Arthur Hastings

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**Arthur E Hastings** is the main playable character and the main protagonist in *We Happy Few*. Born August 12, 1934, he is approximately 30 years old when the game's events take place. At the start of the game, Arthur is working as a redactor, or a government censor. While scrolling through newspaper articles, he finds an old article on the war effort against the Soviet Union, with Arthur himself along with his brother receiving the Scrap Gathering Prize for donating scrap towards the Victory Against Communism Bond. This triggers strong memories for Arthur, causing him to neglect taking his Joy, and faint shortly after tossing away the pills. Several hours later, a coworker comes in waking Arthur, and questions him about his work, noting that she hasn't heard a single "whoosh" through the door since ten o'clock, and reminds him about a birthday party which will take place in the conference room, claiming that they have a pinata. Approaching his desk, she finds his Joy pills on the floor and asks if he has forgotten to take them, to which Arthur responds, "Of course not! Snug as a bug on a drug!". His coworker, still questionable over Arthur, entices him to come with, but Arthur tells her that he still has more articles to take care of, leaving her to tell him to hurry up, and exit his office. Shortly after his coworker leaves, Arthur makes his way to the conference room, noticing several workstations that seem out of shape with an excessive amounts of work left undone, and finds a mysterious man with a syringe in one of the offices, stabbing another man with it, giving him a dose of Joy. The (now dosed) man sees Arthur and waves, alerting the mysterious man to his presence, and causing him to close the shades of the office. Arthur continues towards the conference room where he finds a small party of four of his coworkers whacking a pinata. The coworker from earlier, upon seeing him, hands him a broom to use as a club and tells him about the pinata, calling it an adorable Spanish custom and explaining that Uncle Jack did a show on it. She then eagerly instructs him to hit the pinata, and the rest of the group join in, all shouting for him to hit it. Arthur does and the pinata explodes. But to his horror, instead of candy and goodies scattering everywhere, blood suddenly splashes across his hands and all over the table. He realizes that the pinata was not in fact a pinata, but actually a live rat, and that the pinata was merely a hallucination (presumably induced by Joy, hence why his coworkers don't realize that they're actually consuming rat innards as they begin to feast.) Arthur begins to gag, and his suspicious coworker calls him out for being off his joy. She offers him one of hers, but a repulsed and horrified Arthur refuses. This causes his coworker to call him a downer, and instruct one of the others to alert security. Two bobbies chase him down, following Arthur into a sewer, where he is knocked unconscious. However due to a gas leak, the Bobbies leave the sewer, allowing Arthur to wake up and escape to a connected safehouse. Depending on how Arthur dies, a newspaper article will be displayed to the player, revealing his relation to Norton Keynes, who is his uncle at the age of fifty-five, and a pet gecko named "Sparky".
Arthur believes that he lies a lot himself, like he mentions to Ed MacMillan.
He used to be friends with Sally in his childhood and he was also neighbours with a war hero called Ollie in his childhood.
He seems to be widely known in Wellington Wells, and is even called "Miss Victorias pet" by a gang.