What is the outcome for his character? What could it possibly be? He just jumps off Icecrown like Sylvanas? He didn’t actively do any of the things that happen of his own volition. Or he becomes emo and moody?
Jaina, Tyrande, and even Cata Thrall surely shows that will go over well with the fanbase. Drastically shifting a character’s story just for shock value and no build up.
Again I’m talking about it from a storytelling perspective for the audience. What’s the interest in seeing Anduin be sad because the Super Lich King mind controlled him into doing bad things.
I donno perhaps you should expect more out of a billion dollar company than just a story they’ve done 10 times before.
You’re being intentionally reductionist in a way that anybody can do to make anything sound stupid. “Oh, Charles Foster Kane’s ideals and business empire collapsing just caused him to be sad? So predictable! Orson Welles is a hack fraud.”
And you are drastically overestimating what the story is going to be considering what we’ve gotten for the last 6 years. And continuing to strawman my opinions about it because I’m not just barfing out, “Wait and see it’s going to be interesting!”
What’s past is prologue, Anduin will be sad about it and then with the help of some character he’ll overcome it only for the Horde or some other threat to make him sad again.
You’re in the wrong franchise if you’re expecting some deep dive into psychological or emotional recovery from trauma in the story.
That is essentially the entire personality and theme of the Forsaken. They were raised and controlled by the lich king to do horrible things against their will and then got their freedom back. The Alliance really dont need to be stealing that from the Horde.
Its a basic retelling of everything we have seen characters have gone through since warcraft 3 created the scourge. We have seen multiple forsaken and ebon blade characters go through this. Except Anduin will probably cope and come out unaffected better than them. Anduin even comes out better as he will probably get to stay alive at the end of it all.
The story has never held any character responsible for what they have done while being controlled by another. They certainly won’t with Anduin infact they will probably write him out to be a bigger victim than the people hes killed.
Which is funny, because he only resembles Arthas in terms of appearance. In terms of actions and personality, they are basically opposites.
Arthas thought he was doing the right thing, but in reality it was just his pride and anger that spurred him on, and eventually it was all that he was. He willingly walked down the path of damnation.
Anduin on the other hand, genuinly does things because he is wants to do good, no strings attached. And he is being forcefully controlled every step of the way in order for the Jailer to enact his plan. Not once, not for a millisecond, does he believe that the Jailer is right, or do anything for him out of his own free will.
It also means the “high stakes” are actually nonexistant, because we know Anduin is Anduin. Even if he is a bit traumatized by what he has been forced to do, in the end when he is freed, and he will be freed, no doubts about that, he will be back to his usual altruistic self, with a slightly somber undertone I imagine.
And that’s the very predictable and boring storyarc of Anduin, simply because Blizzard has are dead set on how they want him to be portrayed, with no deviation allowed. Which wouldn’t be a problem if he wasn’t such a black hole who doesn’t allow other Alliance characters to stand out, or even act in a way that goes against his beliefs. It’s fine to have an altruistic, idealistic character who people can see as “the good guy”. It’s not okay when that one character dictates literally everything for that faction.
It’s not impossible. We have to find the Seat of the Pantheon somewhere in space…should be easy enough because Illidan alone radiates so much edginess that any radar can pick it up from thousands of lightyears away. After that we kill the titans, kill Illidan and free Sargeras.
Outside of that I really, really cannot care about the storyline at all. None of the involved characters is remotely interesting enough to be invested into the story.
I miss the days when we knew where the story was heading years before.
All it does is frustrate, nothing really stays unspoiled anyway because of PTR so what’s the point of keeping things hidden?
I do have to admit this whole scene seems disturbing with a vacant looking Anduin standing there looking at nothing in silence with Sylvanas. With there being no voices nor music playing adds to how uncomfortable it is, with the random ambient noises. [I know its a work in progress]
Looks like it will eventually be dialogue heavy and, no doubt, pass for whatever the dev team things of as ‘revelatory’, but I’m just wondering when Thrall suddenly got huge - he’s towering over everyone in this scene. Is it just the shoulders?
Ever considered that portrayal of the themes and characters in WoD+ time is drastically different from what was developed in early 2000s (W3, vanilla-TBC-maybe concept of WotLK)? To some it’s just vastly inferior to the originals. That’s about it.
We’re in a franchise that resolved a drug addiction allegory in TBC by claiming the Blood Elves were just edgy because they didn’t have drugs and the way to resolve all their societal woes was to hook them up with a different drug.
WoW’s writing has always been about introducing topics that might be interesting to explore and then doing nothing with it (or worse, making resolutions to real world allegories with questionable implications.
It seems quite possible that the WoWhead video threw Jaina’s quote in there by mistake. Considering this event clearly takes place in Korthia, which is not part of the raid.
I guess I never really thought about it but yeah its pretty screwed up that the solution to the Blood Elves’ drug addition (Fel) was that they just needed jesus (the Light of the Sunwell)
100% opposite reaction from me, I´d pay irl money to get him OUT of the story permamently (the Med´an treatment seems like the proper thing to do to Med´an´s narrative heir after all).
The only job he could fulfill in Forsaken society would be to act as the stand-in pinata for Arthas himself. He´s redundant even for “muh Light / muh peace” standards considering the poor Forsaken ALREADY got saddled with Calia.
Wrong, the screwed up part is about the Blood Elves NEVER fixing the addiction in the first place (as a mixture of ARCANE -the drug- and the Light -another type of drug-) the Belves are pretty much the pot heads of always.
The Sunwell should had never be recovered, that was an awful narrative choice (and the devs DID learn their lesson, reason why Nightborne got their fancy three that actually DOES cure the addiction. The current Sunweel does NOT cure the addiction issues, is just a mega source of the drug and nothing else).
[I know its a work in progress]