I feel like the most significant thing there is whether Anduin will be able to use Light at all, since he openly doubts that. We've been told that Light magic requires will power, usually derived from one's faith in the chosen path/the Light itself. Anduin now clearly lacks it, and it's different from when he had self-doubt in the past (in Legion in BfA he clearly knew what had to be done, he just doubted if he had that strength). Things with Light may get very difficult for him now, and Madeleine Roux said that the shadow magic moment was somehing Blizzard asked her to put there, so we may be heading somewhere with this.Also Anduin's story is now somewhat similar to that of the Black dragonflight, so maybe we'll see him in Dragonflight being friends with Wration again or something.
I already appreciated this scene a lot, its subtle, well animated, and it is as with most of the voice acting in general this expansion, completely on point.This article sold me on the book tho most of all, its a shame this much depth isn't included in game, as it would probably redeem her entire arc to many players. 2 different showrunners working on the same canon source material and it has to merge in the end.... Its completely clear which vision won out. I need to pick it up sometime and give it a read...
I'm loving the direction they are taking with the storytelling these last few patches. I wasn't happy with what they did to Sylvanas at first but this is very touching and human.
If only we had known more about Sylvanas' reasoning before Shadowlands, and more about why she chose to not continue with the Jailer's plans.Another case of "the books should've been in-game content.". At this point I'd accept it as a cinematic or even a Warbringers style video.This patch has done A LOT to fix the problems both in lore and gameplay, but we really need to see that Blizz is capable of learning. Too often do they "fix" a few things in the last patch only to make more, but not new, mistakes in the next expansion.
Man, who cares about either of these characters? They should have killed them off.
This is the only Cinematic worth a damn this patch. Winter Queen one is eeh ok, and Lordaeron's is borderline insulting by saying that either of those characters are forsaken when they (especially Calia) aren't forsaken by anyone. This has actual character development and progression, and the ''conclussion'' is actually poignant, the voice actors are at the top of the game. Will be interesting to see what they do in the future.
This Cinematic was amazing. No battle, no major happening or revelation, but still showing us an interesting side of each character that we were previously not fully aware of. I wish there were more cinematics like this.
This Cinematic just brings to mind the refrain from The Accuser. "Absolution isn't free, and why should it be!"
Anduin doesn't have enough justification to just decide to "take a break to find himself" without going back to at least OK it with Greymane, Turalyon and the Nobles. Heck when Thrall did something similar, he at least had the justification that the elements were out of balance, and he needed to leave to become a better Shaman to be able to save the world, Azeroth is now in the most peace since the series began so Anduin doesn't have an excuse, he can find himself in his off time.If he doesn't think he can handle the job he has to abdicate, which I think he's going to do ultimately and if we're right about an upcoming "Tyranny of the Light" expansion coming up and we have to get Turalyon off the Throne given how things are going he's going to be replaced, both for the Alliance and Stormwind separately, with two more f---ing councils! At that point what is the difference between the Alliance and the Horde anymore other than favorite color? The lore just keeps getting watered down because "muh democracy" whether it fits for a race or faction or not!My advice for Anduin is keep working this out but in the meantime man up, sit your butt down on that throne and do your d--n job!"
I'm sorry, but this article has just as many bad takes as the scene itself and comes across as apologia instead of analysis. Instead of examining what was presented, it takes the writing at face value without calling out whether what was presented made sense. The way the article refers to other story beats and dialogue that related to this topic or these characters is great, and shows a good knowledge of the game's storyquests. However, the commentary is lacking and seems to endorse rather than interrogate. (The Primus article was an interesting theory of independent critical thinking, but this isn't really an analysis - maybe call it "story recap" instead?)Writing off Genn as unable to understand Anduin is nonsense, because as you'll note Anduin doesn't tell him what actually bothers him. He says that the things he did bothered him, and that he should have been stronger. First Genn tells him that it being forced means it's not his fault, and that he is incredibly strong so he will overcome these issues (just like he overcame the domination by himself during the raid, let's not forget). Both directly address what Anduin said. When Anduin tells Sylvanas that he feels guilty, she tells him that he shouldn't do that for things he was forced to do... and then Anduin tells her that he felt exhilaration. And only then does Sylvanas understand what he wanted to say. Sylvanas doesn't have any kind of special understanding of Anduin here; he simply told her what's bothering him while he didn't tell Genn. Since neither Sylvanas nor Genn are mind-readers and only go off of what they were told, that's not a fault with Genn and not an argument for Sylvanas being understanding.Sylvanas not only doesn't have a special understanding, but Anduin going to her was contrived as hell, seemingly a byproduct of writers at Blizz pushing favoured characters to the forefront even when it would make no sense for characters to do so organically. Sylvanas was Anduin's abuser, the person who chose to enslave him. He spent ages listening to her blind hypocritical fallacies while her captive, and Anduin was right about every instance that Sylcanas was blind to. Throughout the story she demonstrated no insight nor understanding regarding the Jailer, her own selfish goals, or her own self, so for Anduin to go to her for insight is laughable. It was Uther who even made what little self-realisation she now possesses possible. There are dozens of characters better suited to understand Anduin, including Uther himself, as well as Jaina who had a whole arc about accepting her past and the dodgy things she did and almost did, not to mention Bolvar and all the Death Knights who went through the same thing.Thirdly, the wishy-washiness of choice is as problematic as the whole morally grey angle was. The game bent itself over backwards to avoid calling out Sylvanas during BfA, and spent the whole book trying to invent explanations for why the person grinning during every warcrime somehow wasn't that bad and had sympathetic reasons for her actions. The article also draws a false analogy between Sylvanas and Anduin. Sylvanas having to come to terms with the choices she made, and facing what she did at Teldrassil, has absolutely nothing to do with Anduin's situation. Sylvanas was deceived by the Jailer because she's an idiot, she wasn't dominated. Comparing her accepting responsibility for her actions with Anduin taking on guilt for things outside of his control is tone-deaf. The correct analogy would have been to Sylvanas's domination by Arthas, and her slaughter throughout Quel-thalas under his command. But of course, the game realises that it would be nonsense to claim that she found that exhilarating or that being forced to massacre her people as a Banshee somehow blurred the line between domination and kinda wanting to do it herself lol. Yet the scene and the article make that analogy between Anduin's dominated actions and Sylvanas's choices that doesn't hold up at all.Not only was these scene between the characters contrived and nonsensical, it was also tone-deaf - there is no special understanding or profound character connection here, just a toxic abuser-abused captor-captive Stockholm dynamic. It's unbelievable that Blizzard would choose to go down the "I kinda liked it" route with this story about domination, as if their track record of butchering heavy subjects like genocide and trauma wasn't the utter careless atrocity that it is, or as if their real-life track record of abused women getting over a toxic environment wasn't what it is. But here we are, and it's mind-boggling. The domination storylines in wow have a distinct undertone of the r-word and bodily autonomy. We have abusers (Arthas and Sylvanas) who take away the free will of a victim (Sylvanas and Anduin) and use their victims' bodies to commit acts for the abuser's selfish wants while their minds are forced to live through it. To come here and pull the "I kinda enjoyed what I was forced to do" angle is sheer lunacy. Nowhere in Sylvanas's story is it suggested that she kinda enjoyed what Arthas made her do, and she certainly wouldn't have gone to her own abuser for advice. So even without the undertones (it has resonated as a r-metaphor for many, and Sylvanas's scar was even retconed from her abdomen where Arthas originally stabbed her with Frostmourne to her collarbone now), the scene is just such an eye-rollingly absurd follow-up to Anduin's domination. Not to mention that it came entirely out of the blue, because Anduin is repeatedly seen horrified not exhilarated during the atrocities he is forced to commit. Seeing himself stab the Archon is such an irreconcilable antithesis that he manages to break his will free; and while he was unable to regain control while his own self was captured and in danger, he musters greater force of will when others are in danger and breaks free again in the raid instead of finishing the job and killing his friends. So it's ridiculous to now turn around and say he found the atrocities he committed exhilarating and can't trust himself, when he found them so unacceptable that he literally broke domination multiple times.The scene is nonsense on so many levels, and I hope I don't come across as rude when I say that I was disappointed by this "analysis" that mostly just endorses the writing without examining it. More "It makes sense for him to do this because here are the reasons the writing said it makes sense for him to do this" rather than looking at the whole story so far and pointing out incongruencies, false analogies, and fabricated character moments that are contradictory and illogical.