Ethan MacMaster, Private Eye

Male, adult

Video Game: Crime Factory

The protagonist of Crime Factory, a fictional point-and-click adventure game that was famous in the late 1980s, is Ethan MacMaster, P.I. Originally from Canada, in the game MacMaster is implausibly ejected from the Mounties after being framed for a crime he didn’t commit, and ends up fleeing south of the border to Detroit with nothing but his top-notch detective skills, a bad attitude, tortured backstory, and an alcohol problem. (In the original 1980s game he’s drunk and belligerent in about half the scenes he appears in, although the remake was forced to tone that one aspect of the O.G. game down to avoid falling afoul of legal safeguards in the EU and other countries.) His dialogue also leans into bad noir tropes of being sarcastic and cold, especially towards women.

Unlike most of the other characters, whose personalities are actually rather different in the Waiting Room than in-game, Ethan is absolutely the same over-the-top grimderp jackass no matter where he is. He chain-smokes incessantly, mocks other characters, and is generally an unlikeable jerk. The only major difference between in-game and out-of-game Ethan is that the latter is also insufferably proud of his “celebrity” status because of his dialogue and actions in the O.G. game being so controversial.(He knows about this because the remake of Crime Factory has a “History of” section the player can read through which proudly preens itself about how much it offended the “pearl-clutchers”, as it calls them, back in the day.) Puffed up with this knowledge, Ethan incessantly mocks the other characters for being “corporate”or “bougie” and has a big hipster vibe about him when it comes to his own game.

Voice: Ethan’s biting, sarcastic, and gravelly from way too many cigarettes and cigars for his own good. Since he’s Canadian and based in Detroit, he should optimally have either a Canadian or Upper Midwest accent.