The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

Lore & Background

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter was developed by three former People Can Fly employees who had previously worked on first-person shooter games. The team was interested in moving into more story-heavy games, and after a canceled collaboration with THQ on a project called Come Midnight, they formed their own company, The Astronauts, to gain the freedom needed to work on such a game. From the start, the game was always going to be focused on horror; lead designer Adrian Chmielarz discovered the genre of weird fiction and took inspiration from 'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,' which helped solidify the concept. The team used photogrammetry technology to create the in-game environment, making it look like the Polish Karkonosze mountains, as they felt settings in games inherently felt 'a bit artificial.'

The game's plot follows paranormal investigator Paul Prospero in 1973, who journeys to Red Creek Valley, Wisconsin after receiving a fan letter from 12-year-old Ethan Carter. Prospero learns Ethan has gone missing and uncovers a dark family secret involving a malevolent spirit called the Sleeper. The narrative includes multiple deaths and a twist ending: if Prospero has uncovered all of Ethan's stories, he discovers he is a figment of Ethan's imagination, and the events were a fiction created by Ethan to find comfort as he died in a mansion fire. A VR version was released as DLC on Steam and as a standalone game on the Oculus Store on March 28, 2016, but was delisted in 2024.

Reader's Guide

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is significant for its approach to storytelling and environmental design in the adventure game genre. The game's open world, which the article notes 'does not hold the player's hand,' requires players to piece together the story by solving deaths using paranormal abilities, such as sensing important objects, restoring scenes, and reassembling timelines. This mechanic, along with additional 'stories' that include puzzles and stealth sections, creates a non-linear narrative experience. The game's development by former first-person shooter developers marked a deliberate shift toward story-heavy games, and its use of photogrammetry to create a natural-looking world was a notable technical achievement. The game received positive reviews, with critics praising its visuals, story, and puzzle-solving, though some criticized its linear gameplay and auto-save system. It sold over a million copies by December 2017 and won the Best Game Innovation Award at the 2015 BAFTAs, while also receiving D.I.C.E. Award nominations for Adventure Game of the Year, Art Direction, Game Direction, and Original Music Composition. The composer Mikolai Stroinski was nominated for two Hollywood Music in Media Awards. A port to Unreal Engine 4, titled Vanishing of Ethan Carter Redux, was released for PlayStation 4 in July 2015 and for PC in September 2015, featuring a new save system and eliminating backtracking from the ending sequence.

Did You Know?

• The setting takes inspiration from the Polish Karkonosze mountains, and the team used photogrammetry technology to create the in-game environment.
• A VR version was released on March 28, 2016, but was delisted from Steam and the Oculus Store in 2024.
• The game sold 60,000 copies in its first month and over a million copies as of December 2017.