. For instance, Ashley Bardhan from Kotaku compared Ethan to James Sunderland from Silent Hill, criticizing both characters for being "bumbling" and "regrettably uninteresting" to the extent that she was unable to find anything about them to care about compared to their missing wives, while Matthew Bryd of Den of Geek felt Ethan was the worst protagonist of a Resident Evil title and even gaming in general, citing "bad voice acting, bad writing, and questionable lore", as well as further character flaws. Conversely, Andy Kelly from PC Gamer and Jade King from TheGamer opined that being "boring" or "generic" is Ethan's most positive contribution to the player's gameplay experience, given the context of the dangerous environments and characters he faces.

As a result of his faceless presentation and lack of background information provided by Capcom, Ethan's character is often discussed in fan theories about his true nature. Ian Walker from Kotaku was amused by Capcom's persistent attempts to hide Ethan's face behind the weapons he wields within promotional art. GamePro's Hannes Rossow called the attempts to maintain the illusion of Ethan as a faceless character absurd, as the character's actual face is known to exist within the game assets of Resident Evil 7, while Moises Taveras of Paste didn't feel that Ethan belonged in the world, due to his ambiguous backstory and lack of physical appearance. Some journalists have noted a tendency throughout the games for Ethan to suffer from serious injury or complete dismemberment of his limbs, particularly his hands, and an ability to quickly heal or re-attach them with little effort.

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.

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.

References

1. ^ Romano, Sal (25 February 2021). "Resident Evil Village Japanese Voice Cast Announced". Gematsu. Retrieved 11 January 2025.
2. West, Josh (2 November 2021). "Why Ethan Winters is such a wise-ass in Resident Evil Village". GamesRadar+. Archived from the original on 2 November 2021. Retrieved 17 April 2022.
3. McGreevy, Fawcett & Ouellette 2020, p. 256.
4. Stobbart 2019, pp. 30–31.
5. ^ Feit, Diamond (25 September 2020). "Resident Evil Village Will Focus More on Exploration than Resi 7". IGN. Archived from the original on 16 March 2021. Retrieved 19 March 2021.
6. ^ Ruppert, Liana (12 February 2021). "Capcom Opens Up About The Decision To Bring Back Ethan Winters In Resident Evil Village". Game Informer. Archived from the original on 26 July 2021. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
7. ^ Ian Walker (23 January 2021). "Capcom Is Still Hiding Ethan's Face In Resident Evil Village". Kotaku. Archived from the original on 4 March 2021. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
8. ^ Hannes Rossow (26 January 2021). "Sorry, Resident Evil 8: Warum muss Ethan Winters so langweilig sein?" [Sorry, Resident Evil 8: Why does Ethan Winters have to be so boring?]. GamePro (in German). Archived from the original on 8 May 2024. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
9. Josh Broadwell (13 June 2022). "Resident Evil VIllage DLC still won't let you see Ethan's face". PCGamesN. Archived from the original on 15 June 2022. Retrieved 15 June 2022.
10. ^ Park, Gene (14 May 2021). "The real tragedy of Ethan Winters, Resident Evil's Village idiot". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 15 May 2021. Retrieved 17 April 2022.
11. McWhertor, Michael (13 May 2021). "What does Ethan Winters really look like?". Polygon. Archived from the original on 13 May 2021. Retrieved 17 April 2022.
12. ^ "Resident Evil: the Story so Far". IGN. 28 August 2020. Archived from the original on 7 September 2020. Retrieved 11 January 2025.
13. Faulkner, Jason (26 January 2017). "Resident Evil 7: So You Got Your Hand Cut Off". Shacknews. Archived from the original on 5 January 2022. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
14. ^ Figueroa, Audric (5 October 2019). "Resident Evil 7's Focus on Family Made Its Horror Personal". The Escapist. Archived from the original on 20 May 2021. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
15. ^ Roach, Jacob (7 May 2021). "Everything you need to know before playing Resident Evil Village". Digital Trends. Archived from the original on 7 January 2025. Retrieved 17 November 2024.
16. 小笠原光 (21 June 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」" [Resident Evil 7 secretly announced with the VR demo "KITCHEN" logo]. IGN Japan (in Japanese). Archived from the original on 8 May 2024. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
17. ^ Heather Alexandra (13 February 2017). "Resident Evil 7 Is Way Less Bloody In Japan". Kotaku. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
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19. Peter, Vincent (28 October 2022). "Resident Evil Village: Winters' Expansion is A Great Send-Off for Ethan". IGN. Retrieved 1 November 2022.
20. Yang, George (25 September 2020). "Resident Evil Village Is Next-Gen, but Capcom Is 'Looking into' Making a PS4/XB1 Version". The Escapist. Archived from the original on 3 February 2021. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
21. Reed, Chris (9 March 2021). "Resident Evil Village: What Comes in Each Edition". IGN. Archived from the original on 10 May 2021. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
22. Dustin Bailey (23 March 2021). "Fortnite devs gauge interest in Lady Dimitrescu". PCGamesN. Archived from the original on 6 May 2021. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
23. ^ Porreca, Ray (9 February 2017). "How Ethan's sleeves saved Resident Evil". Destructoid. Archived from the original on 22 January 2021. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
24. Moyse, Chris (23 March 2021). "Resident Evil 7: Biohazard still shipping one million copies a year". Destructoid. Archived from the original on 23 March 2021. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
25. West, Josh. "Inside Resident Evil Village, Capcom's attempt to create "the best survival horror game to date"". GamesRadar+. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
26. Bardhan, Ashley (25 December 2023). "I lived like Ethan Winters for a week to survive the horrors of the holidays". Polygon. Archived from the original on 8 May 2024. Retrieved 23 January 2024.
27. Reiner, Andrew (23 January 2017). "A Familiar Taste of Blood – Resident Evil 7: Biohazard – PlayStation 4". Game Informer. Archived from the original on 2 February 2017. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
28. Ashley Bardhan (21 October 2022). "Resident Evil's Ethan Winters And Silent Hill's James Sunderland Are The Same, Boring Protagonist". Kotaku. Retrieved 21 October 2022.
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32. Chris Werian (24 January 2021). "Resident Evil 7: Ethan Winters ist vielleicht doch nicht so unscheinbar, wie ihr denkt" [Resident Evil 7: Ethan Winters may not be as inconspicuous as you think]. GamePro (in German). Archived from the original on 18 April 2021. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
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34. Zwiezen, Zack (8 May 2021). "Someone At Capcom Really Hates Ethan's Hands". Kotaku. Archived from the original on 8 May 2021. Retrieved 12 May 2021.
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37. Troughton, James (21 May 2021). "Resident Evil Village: We Counted Every Time Ethan Winters' Hands Are Injured". IGN. Archived from the original on 21 May 2021. Retrieved 23 May 2021.
38. Stobbart 2019, pp. 81–83.

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