Evil Dead's beloved Ash Williams, there is a roster of Survivors for players to choose from. Alternatively, players can opt to play as the Demon, facing off against the team of Survivors using a unique set of abilities. There are three different classes of Demon with nine different Demon characters in total for players to choose from, including yet another variation of Ashley Williams: Evil Ash.
Evil Dead: The Game is a 4 vs 1 asymmetrical survival horror game from Saber Interactive for PlayStation, Xbox, and PC. A future port to Nintendo Switch is planned. Based on the Evil Dead franchise, the co-op game features characters from all three original Evil Dead films, as well as the STARZ Ash vs Evil Dead television series. This isn't the first Evil Dead video game, as a trilogy of Evil Dead games was released in the early 2000s. Ash Williams has also made guest appearances in other video games, most recently and notably the survival horror game Dead by Daylight.
There are four variations of Ashley Williams as a Survivor, one in each of the four character classes: Leaders, Hunters, Warriors, and . The Leader class has chainsaw-wielding Ash vs Evil Dead Ash, whereas the Hunter class has Evil Dead 2 Ash, an avid treasure hunter with the ability to exorcise demons. In the Warrior class is armor-clad Ash from Army of Darkness, best suited to melee combat. Finally, Ash from the original Evil Dead movie fulfills the role, with healing abilities. Evil Ash, featured in multiple movies, is the only iteration of Ash Williams out of the Demon characters.
Why Evil Dead: The Game Has More Than One Ash Williams
Aside from wanting to please fans of the Evil Dead franchise, there is lore to multiple versions of Ash existing in the same place. Evil Dead 2 features a space-time vortex that Ash is sucked into, traveling back in time to Medieval Europe. The 2005 video game Evil Dead: Regeneration showed an alternate narrative where Ash doesn't travel back in time, changing the course of events following Evil Dead 2. The game made heavy use of portals, including travel to alternate dimensions. The Necronomicon, Evil Dead's book of the dead, itself is a portal to the Mirror Dimension, to which deadites are banished.
The Evil Dead franchise frequently features the use of portals to travel through time and space and between alternate dimensions so, canonically, multiple versions of Ash Williams existing simultaneously are possible. Additionally, Ash has faced off against Evil Ash more than once, showing that multiple versions of Ash can exist at the same time and place. Evil Ash is described as a doppelganger or clone of the original Ash Williams, so this could also be used to explain why there's more than one Ash in Evil Dead: The Game. Including multiple versions of Ash in the games satisfies fans of the Evil Dead franchise, regardless of which Ash Williams is their favorite, while remaining true to Evil Dead canon.
