Amanda The Adventurer 3 Rant (SPOILERS)
okay LISTEN. I have been thinking about the Marcus/Wooly situation for DAYS and the more I think about it the more unhinged I become. SO Amanda the Adventurer 3 had that whole reveal that Wooly is actually Marcus, like a 30-ish white dude, and I have been rotating this in my brain NONSTOP because the way they handled it is… so weirdly noncommittal
Like. They reveal Wooly is Marcus (a whole grown adult man) and then proceed to do NOTHING with the implications of that. NOTHING. It’s like they dropped a bomb and then walked away whistling. The reveal SHOULD recontextualize everything.That’s the kind of twist where you go back to the earlier games and suddenly everything clicks into place. Except… it doesn’t. At all.
it feels like the writing is stuck between two completely different interpretations and refuses to fully pick one:
either Marcus is a guy who got manipulated by Hameln, didn’t understand what he was signing up for, and is now stuck trying (badly) to keep things under control
OR it also wants him to be a grown man who knowingly entered this situation and is now weirdly, uncomfortably fixated on a little girl
They CONFIRM he signed up for it.
They CONFIRM he knew what he was doing.
But then they STILL frame him like a tragic, sympathetic “handler” who’s just trying his best.
like I’m sorry but WHAT adult insists they are a child’s “best friend” like that??? that is not normal behavior. that is not something you just do
and it gets even messier when you go back to the earlier games because NONE of that intent is clearly seeded. if this was always the plan, they should’ve made it WAY more obvious that something was off about Wooly. like, lean into the discomfort. let the player feel that something isn’t right with how he and Amanda interact.
instead we get this version of him where:
- he’s not clearly being threatened by Hameln (as far as we know)
- he’s EXTREMELY insistent on keeping Amanda isolated
- but there’s no strong, explicit reason for why he’s acting like that (at least until the very end)
so his behavior lands in this awkward space where it’s like “okay I can kind of see what they were going for” but also “this does not fully make sense”
AND THEN there’s the whole Jordan situation
Jordan (Chickenscratch) is clearly another victim. He can barely communicate, he’s glitchy, he’s trying to help the player, and Amanda likes him. There's a level of trust there.
which like—on one hand, yeah, I get it. Jordan is unpredictable, weird, probably messes with whatever “order” Wooly is trying to maintain. from a control perspective, sure, he’s a problem
Marcus is a full grown adult.
Jordan is a CHILD. a scared, hurt, barely-able-to-speak child
why is a 30-year-old man acting THREATENED by him??
that is such a wild dynamic and the game just… doesn’t dig into it enough. because that could say SO much about Marcus:
- is he afraid of losing control?
- is he worried Jordan will help Amanda break free?
- is it jealousy over Amanda trusting someone else?
- or is it just that Jordan represents everything he failed to contain?
like there is SO MUCH there and it just kind of sits on the surface. Like yes a lot of it is implied but??
AND THEN HAMELN IS JUST. GONE.
Their warehouse? Abandoned.
Their system? Still running.
Which means Marcus was NOT being actively forced to be controlling in the original timeline. (As far as we know)
So if he’s a grown man… yikes.
ALSO the implication that when Amanda leaves the tapes, Wooly/Marcus basically ceases to exist because his real body is gone???
that is SUCH a horrifying concept. like he is literally dependent on the system AND on Amanda’s presence to continue existing
and they barely expand on it. they don’t fully state it. it’s just kind of… there
Which is why the whole thing would make SO much more sense if Marcus wasn’t a 30-year-old man at all, but a teen or young adult who got in way over his head. Like imagine he learned too much, Hameln cornered him, and they basically took his physical body or consciousness hostage. They shoved him into the system as Wooly and told him Amanda’s body was unsalvageable. So from HIS perspective, if Amanda leaves the tapes, she dies. If HE leaves the tapes, he dies. The system is the only thing keeping them alive. Suddenly his controlling behavior isn’t creepy, it’s fear. His hostility toward Jordan isn’t jealousy, it’s panic. His “best friend” script isn’t obsession, it’s a coping mechanism. He becomes a reluctant caretaker, a kid who made a terrible choice under pressure and is now trapped in a role he never wanted.
And because Hameln is gone, he has no one left to tell him the truth. No one to tell him Amanda CAN be saved. No one to tell him the system is failing. He dies (or gets erased) still believing the lie. THAT version of Marcus is tragic, coherent, and emotionally rich. The canon version is just… confused.
honestly I feel like they should’ve just picked a lane and committed:
A) make Marcus/Wooly clearly unstable, obsessive, and controlling. lean fully into that discomfort and make the player question every interaction from the start
B) make Wooly a teen/young adult who is actively being pressured by Hameln, someone who is also a victim and is trying (and failing) to manage Amanda while being controlled himself
because right now it feels like they wanted the implications of both without fully committing to either, and it leaves his character in this weird in-between space where his actions are both understandable and completely off
ANYWAY sorry for the essay I am currently obsessed with this game and the kidnapped kids lore and I need to draw all of them immediately