The Evil Within is a survival horror game developed by the same publisher from the prestigious stealth game, Dishonored. It entails the story of fellow detective Sebastian Castellanos. Upon being called to investigate a mysterious murder report in Beacon Mental Hospital, Sebastian Castellanos finds himself being pulled towards a much stronger and stranger force. When he comes to, he finds himself trapped in a horror world, filled with strange and gruesome creatures. Will Sebastian find a way out of this living nightmare?

Overall, Sebastian Castellanos is this typical ‘been-through-done-that’ detective. He doesn’t really flinch or cower in the face of threat. You will get this rugged, beat-up vibe from this veteran detective, and that just adds more points to his sense of bad-ass. Despite all of the bad-ass on the surface, Sebastian has a real soft spot for his family and comrades which will be discussed later in this article.

Sebastian Castellanos is a very bad-ass detective. Just like what was written in his bio, he has that look that showed he’d been through grim times, and that shows the way the character was built. You’d often see it in TV shows, you know that one guy that works very hard, has a reputation of being stubborn, often finds himself torn between work and family. If you haven’t played the game yet, think of him as the Detective Jim Gordon (Gotham) of The Evil Within series. Sebastian isn’t the type to take an ‘L’ to the face, so beware he is one tough cookie.

A normal person would have instinctively found a way to escape the place, but Sebastian chose to pursue it in hopes to uncover the mystery behind Beacon Mental Hospital.

If you played the game, then you would know what I am talking about. Based on the previous point, you’d realize that Sebastian isn’t one that takes ‘no’ for an answer so easily. He acts in his own way, although we must give him credit since he has a righteous side to him. This also means that he has this ‘leave-no-man-behind’ attitude, and always want to try and save everybody.

However improbable it may seem to him, Sebastian will always go for it, risking his life. In the screenshot above is a cutscene where Sebastian knocked over Joseph Oda, who tried to shoot himself in the head after suffering from a strange transformation that rendered him murderous. This showed how Sebastian values his comradeship with Joseph, despite not knowing whether Joseph is going to turn against him or not, he still saved him.

This ‘incident’ sparked a lot of ‘interesting’ fan art or artwork of Sebastian and Joseph. Feel free to look it up.

In the face of danger, Sebastian has proved to be resourceful, multiple times. In the picture above, you’d see that it’s a cutscene of where Ruvik was choking Sebastian, and with his life in danger, Sebastian smashed a torchlight into Ruvik’s face, subsequently burning him enabling him to survive that much longer in that hellhole.

There are also instances where Sebastian Castellanos managed to escape a large mob of angry creatures in the earlier stage of the game. Not to mention all the puzzles and trap doors that need to be activated. All in all, there’s no denying that Sebastian is one smart and sneaky fellow, credits to his years of serving the KCPD.

Call it intuition, call it gut feeling, we all can relate to that inner voice inside our heads that tells us things at times. Take Sebastian Castellanos, with the amount of his experience as a detective for the KCPD, his spidey-senses are seldom wrong. In the picture above, is where Sebastian Castellanos decides to confront the ‘rookie’ Juli Kidman, who is adamant in killing Leslie Withers in order to stop Ruvik from possessing him. It was at this cutscene that Sebastian noticed Kidman is hiding something more and isn’t the average typical police detective everyone thought her to be, as it was later revealed that Juli Kidman was an agent of MOBIUS, the organization behind the creation of the STEM System.

Despite having a respectable background serving the KCPD, Sebastian Castellanos also has a darker side to him. In the early years of Sebastian’s career, he fell into despair as a mysterious fire claimed the life of his daughter. For a family man, it destroyed him. He succumbed to temptation, often found drinking and smoking his pain away. If you played the game, then you’d notice that Joseph Oda mentioned this to him, referring it as ‘the incident’.

Personally, the developers did an excellent job of adding this part of his personality to his story. It made Sebastian’s character seem much more real and relatable. This gave him a human side for the players to relate to. As a man that had the perfect family and then suddenly lost it all, you can only imagine how much pain that would cause. In the picture above, you can see that Sebastian is reaching for a quick cigarette after being wounded and chased by a monster.

In conclusion, The Evil Within is a very exciting horror-survival game, and having Sebastian Castellanos, a beat-up cop as the main character fits the whole scenario perfectly. His character showed resilience and persistence in surviving the whole incident. Even after the Beacon Mental Hospital incident, the story revealed that Sebastian still suffers from severe PTSD and depression, which continued on to the next series of the game, The Evil Within 2, and becomes the main plot of the story as it is picked up just a few years after the end of The Evil Within.