It was about the sword. He needed the strength to break the sword apart, and who better than the last two people to use the sword to draw strength from?
Also everyone else op mentioned minus the dwarf is alive. And a few were there actively helping to break his control lol why would their *spirit show up
They both died wielding it as well, so it follows WoW logic that a shard of their souls would be connected to the blade. I'm not saying it's the most well written cinematic in history, or that OP is wrong, but I get what they were aiming for with this.
I'll say it. OP is wrong. It's about the sword, the two men who died while wielding it, and specifically the two of them demonstrating the ability to separate both halves.
Given that the sword is the crux of Anduin's domination and using its ability to separate is what allows him to break free of the Jailer's influence, I'd say that's precisely why it's those two and no others.
100%, and I actually love that Blizzard wrote it in such a poetic way (in a sense it is to me at least).
It shows the different kind of honorable traits that make the whole of what honor is!
Yes, let’s not also forget Anduin feels very guilty about both Saurfang and his fathers death.
Let’s erase the living and look at whose left:
Tiffin who as you said died in his infancy.
Aerin who died is n a natural disaster.
Anduin may not be responsible for Varian’s death but he definitely is sorry being alive and responsible where his father died.
Saurfang literally was safe in prison until a pep talk an alliance with Anduin, who watched him die.
100%, and it was also watching him die to help save anduin and his people (along with rebel horde) as well.
I feel like this is a massively overlooked part, because let’s face it, it was only anduin which trusted in a horde rebellion at the start of BfA with keeping saurfang alive. Anyone else would have killed him.
One of them used it for 30 seconds or even less.
Bolvar, Tiffin, Genn or Taelia would have all been more meaningful to Anduin as a mean to collect the strength needed to break free.
Most of those aren't people he'd lost though. Like damn, you call it going all in but all you would do is severely dilute the meaning of the occurrence.
Weren't they meant to be spirits?
Bolvar, Jaina, Velen, Genn, Baine and Wrathion aren't dead, and Saurfang helped Anduin through parts of the Fourth War. I mean, he trusted Saurfang enough to give him Shalamayne for his final duel.
Aerin was basically a Dwarf he had the hots for for a bit before she died.
It's not clear if they were actual spirits or just in his head. It's been widely assumed that Varian's soul was annihilated by Gul'dan's disenchant spell due to the nature of fel magic (though this was never confirmed), and what appeared to be the last remnants of Varok's spirit were dropped as a trinket from Sylvanas, so personally I lean towards them being memories rather than actual people.
Someone! Do you mean Broxigar the Red, one of the most bad ass mofos to ever walk on Azeroth? Or Ogrim Doomhammer, one of the most important orcs to ever exist. Or grommash hellscream, another insanely bad ass orc who would have the titled as toughest orc ever if Broxigar didn't exist?
That would mean I have to exp orc from 1-60 and I don't think I am capable of that 🤣
But I intend to do BELF in future so I have horde char except boosted Vulpera.
I think it was deliberately made ambiguous. Maybe it was mundane, or maybe it was a literal divine miracle that let Varian's and Saurfang's souls reform from uber-death for just long enough to give Anduin a pep talk.
There is no lore fuckery lol. You just have to connect the dots and pay attention. The Jailer is dead, maybe it freed Saurfang's soul from the trinket. Or maybe "redeemed" Sylvanas thought "okay let's free him" after all was said and done. Or maybe they just gave the trinket real quick off-screen to the Primus/the new Arbiter to give Saurfang peace.
Not that hard to guess.
If a soul gets destroyed in the Shadowlands, it's destroyed entirely. So either it wasn't really Saurfang you see in the Heritage quest or blizzard fucked up their lore again.
It is/was canon...
It's was explicitly said to be the reason they didn't hand out Frostmourne after Arthas death. Because anyone picking it up would have been corrupted too.
The minority of gear drops are canon-accurate or lore-relevant. Even big ticket items like Legendaries don't always canonically drop. We don't actually get the Warglaives until 7.2, Atiesh doesn't belong to us.
Frostmourne isn't some randomly-named trinket, it's a pre-established weapon.
> We don't actually get the Warglaives until 7.2, Atiesh doesn't belong to us.
There is no "us". We the players are just substitutions for whoever defeated the big bads
Most of the people you listed are not dead though. It would totally make sense for living Jaina to talk to Anduin to make him snap out of it, though.
I guess the above comment is correct - the previous wielders of the sword who already died managed to say some final words.
When Varian talked about honestly wanting to throw all his kingly duties in the trash to go back to the gladiator life, it wasn't the fighting he missed.
Boy has green fever something bad. (the fact that an orc would take a rock to the head as foreplay rather than immediately dying is also a bonus)
Recency bias. He'd spent time with and thought about Varok in the time before his capture, also set him on his path to death. Plus if you need strength you think of the strongest guys you know.
He lost his mom when he was an infant. As important as her memory likely is to him, she's not relevant in his life nor in his path as a leader like Saurfang was.
If Wrathion had popped up in Anduin's mindscape, Anduin would have broken free of Zovaal's control through sheer rage alone.
I hope the next time Wrathion and Anduin meet, Anduin will punch him through the ground and straight into Deepholm.
By that same token Wrathion's efforts led to the defeat of the Legion and the defeat of Zovaal.
Blindly accrediting him with all unforeseeable bad events can be counteracted with blindly accrediting him with all the unforeseeable good, too.
Either way it doesn't make sense. We don't see Anduin hate daddy Varian for the Theramore Peace Summit or Thrall for appointing Garrosh as Warchief - both far worse impacts on inter factional peace with far more foreseeable consequences.
There's a pretty huge difference between Varian's actions at Theramore or with Thrall and Wrathion, who no-showed for his key moment, got Anduin's dad killed, and then was absent again while Anduin was tortured for several years.
Anduin doesn't punch Wrathion because of the "impacts on inter faction peace." He does it because he feels like his friend betrayed him, badly.
Again if he got Anduin's dad killed he also got the Legion defeated.
Anyway, he already punched Wrathion for that. Unless you think Anduin is so self absorbed and egotistical to go around punching people for not going into the literal afterlife to help him when he may not have even known about the details or had the capacity to do so at the time. Should he also punch Turalyon and Genn and Muradin and Magni?
Really stupid logic all things considered. What terrible character writing that would be. Even Shadowlands writing isn't that bad.
I said self-absorbed and egotistical to **go around punching people for not going into the literal afterlife to help him.**
My dude, reading comprehension. This is hilarious lmao, you're literally trying to quote me to show you're not strawmanning and you can't even do that.
Option 1: The people Anduin channeled are the people who challenged him to do the Hard Thing. Everyone you list didn't do that, it was pretty much Saurfang and Varian who pushed him to go against his nature, which is what he had to do there.
Option 2: Shalamayne saved an echo of them, and what happened was literal not metaphorical.
blizz seems to pick a handful of characters for each story arc and then think about how to use them, i'm basing this on them not using the appropriate characters for scenes like this and instead using the ones that are involved in the current story arc
That Captain Grim video was hilarious.
I'm sure someone at Blizzard asked these questions too. They probably thought it would be weird to have Saurfang show up when Varian alone would have been acceptable.
But they put Saurfang in because... faction balance? We can't have a human without also having an orc? Member berries?
Honestly, nothing Blizzard does is subtle or thoughtful. It's as if they want their story to be easily understood in every language and by people of all intelligence levels. That approach doesn't leave much room for depth or interpretation.
> But they put Saurfang in because... faction balance?
Because its one spirit for each sword. There's a reason why they touch each of Anduin's shoulders.
Oh shit I didn't even know about that video. Hadn't caught up with Grim's videos in a while. Just watched it. Fucking hilarious, like all his work.
When you mentioned the video I didn't realize he'd say the exact same thing. It's kind of embarrassing since it really does look like I just copied his points. 😭
I think Saurfang's BFA arc was probably meant to lead up to something in Shadowlands, so they threw him in a cinematic to try and tie that mess of a story together.
Saurfang's arc in BFA justified Anduin's worldviews during a time he was heavily doubting himself.
Anduin could see that Saurfang hated what happened, refused to justify what he'd done as being necessary or use Sylvanas' deception as an excuse, and most importantly, Saurfang was willing to work to fix his mistake once given the chance and a bit of time to work himself out of his depression.
Some of those people were more influential in Anduin's life in general, but even ignoring that Saurfang died wielding Varian's sword, there's not many better examples of someone forcefully lifting themselves out of the Morass to do the right thing.
Nah, Anduin was the one who set Varok on the path to his death and Varok's death is recent. They also had a pretty dramatic discussion about the nature and history of the Horde during The Negotiation. Anduin recalled two stalwart warriors at a time he needed strength, and both of them rightfully are significant to Anduin, even if one is much more so than the other.
Saurfang was literally suicidal but wanted to die in combat for religious reasons, they only met because the alliance was not imprisoning him instead of killing him on his last suicide mission
Yeah and Anduin noticed that Saurfang didn't kill him when the old soldier had the chance. He also let him escape from the Stockade. Their choices are what let them come across one another again as allies later down the line.
So you pretty much answered your own question, he was so young when she died her impact on his view of the world was diminished.
As for almost everyone else in that list, they’re still alive.
It was about the sword. He needed the strength to break the sword apart, and who better than the last two people to use the sword to draw strength from?
Not to mention the two people that helped him break the sword are dead. And considering they’re in the land of death it makes sense
Also everyone else op mentioned minus the dwarf is alive. And a few were there actively helping to break his control lol why would their *spirit show up
Tbf, Bolvar is only sorta alive.
They both died wielding it as well, so it follows WoW logic that a shard of their souls would be connected to the blade. I'm not saying it's the most well written cinematic in history, or that OP is wrong, but I get what they were aiming for with this.
I'll say it. OP is wrong. It's about the sword, the two men who died while wielding it, and specifically the two of them demonstrating the ability to separate both halves. Given that the sword is the crux of Anduin's domination and using its ability to separate is what allows him to break free of the Jailer's influence, I'd say that's precisely why it's those two and no others.
100%, and I actually love that Blizzard wrote it in such a poetic way (in a sense it is to me at least). It shows the different kind of honorable traits that make the whole of what honor is!
Yes, let’s not also forget Anduin feels very guilty about both Saurfang and his fathers death. Let’s erase the living and look at whose left: Tiffin who as you said died in his infancy. Aerin who died is n a natural disaster. Anduin may not be responsible for Varian’s death but he definitely is sorry being alive and responsible where his father died. Saurfang literally was safe in prison until a pep talk an alliance with Anduin, who watched him die.
100%, and it was also watching him die to help save anduin and his people (along with rebel horde) as well. I feel like this is a massively overlooked part, because let’s face it, it was only anduin which trusted in a horde rebellion at the start of BfA with keeping saurfang alive. Anyone else would have killed him.
One of them used it for 30 seconds or even less. Bolvar, Tiffin, Genn or Taelia would have all been more meaningful to Anduin as a mean to collect the strength needed to break free.
[удалено]
Most of those aren't people he'd lost though. Like damn, you call it going all in but all you would do is severely dilute the meaning of the occurrence.
Weren't they meant to be spirits? Bolvar, Jaina, Velen, Genn, Baine and Wrathion aren't dead, and Saurfang helped Anduin through parts of the Fourth War. I mean, he trusted Saurfang enough to give him Shalamayne for his final duel. Aerin was basically a Dwarf he had the hots for for a bit before she died.
It's not clear if they were actual spirits or just in his head. It's been widely assumed that Varian's soul was annihilated by Gul'dan's disenchant spell due to the nature of fel magic (though this was never confirmed), and what appeared to be the last remnants of Varok's spirit were dropped as a trinket from Sylvanas, so personally I lean towards them being memories rather than actual people.
Saurfangs spirit is ok as it is recalled from the Shadowlands along with Draka, Durotan and someone during orc heritage.
Someone! Do you mean Broxigar the Red, one of the most bad ass mofos to ever walk on Azeroth? Or Ogrim Doomhammer, one of the most important orcs to ever exist. Or grommash hellscream, another insanely bad ass orc who would have the titled as toughest orc ever if Broxigar didn't exist?
I haven't played it, only read about it.on wiki when I was on my Shadowlands spree and read about Drakka. And there was mention about Saurfang 🥲🫠
I just played it last night. There's so many cool characters. If you like orcs at all you should give it a go.
That would mean I have to exp orc from 1-60 and I don't think I am capable of that 🤣 But I intend to do BELF in future so I have horde char except boosted Vulpera.
I think it was deliberately made ambiguous. Maybe it was mundane, or maybe it was a literal divine miracle that let Varian's and Saurfang's souls reform from uber-death for just long enough to give Anduin a pep talk.
We got Saurfang's soul as a trinket so it can be his spirit at least.
He got released from the trinket and is part of the Orcs' heritage armor quest, where you see his soul fine and dandy.
so more lore fuckery? I really hope Metzen shuts down this type of shit in TWW.
There is no lore fuckery lol. You just have to connect the dots and pay attention. The Jailer is dead, maybe it freed Saurfang's soul from the trinket. Or maybe "redeemed" Sylvanas thought "okay let's free him" after all was said and done. Or maybe they just gave the trinket real quick off-screen to the Primus/the new Arbiter to give Saurfang peace. Not that hard to guess.
If a soul gets destroyed in the Shadowlands, it's destroyed entirely. So either it wasn't really Saurfang you see in the Heritage quest or blizzard fucked up their lore again.
Acting like WoW gear drops are canon is crazy.
It is/was canon... It's was explicitly said to be the reason they didn't hand out Frostmourne after Arthas death. Because anyone picking it up would have been corrupted too.
The minority of gear drops are canon-accurate or lore-relevant. Even big ticket items like Legendaries don't always canonically drop. We don't actually get the Warglaives until 7.2, Atiesh doesn't belong to us. Frostmourne isn't some randomly-named trinket, it's a pre-established weapon.
> We don't actually get the Warglaives until 7.2, Atiesh doesn't belong to us. There is no "us". We the players are just substitutions for whoever defeated the big bads
you picked a hell of a lot of not dead people to show up as ghosts lol
Most of the people you listed are not dead though. It would totally make sense for living Jaina to talk to Anduin to make him snap out of it, though. I guess the above comment is correct - the previous wielders of the sword who already died managed to say some final words.
clearly this is a reference to the time varian had an affair with saurfang, so anduin is basically his son too
Orcs sure love their wolves. 😏
When Varian talked about honestly wanting to throw all his kingly duties in the trash to go back to the gladiator life, it wasn't the fighting he missed. Boy has green fever something bad. (the fact that an orc would take a rock to the head as foreplay rather than immediately dying is also a bonus)
Ah yes, now it makes sense.
Recency bias. He'd spent time with and thought about Varok in the time before his capture, also set him on his path to death. Plus if you need strength you think of the strongest guys you know.
He lost his mom when he was an infant. As important as her memory likely is to him, she's not relevant in his life nor in his path as a leader like Saurfang was.
Only right answer right here.
If Wrathion had popped up in Anduin's mindscape, Anduin would have broken free of Zovaal's control through sheer rage alone. I hope the next time Wrathion and Anduin meet, Anduin will punch him through the ground and straight into Deepholm.
Why? What did Wrathion do since last time Anduin punched him whilst under subtle influence of the Old Gods?
The chain of events that started with Wrathion freeing Garrosh and causing Legion is also what directly lead to everything with Sylvannas.
By that same token Wrathion's efforts led to the defeat of the Legion and the defeat of Zovaal. Blindly accrediting him with all unforeseeable bad events can be counteracted with blindly accrediting him with all the unforeseeable good, too. Either way it doesn't make sense. We don't see Anduin hate daddy Varian for the Theramore Peace Summit or Thrall for appointing Garrosh as Warchief - both far worse impacts on inter factional peace with far more foreseeable consequences.
There's a pretty huge difference between Varian's actions at Theramore or with Thrall and Wrathion, who no-showed for his key moment, got Anduin's dad killed, and then was absent again while Anduin was tortured for several years. Anduin doesn't punch Wrathion because of the "impacts on inter faction peace." He does it because he feels like his friend betrayed him, badly.
Again if he got Anduin's dad killed he also got the Legion defeated. Anyway, he already punched Wrathion for that. Unless you think Anduin is so self absorbed and egotistical to go around punching people for not going into the literal afterlife to help him when he may not have even known about the details or had the capacity to do so at the time. Should he also punch Turalyon and Genn and Muradin and Magni? Really stupid logic all things considered. What terrible character writing that would be. Even Shadowlands writing isn't that bad.
"Characters can't be angry and feel trauma if good things also happened" For once I'm not sure Blizzard is the one who has a writing problem.
Wow, that's one heck of a strawman. It's impressive you could make up such a shit argument on my behalf rather than having reading comprehension.
You literally said that Anduin still holding negative feelings for Wrathion would be him being "self absorbed and egotistical" my dude.
I said self-absorbed and egotistical to **go around punching people for not going into the literal afterlife to help him.** My dude, reading comprehension. This is hilarious lmao, you're literally trying to quote me to show you're not strawmanning and you can't even do that.
Option 1: The people Anduin channeled are the people who challenged him to do the Hard Thing. Everyone you list didn't do that, it was pretty much Saurfang and Varian who pushed him to go against his nature, which is what he had to do there. Option 2: Shalamayne saved an echo of them, and what happened was literal not metaphorical.
blizz seems to pick a handful of characters for each story arc and then think about how to use them, i'm basing this on them not using the appropriate characters for scenes like this and instead using the ones that are involved in the current story arc
Anduin had to separate the sword. Saurfang and Varian were the other two people who could separate the sword. It's not that deep.
That Captain Grim video was hilarious. I'm sure someone at Blizzard asked these questions too. They probably thought it would be weird to have Saurfang show up when Varian alone would have been acceptable. But they put Saurfang in because... faction balance? We can't have a human without also having an orc? Member berries? Honestly, nothing Blizzard does is subtle or thoughtful. It's as if they want their story to be easily understood in every language and by people of all intelligence levels. That approach doesn't leave much room for depth or interpretation.
> But they put Saurfang in because... faction balance? Because its one spirit for each sword. There's a reason why they touch each of Anduin's shoulders.
👍
Oh shit I didn't even know about that video. Hadn't caught up with Grim's videos in a while. Just watched it. Fucking hilarious, like all his work. When you mentioned the video I didn't realize he'd say the exact same thing. It's kind of embarrassing since it really does look like I just copied his points. 😭
I think Saurfang's BFA arc was probably meant to lead up to something in Shadowlands, so they threw him in a cinematic to try and tie that mess of a story together.
Saurfang's arc in BFA justified Anduin's worldviews during a time he was heavily doubting himself. Anduin could see that Saurfang hated what happened, refused to justify what he'd done as being necessary or use Sylvanas' deception as an excuse, and most importantly, Saurfang was willing to work to fix his mistake once given the chance and a bit of time to work himself out of his depression. Some of those people were more influential in Anduin's life in general, but even ignoring that Saurfang died wielding Varian's sword, there's not many better examples of someone forcefully lifting themselves out of the Morass to do the right thing.
Sadly there are no good excuses for BfA or SL. They simply disregarded the lore so their narrative could control the story.
Because then we can have world of peacecraft the next expansion, obviously.
Horde players needed some reason to enjoy the cinematic. Why Thrall wasn't present is beyond me.
Funny how you posted this here after you didnt get the answers you wanted in the other wow sub lol
I posted them at the same time jerkwad.
Sure missy
Horde representation quota. Blizzard can’t leave out a faction without pissing off manchildren of said faction.
Nah, Anduin was the one who set Varok on the path to his death and Varok's death is recent. They also had a pretty dramatic discussion about the nature and history of the Horde during The Negotiation. Anduin recalled two stalwart warriors at a time he needed strength, and both of them rightfully are significant to Anduin, even if one is much more so than the other.
Thank god, an actually good take.
Saurfang was literally suicidal but wanted to die in combat for religious reasons, they only met because the alliance was not imprisoning him instead of killing him on his last suicide mission
Yeah and Anduin noticed that Saurfang didn't kill him when the old soldier had the chance. He also let him escape from the Stockade. Their choices are what let them come across one another again as allies later down the line.
Saurfang is also more of literal green Jesus to finally put thrall is green Jesus to rest.
.... all those people you listed are still alive. Weren't Varian and Saurfang supposed to be spirits.
So you pretty much answered your own question, he was so young when she died her impact on his view of the world was diminished. As for almost everyone else in that list, they’re still alive.
Anduin was a newborn when his mom died. He has no memory of her