The Curse Of Baldur

The first of the Aesir to be encountered in the 2018 God of War is Baldur, who visits the home of Kratos and seems to be aware of his legacy.  Eager for violence, he goads Kratos into a fight even though the latter has turned away from gratuitous fighting.  Baldur withstands every powerful blow from Kratos or exhibits regenerative powers when there is a major wound.  During this confrontation, he exclaims that he cannot feel any of the attacks.  A snapped neck only seems to kill him, for he appears later on to hunts Kratos and his son Atreus, and even then, his neck is only snapped after very destructive changes are inflicted upon the landscape.

Well into the main story, these same aforementioned characters wind up in Helheim.  There, Kratos and Atreus stealthily observe as Baldur is tormented by memories of how his mother Freya put a spell on him so that he would be invulnerable to death or permanent injury from most sources--at the expanse of his ability to feel anything physical whatsoever.  It was not out of malice that she did this despite the debilitating personal effects.  Rather, her intention was to avert a prophecy about her son's death.  Food, sexual contact, and other pleasures of sensuality that involve physical sensations became devoid of all stimulation for him other than that of merely seeing them.

It does not follow from outwardly acting like a person feels emotions that they actually do, though Baldur does genuinely seem to feel determination, frustration, anger, and so on.  The curse of Baldur only explicitly affects his sense of touch and all related senses, like that of pain (the sense being nociception).  Emotional and broader psychological pain would not be removed just because the physical kind cannot be experienced.  In his case, he expresses regret over his condition and great rage towards his mother for what she removed from his life.  This actually is the reason why Kratos eventually ends his life at the end of the game.

Physical exposure to a mistletoe arrow in the game's finale breaks the curse and allows him to feel ordinary physical sensations again.  In Norse mythology, a sharp item fashioned from mistletoe by Loki is used to kill Baldur because his mother made all other applicable things swear to never harm him.  In God of War, this substance only reactivates his senses pertaining to physical experiences and makes him vulnerable again.  He celebrates the restoration; the loss of the sense of touch (and other adjacent senses like nociception) was devastating to him.  Even so, physical pain and pleasure would be much less impactful without any emotions to be stirred up by them.

No, Baldur does not at all appear to have had any kind of emotional numbness, which would not by necessity be entailed in the loss of the senses.  There are still two ways to feel pleasure (or pain): physical pleasure involves the body and the mind, without which nothing could be experienced anyway, and mental pleasure only involves mental states.  The loss of the latter would be much more foundational and penetrating, removing things that contribute to core of motivation despite how one could still have rationalistic knowledge and a desire to live in a given way in light of this.  In either case, physical pleasure and emotional pleasure can only be truly understood and fully savored as they are by rationalists.  Only they can in a holistic sense not take either kind of pleasure for granted.