I would strongly disagree. If what happened to Anduin would be considered trauma, then there are many other people who should be locked in vegetative comas. And yet. they go on with their lives without burdening me with their issues.
But rather than come up with counter examples or refute any claims of “good writing” point by point. Let me just offer this. All the crap with Anduin and any other woe-is-me characters is at direct odds with all the silly slapstick buffoonery in all the other aspects of the game.
In Kriegval’s Rest there is a giant, anthropomorphic rat monster that literally picks me up and repeatedly slams me into the ground while I am fighting him, but instead of dying with my brains splattered on the ground, I still win the fight. EVERY TIME.
A couple of my characters received as loot a “wizard’s staff” that was an active crosswalk/traffic light. It blinks and everything.
There are dozens of other such silly nonsense. And they are all fine. They just SUPER, SUPER clash with all these poor attempts to dramatize the lives of people who are barely believable as it is.
It does not imply that at all. It implies that if Anduin gets to whine and mew about having his mind controlled, something EVERY PRIEST has the power to do, then is “reaction” to his “trauma” should be much more common. But thankfully, this game is super inconsistent about such things.
This is true, but also kind of beside the point. People understate Anduin’s trauma and deliberately omit every depiction of his character (see: most of them) that don’t fit neatly into the fanfic version of him who’s always crying, or whatever.
It’s just projection. Anduin represents a tonal shift in Blizzard’s writing that many people don’t like, so outright lying about his character is a convenient way to give that argument a leg to stand on.
Yes that was a reference to using the Light, but when it finally became important he was able to do it. Meanwhile you seem to have forgotten all the scenes where a battle of one sort or another started up and he was fighting right along side of us.
A hero is one who steps up when someone else’s life is on the line or when there is a cause to be defended. His only hesitation was when it was to his own benefit.
They’re legit bred not to or experimented on so they wouldn’t. But yes, even they get PTSD and we’ve seen it, just shows you how horrible 40k universe truly is.
i get that you don’t like anduin but its kinda wrong to assert that a priest spell works in the same way to what domination did to anduin or sylvanas. heck, even having priests use the light to resurrect people in-lore is kinda a grey area much like how mind control works in-universe.
mind control works via posession whereas domination works by rewriting your very being.
andy lost more sense of who he was with each time he got dominated. his brain is scrambled eggs to the point where the line between good and evil from his perspective becomes indistinguishable from one another.
figuring out whether or not you are you is a big part of how just some traumas work irl.
as people have pointed out, it affects people differently because theyve had different lives. literally.
when i was in high school i met someone who had gone through something similar. her brain adjusted to the trauma by creating entirely split personalities. you aren’t just “you” anymore and it’s an incredibly interesting thing worth studying if you are interested
methinks some people could stand to consider that being traumatized doesnt mean you’re sad
This is what bugs me about this whole conversation. People have to go out of their way not to honestly engage with the material they’re complaining about to contrive the argument that Anduin is some wallowing, ineffectual baby. The amount of times I’ve seen people outright ignore clear and irrefutable examples of Anduin being every bit as heroic and masculine as they pretend to want him to be in favor of their own headcanon is why I can’t take this conversation seriously beyond hoping that Blizzard knows better than to take such shallow feedback to heart.
Others have pointed this out, but Tolkien’s works would absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt, get raked over the coals for the same thing. 2016 just never ends.
I genuinely don’t think I would have ever put it together that this is the scene it refers to. Because I just rewatched it, and it sure as hell seemed like Saurfang was out for blood. It was following Sylvanas crying “For the horde!” He roared and grabbed a horde banner as he charged forward. The answer to Anduin’s question, “Why didn’t you kill me?”, from that can only really be, “Because a bloody great big werewolf leapt on me and almost clawed my eyes out!”
My assumption had always been that it was something to do with when we confronted Saurfang outside the throne room, and that maybe part of it had been cut. But I guess sure, maybe Anduin intuited that it was weird for Saurfang to knock him down that way rather than just chop him in two with the correct end of his axe. I’m happy to accept that. Still it was pretty unclear. And frankly a weird moment to have it happen given the context of the cinematic - an apparent triumphant moment for the horde was actually their greatest general making the decision to turn on their warchief. Psyche!
lmao i just get so tilted when these topics crop up from time to time. maybe thats just a me sorta thing i guess. if you’re not the biggest fan of cutscenes that are rife with deep seated moments of reflecting on the past is one thing. but not surprising to see how simply having trauma is the thing that everyone doesn’t like and is used as blunt object against him.
anduin isnt even unique in that characterization either. jaina pretty much offered herself up to be sacrificed by her own mom. tyrande filled her heart up with nothing but hate and sadness. uther constantly doubting himself since becoming forsworn. azahara is staring blankly at her own reflection thinking herself the most beautiful monster in the seas. and khadgar noped the heck out of that one.
My favorite thing about Arthas was that his decision to cull Stratholme was born out of a desire to stop the spread of the plague.
To this day, I think Arthas has had some of the best character development I’ve seen in any game. I really think he qualifies as a tragic hero, even with some of the arrogance he displayed while he was still a paladin.
