I didn’t think so.
Sure, but my understanding is it can also be a bit more involved than just that reaction. I just take issue with it being an exaggerated situation if not the case. Like a story can be told with the impact of trauma without having it be full blown or wholly realistic. While still getting that point in.
You seem to be unable to read beyond the first line:
But if you want specifics sure:
Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus
and both of The Last of Us games.
Not sure how to really argue earnestly with someone who argues by throwing a fanfiction based around their own twisted narrative tbh.
Okay, so explain how.
How did the incorporation of PTSD make those games better?
You’ve made that emphatically clear, sweetie.
The effects of PTSD and trauma are the core themes that play within the stories of those games.
My argument wasn’t that ‘incorporating PTSD/trauma within a story makes that story better’, it was that these kinds of stories are entirely fine to have within gaming.
But if you want me to argue that it adds some benefit to Warcraft’s setting:
Like I said a few posts back, the addition of the actual psychological effects that conflicts like war/death bring create stakes surrounding conflict. Seeing how war effects people makes those wars feel like they’re actual forces that play out within Warcraft’s setting, and people’s thoughts and actions are influenced by it.
Makes it so that these conflicts which play out in WoW feel like they’re made up of individuals and not thoughtless emotionless units hitting one another.
Ideally, what you want out of Warcraft’s lore/story is to give life to these otherwise static pieces of pixels on a screen and make them compelling by humanizing them somewhat.
Otherwise, they’re simply NPCs in a game that you don’t care whether they live or die. That’s all the lore/story is there for, to create a narrative you can be compelled by and care marginally about what’s going on.
I’m not saying that the incorporation of Anduin having some form of trauma is a good or bad thing for WoW’s story, it’s simply something Blizzard is experimenting writing with. If done so properly it adds more to his character and makes him more compelling/gain a feeling of continuity as we’ve seen him through the expansions.
You’re totally right and I agree. War should carry weight and consequences. When characters die, NPCs we care about, we should feel emotionally roused. When they suffer, we should feel empathy for them.
The trouble is, we were never shown Anduin being put through the wringer.
When he appears on-screen throughout Shadowlands, he’s unchanged. His armor is still shiny and he’s standing perfectly upright. It’s implied that Sylvanas and the Jailer have imprisoned him within Torghast, in a circle and engage him in conversation. He hasn’t lost weight. He’s not bloody or scarred. He isn’t shaking or giving any appearance of being anything but bored. Even his voice is normal; no wavering, stammering or whimpering.
To the player, Anduin is in captivity and not being mistreated. We simply need to rescue him.
Right now, Anduin’s PTSD is unearned, which makes him come across as weak and pathetic. Until Blizzard fleshes out Anduin’s captivity, he’ll remain that way to the vast majority of players.
I truly hope this is the case.
They can actually make some interesting contrasts to how Varian and Anduin process things. Varian coped with his trama by just… being very angry all the time. His son bore the brunt of it, which is why Anduin was given a hearthstone set for Theramore so he could get away from his father when he was “having a lo’gosh moment” and was intolerable to be around. Anduin seems to be coping through withdrawal and avoidance. It highlights how different they are as people.
Except all the points after that as mentioned that we see.
Well to you.
Oh yeah? Where? When?
When do we see Anduin being mistreated?
I don’t know, I think losing control of your body while still remaining councious of your actions would be traumatizing to anyone.
Did you already forget the points given to you in this thread? I can do repost them if you did.
In every Shadowlands cinematic, Anduin is depicted as being just fine.
He gets mind-controlled to assault robots. Big whoop.
Where do we ever get to see him being abused?
He’s not fine when he’s being mind dominated, no.
The entire time he’s mind controlled draining his personality, forced to try and kill his friends and others, trying to annihilate the world. That’s all abuse.
Nah man, that’s weaksauce.
It really doesn’t hit the same. We’ll have to agree to disagree on this point.
I’ve seen way too many TV shows where someone gets mind-controlled or mind-swapped or whatever. It’s been done to death and is a common trope in entertainment.
It is. When I watched the trailer, I could see the trauma in his features well before that reflexive aggression.
This is harder to do and requires a lot of time. You need to gradually draw people in while showing them the character(s) avoiding certain situations and reacting to others… and after all of that if you were too subtle then all that effort could well be wasted.
Some, as demonstrated by this thread, will never accept that trauma is a thing that doesn’t care how tough you think you are. Trauma is a deeply personal thing. You can’t logic your way into or out of trauma. Take two random people put them through the same situation and both will likely have different responses.
I do always find that interesting, yeah. But I know of situations with people I know like that. It also comes up with survivor bias. “I made it out ok, this others can do it”. But ultimately not everyone reacts the same for reasons beyond their control. Two soldiers can go through the same situation with different impacts.
And part of that is showing the psychological impacts of war, i.e. trauma and PTSD.
Glad we finally agree on this.
We don’t know the full extent of what was done to him when he was under the control of the Jailer. It’s all sort of implied.
I don’t doubt that their original intention for Anduin was much different when under Jailer control, but they’ve shifted it into something new (and likely a lot better than what they originally had planned).
I don’t know if the vast majority of players agree with this.
But, I also don’t think we need the full gory extent of what happened to him to empathize. I don’t really believe that Blizzard needs to make Anduin’s trauma ‘earned’ or anything like that, it’s fine being up to interpretation and vague the way it is.
Though, the new expansion which will assumedly be exploring this hasn’t come out yet and we know only bits and pieces so far, I wouldn’t draw conclusions yet we’re only just learning about this/starting this storyline.
That’s all we see first-hand for now.
Doesn’t mean it’s the only thing he did while under the Jailer’s control.
Not to mention, having your mind ‘dominated’, being used as a puppet and losing all free will is traumatizing alone.
This was something not done out of comedic effect or anything like that, this was him being forced to do things with his mind ‘dominated’. Think there’s an important distinction there.
We also don’t know the psychological toll that ‘domination’ magic does to a person still alive, who knows how it actively effects the mind beyond being controlled.
I think there is one thing that has not been mentioned yet regarding Anduin’s imprisonment. He was the Jailer’s prisoner for, what, a year or so before being dominated? Months at least.
While Anduin may not have been physically tortured, he was definitely mentally tortured. Think about it. He was all alone, basically in solitary confinement. His only visitor is someone coming along to feed him and Sylvanas. Otherwise, he’s alone. Much of the world considers solitary confinement to be cruel and unusual punishment, practically torture.
He doesn’t know what happened to his friends and he doesn’t know what is happening on Azeroth. Anduin only knows what he’s been told and that seems to be basically nothing. There is no sense of time for him. No sun or night. The only time he gets to talk is with Sylvanas and she is trying to sway him to finally submit to the Jailer.
Imagine that for months on end. All alone in the Maw with just his thoughts, his fears, and nobody to assist him.
For PTSD sufferers, they usually can carry on with their normal lives. Sadly, some do have it worse than others. They also have triggers and it isn’t the same for everyone. It can be a word or words, a smell, a particular sight, or certain sounds. With Anduin, mentioning the Light seems to be one of his. The poor man will be suffering from nightmares for years to come.
I don’t know if Blizz writers can pull off Anduin and his PTSD issues, but we’ll see how they handle it.
The worse punishment you could give someone outside of forcing them to do Torghast 24/7
This thread comes across as another “fans put more thought into it than the writers” situation for Warcraft lore.
Not sure why mentioning “Light” would do this to him, since the Light was a big part of how he broke free from the Jailer’s grasp in Zereth Mortis. And what he used to put the message in the compass.
My shot in the dark guess? He feels unworthy of the Light.
The Light clearly really likes him. It was his powerful connection to it even in a place like the Maw that impressed Zovaal. It played a factor in his eventual escape from the Jailer’s control. And even after all the things he feels guilt over, the Light still comes to him when he calls. It’s hard, if not impossible, to feel worthy of that kind of connection for anyone. It must be harder still for someone who had the reins of leadership over a global super power thrown into his hands because his father died fighting an army of interdimentional space demons, only to quicklly be thrust into a war of his own against a sexy evil dead elf boss babe who controls the other global super power, commanding X number of citizens of your super power to die under your banner to the point forcing farmers on to the field was the only viable option left, then going from that immediately into aiding in a war against Cthulhu’s brother, catching a break after his defeat that ends up with you getting abducted into the latest hall variant, and so on and so forth. All before you’ve even had a real girlfriend/boyfriend.
Basically? Anduin probably suffers from imposter syndrome.