Here's a thought that's been knocking around my head for a hot minute How much of Rasputin's personality and tendencies do you think was learned as opposed to what he was inherently like? He was designed to be a weapon and was raised accordingly and while he did have Anna to teach him emotions and independent thought it was still to a degree limited Do you think if Rasputin had been raised differently and in a different environment he would have made different decisions?
All of it. Rasputin is a machine; he can only work with what he has learned. Programming isn’t personality. But he WAS given the programming to learn, and he was given Ana who saw the potential for him to be made into a monster, and did her best to help him learn things that would better guide him away from that path.
Clovis would have kept him an unthinking machine; something that would take data and respond based on the math rather than weigh other less measurable factors such as morals.
Rasputin himself asserts he grew out of that methodology with significant time and education, in no small part thanks to Ana’s efforts, but also, eventually, Felwinter’s perspective and influence. It’s not necessarily that his capability to learn things like empathy were limited, but that it took a very long time for him to attain the resources needed to learn them entirely (his entire existence, in fact, as he really only had this stuff figured out for a few years and on-lock for a few weeks. Remember in-game time is real time: he only carried Felwinter’s memories for the last couple of weeks of Season of the Seraph for example). Longer than intended, I suspect, since it seems likely that his creation of Felwinter - the Siddhartha Golem - was likely an attempt to reach a deeper understanding of the human experience specifically, but his efforts were thwarted by the Collapse and Siddhartha’s demise. I would even suggest his vicious hunt of Felwinter wasn’t just because he was a “lost asset” or compromised Rasputin in any meaningful way, but because he also carried data Red desperately needed.
Counter to that of course is that Clovis repeatedly infers he would have much rather Rasputin had stayed isolated and kept his more sterile, machine-thinking. A big, fancy gun more than a person.
So yeah, that’s exactly what the Warmind would be if it hadn’t been exposed to the opportunity to develop a personality.
