11th, 12th, and 13th PG Proposal. Now you wonder why the consecutive numbers? Well, this time we're doing a triple proposal, and none other from The Evil Within series! Pretty much the first time I've done it, but with that said let's begin!
What is the Work?
The Evil Within is a franchise that firstly spawned two video games developed by Tango Gameworks and published by Bethesda Softworks (same publishers behind RAGE, Doom, and Wolfenstein).
The first game focuses on Sebastian Castellanos, a detective from Krimson City Police Department, whose day job is turned upside down after investigating the odd occurrences within Beacon Mental Hospital, forcing him and his associates Juli Kidman and Joseph Oda to investigate what really lurks in there and uncover the mastermind behind it.
The second game focuses three years after the events of the first game. Sebastian retired from Krimson City Police Department following the events of the Beacon Mental Hospital and his nightmarish encounter with Ruvik in STEM, causing him to be an alcoholic. However, his luck changed when he realised that his daughter, Lily Castellanos, who was supposedly dead after a house fire, isn't dead, and it would take Sebastian to MOBIUS, a shadowy organisation, to find her and once again visit the horrors of STEM, now known as Union, with a different core.
Who Are They? What Have They Done?
Sebastian Castellanos
Senior Detective Sebastian Castellanos is the main protagonist of The Evil Within series. He is a former detective of Krimson City Police Department along with his partners Juli Kidman and Joseph Oda.
Sebastian is one of Krimson City Police Department's distinguished detectives. Prior to being sidetracked by two catastrophes, his career was on the fast track. Depressed and helpless, Sebastian turned to drinking away his problems. As he continued to descend into despair, his enthusiasm for his work gradually diminished along with his sense of perspective and serenity.
Joseph Oda, his longtime friend, reported Sebastian to Internal Affairs in an effort to help him get back on track and protect him from himself. Sebastian's career was saved, but in the end, Joseph and Sebastian's relationship suffered greatly, albeit they eventually grew close.
Since that time Sebastian has returned to the job, but is never without his hip flask. He still feels responsible for the tragedies that befell him and shrugs off any offers of help. He returns to find his daughter within STEM, and to stop the serial killer Stefano Valentini and cult leader Father Theodore Wallace with the eventual help of his wife Myra Castellanos.
Juli Kidman
Junior Detective Juli Kidman is the deuteragonist of The Evil Within series.
She is an ally and a companion of the former KCPD Senior Detective Sebastian Castellanos. She also works as an agent for MOBIUS, a highly enigmatic and mysterious organisation, who was planted into the KCPD to retrieve Leslie Withers. As a result, she is more knowledgeable about the game's happenings than she is prepared to share with her other fellow detectives.
During the events of the second game, Kidman became a rogue MOBIUS agent and turned on them, whose real goal is to rescue Lily Castellanos, Sebastian's own daughter, who was being used as a Core for their own version of STEM known as Union, while also aiding Myra in destroying MOBIUS for good, putting her in a conflict between her and her former employers. After Myra's plan of wiping out all MOBIUS membership through their cranial chips succeeded, Kidman finally rescued Lily and Sebastian, at the cost of Myra's life as she stayed within the destroyed Union to turn herself into its core.
Myra Hanson/Myra Castellanos
Myra Castellanos (née Hanson) is the tritagonist of The Evil Within series.
She is the estranged wife and ex-partner of Sebastian Castellanos during her term in Krimson City Police Department. Despite Myra's strict professionalism, she and Sebastian clicked right away and were a productive team. However, Myra was wounded while on duty four months into their relationship, which resulted in her being removed from field service and replaced by another investigator. While Myra was recovering, Sebastian remembers proposing to her with remarkable (albeit unanticipated) success.
At the time of the tragedy, Myra was also looking into the disappearances tied to Ruben Victoriano/Ruvik's STEM project. After making the connection, she was certain that the two were connected in some way. Shortly after, she disappeared. It is revealed, however, that she's in Union as a Lost, who is alive. Eventually, Sebastian would meet her after his final confrontation with Stefano Valentini and later Theodore Wallace, before her guilt eventually morphed her into an abomination known as The Matriarch.
However, after she was stopped by Sebastian, Myra would then propose the idea to destroy MOBIUS by detonating the chips within all of them through a signal before tearfully telling Seb that she has to stay behind and sacrifice herself to stop both the organisation and The Administrator, once and for all, putting an end to their hegemonic scheme of using STEM for their malicious purposes for good.
Goodness Zone/Admirable Standards
Make no mistake, The Evil Within ironically has a high admirable standard, given that the ones who stand out have stopped a bunch of heinous antagonists who all use the power of STEM for their sinister agenda.
Sebastian
Sebastian is the easiest one, since he's the Admirable Standard setter of the entire series. He's responsible for stopping the psychopathic Ruvik and his army of Haunted, ended Ruvik's sadistic machinations within STEM and escaped there.
In the second game, he decided to go to Union three years later by visiting MOBIUS' own headquarters with Kidman's help to save his own daughter Lily Castellanos, who was supposedly dead from the house fire that "killed" her, stopping the psychopathic serial killer Stefano Valentini and his twisted creation, then ending Theodore Wallace's ruthless reign of terror within Union and his hegemonic plans of brainwashing the whole human population with his own vision of STEM, avenging Liam O'Neal and Esmeralda Torres, as well as others whom he subjected to his brainwashing; as well as exposing MOBIUS' true agenda of using STEM for their world domination purposes.
Not to mention he stopped the Matriarch, the manifestation of his wife's (Myra's) guilt and anger, and made amends with her for the final time. At the end he ultimately rescues his daughter within Union after MOBIUS was finally stopped for good.
Kidman
Kidman is different in that unlike Seb she has far lesser resources than him given that she isn't even much of a badass fighter but an action survivor. She still stands out for her actions, starting from The Consequence, where she uncovers her true background of being an agent for MOBIUS, whom she was just actually being used as a pawn. This is significant as it would ultimately pave her way into betraying them and acting as a rogue agent in the second game, who is actually planning to take MOBIUS down. She fought off against the STEM version of The Administrator, who up to this point had clearly showed his true colours, despite her not being much of a fighter like Seb, then at the end of the second DLC she covertly freed Sebastian with Myra's help, which foreshadows the fact that she is working with Myra who both plan to take MOBIUS down but they keep it secret due to them watching their every move.
In the second game, she aided Sebastian into visiting Union to initiate Myra's secret goal known as The Plan, the covert takedown of MOBIUS, as well as orchestrating the rescue of Lily, who turned out to be alive inside Union. What she really stands out is the endgame: Chapter 17, where she initiates The Plan after hearing MOBIUS' motives of betraying Sebastian upon rescuing Lily, then refusing The Administrator's offer after betraying him, as well as stopping an army of MOBIUS soldiers and agents by herself with just her pistol just to reach Sebastian and Lily from STEM, thus biding Myra and Sebastian within Union the time to successfully achieve their respective goals, with the former planning to detonate all cranial chips of MOBIUS' membership by being the Core of STEM and with the latter rescuing Lily from Union. Then Kidman ultimately used the terminal to kill off all of MOBIUS including The Adminstrator, thus putting an end to the organisation that haunted her and anyone else for decades. Ultimately, she rescues both the real Lily and Sebastian after the chaos. As a result, she mainly stands out for being a key figure in The Plan by taking down MOBIUS and by rescuing both Sebastian and Lily within the high-security facility.
Myra
Myra is little tricky. Unlike Seb and Kidman, Myra has slightly lesser resources than the two in terms of screentime, as she only appeared briefly in both The Consequence and The Executioner, and in Chapter 8 of the second game. But this is counterbalanced by the fact that she is slightly powerful within Union, so she had slightly more resources than both Seb and Kidman. The reason she mainly stands out is because she is the progenitor of The Plan, her secret goal to take MOBIUS down by herself after Theodore turned on her when she entered The Union with him. She stands out in the chapter finale when she basically professes to Sebastian that in order to take down MOBIUS and its entire membership for good she had to stay behind from the crumbling remnants of Union and become its Core, aka Heroic Sacrifice, while telling him to save Lily and escape STEM for good. With Kidman biding the time for her to initiate The Plan, Myra then became the Core and eliminated all MOBIUS through frying their cranial chips at the cost of her life. As a result, she stands out for her very unique act of heroic sacrifice, a pretty selfless act even for the series, and being an essential figure in taking down MOBIUS given that she came up with The Plan to stop them for good.
Corrupting Factors
Lethality isn't a corrupting factor for all three of them given that the enemies they killed are hostile, walking zombies like the Haunted and the Lost. Plus, the main villains they killed including Ruvik, Stefano, Theodore, and The Administrator are all awful monsters of their own right who terrorise innocent people with their differing agendas, particularly the depraved Stefano, so the trio are righteous killers.
Sebastian
Basically, while Sebastian is a brooding, sarcastic man, this is not far too deterring of a corrupting factor as it was later revealed that he is acting like this because of losing his own daughter Lily from a house fire, which greatly affected him to the point that he became estranged with Myra; which amplified after his harrowing visit to STEM and basically Ruvik. Also, him telling Ruvik about his attempt at feeling sorry for his tragic past is not corrupting and only a one-off moment, given that Ruvik, the same Ruvik who tortured people who visits STEM, had committed many heinous actions like turning people within STEM to Haunted and basically saw Sebastian as nothing more than an expendable, a trash for him to rid of. Also, despite resorting to alcoholism to cope for the traumatic loss of his family in the interim during the first and second game, this is not corrupting as he eventually stopped doing it once he began his mission to save Lily, so this is a heating-up moment that he eventually subverted, along with his previous corrupting factors, after rescuing Lily at the end of the second game, thus showing that he was wholly reformed.
Plus, his anger towards MOBIUS is absolutely justified in the second game given that we find out that Lily isn't even dead and MOBIUS lied to him about Lily's true fate of being used as a core for their new STEM system. While it might be argued that Sebastian was forced to kill O'Neal and Torres, he absolutely showed regret in doing so and was completely horrified at it, after Theodore psychologically manipulated him multiple times. Not to mention Sebastian didn't show hate towards the dying O'Neal and Torres, despite the fact that Torres, as revealed by Yukiko Hoffman, was responsible for kidnapping Lily and burning the Castellanos house, an action that haunted Torres greatly to the point that she sided with Myra to get Lily out. Besides, Sebastian would avenge her and O'Neal after Theodore was killed by Myra.
Kidman
While she had some minor corrupting factors at the end of the first game, where she was revealed to be a MOBIUS agent implanted as a mole for KCPD to retrieve Leslie, this is not too much of a corrupting factor as she was indoctrinated by them at a young age, which basically she was forced to be enlisted to the ranks of MOBIUS at an age no higher than her teenage years. This is given MOBIUS themselves who kill off their agents if they turn on them and treat them as mere expendables, whom she did it out of her safety. Not to mention, she actually turned on MOBIUS before the start of the second game and basically went rogue and assisted Myra in taking down MOBIUS, the same people who caused suffering from not just her, but also to Sebastian and to the whole world.
While she did betray Sebastian at the end of the first game and ordered Sebastian to go to Union, she actually regretted betraying him and had a good reason not to tell Sebastian about The Plan, since MOBIUS was surveilling her the whole time, which isn't even a corrupting factor, as if she revealed it to him it would blow her cover as a rogue agent. She basically made it up by stopping MOBIUS with Myra's help for good and finally gave both Sebastian and Lily the life that was stolen from them thanks to MOBIUS' machinations. She essentially wholly reformed herself at the end of the game after leaving her old life and becoming a new person after the events at MOBIUS.
Myra
The closest that is "corrupting" for Myra is basically her overprotectiveness towards Lily, which isn't, as it is mostly a justified instinct since both Theodore and Stefano were after her daughter who wanted to use her as a core for their sick, twisted agenda, thus making this a heating-up period than a real corrupting factor.
Besides the point, after being transformed into the Matriarch and hid Lily into a recreation of their old family home, she basically admits that she lost control of herself after she was stopped, which she shed that said corrupting quality and apologised to Seb. And also, her not telling Sebastian about her true goals of taking down MOBIUS is again justified since the guys themselves watch her move, so that she does it out of her and Sebastian's safety since that would blow her cover.
Final Verdict
Yes for Seb and Kidman. Weak Yes for Myra.