Gobbie BOOM! I mean. Welcome back everyone! I’ve gotta big projects coming so instead of making you wait a while longer I wanted to make something really fast for you all. The Paladin quest chain doesn’t have a great reputation so I wanted to talk about that today. What’re your thoughts?
#ffxiv #lore #jobs
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Meh, even level 60 story quest was stupid. A guy died for nothing! All the "chivalry" and "morality" for a stupid sword
I generally liked the gladiator quest more, and I did like the return to it, but it definitely hurts that we couldn't keep oathkeeper, or continue with the new paladin order.
It just makes it even worse, that the job questlines are done, so we can't expect more from it.
Need to ignore the 'paladin' crap the localizers pulled. It is a Knight. Just a professional soldier with a code of ethics. Some are sworn to a lord, others are free agents following their idea of chivalry.
I've done every job quest in the game and paid attention to every line
except PLD that I actually skipped starting 55 onward i just couldnt be bothered
still firmly believe the stormblood PLD quests should have been a buddy cop story of WoL and a samurai since they're basically eastern paladins
lots of potential exploration of cultural differences in 'honor' to be had
I mean, they went back to Gladiator because of the general backlash of the Paladin questlines, so the issues are generally from before then.
I'm pretty ok with with the 30-50 questlines. They're not groundbreaking or anything, but they're fine. It was something of a waste that Solkzagyl was a stealth mentor to Jenlyns instead of the player, but it doesn't ruin the experience.
50-60, even without the 60 quest weirdness of just casually handing over the blade right after a dramatic moment, it's just not good? You have the weirdness of "Player mentors a newbie", which job quests have a very spotty record of handling due to our characters being silent protagonists and the techniques that would make a storyline like that actually coherent wouldn't be created until late Stormblood patches. But my real issue is that things just…kind of happen. There's only one person in the storyline with the faintest clue what's going on, and he's the one who faked his own death. Which gives off the appearance that things are just randomly happening for no reason. Like that merchant, who casually gets mortally wounded and dies, mostly off screen, for no reason other than he could have given more information. Why are we reactivating the Oathkeeper, to bring morale and pride back into the Sultansworn who just recently catastrophically failed at their sole job? Nah, Solkzagyl just wanted to see it shine again. Why are there glowing lights travelling to jobstone to jobstone revealing an apparently ancient custom of beating up other paladins? We forgot to build up another villain, so we pit you against the true antagonist of the paladin questline, Solkzagyl and his many, many failings as a teacher. Which reminds me, this was just a condensed reprisal of his stealth mentorship, with the minor change of him being presumed dead rather than a traitor. Why did Solkzagyl fake his death in the first place? Because that's the only way he knows how to teach?
Jenlyns ends up lampshading how pointlessly convoluted the whole thing is at the end. Unfortunately lampshading something doesn't absolve it for having been their in the first place.
You know the story is bad when the gladiator npcs overshadow the paladin npcs.
Hearing you outline the base concepts of the PLD story made it clear that there WAS potential there – it was just done so badly. 50-60 in particular was a mess; it was essentially retreading the steps of "can an outsider be a paladin?" but with faked deaths, random tests and… fighting for dominance with your job crystals? And then in the end the magic sword declares the future of paladins and they ignore it and go back to Ul'Dah anyway…?
When your story ends with one of the CHARACTERS saying "well that was a confusing mess," that feels like a red flag.
When I was first doing Paladin, I had done it right after completing the Dark Knight questline. So I went from Dark Knight to Paladin and…. I felt so disappointed. I liked PLAYING Paladin also. I enjoyed the class as a whole. But I really did not like the quests for it.
Honestly I don't believe there needs to be an over analyzation over the idea of "Paladin" with the focus on the ARR and HW quest chain specifically. The paladin order was centered around the Sultansworn and to me it had a decent setup for it's story about the Sultansworn vs the Monetarists which I was hoping they explored more with the HW questchains. The sole reason the PLD quest story didn't work is really that "twist" at the end that just completely ruined the whole mystery they had setup with Oathkeeper with it just being Solkazgyl being a manipulative asshole. Which ruined his character to me because I liked his premise in the ARR questchains where he had to be on the run due to the Monetarists and Death's Grip.
So yeah that's really why I personally think PLD just wasn't well received. If it had a decent payoff towards what they were building up with Oathkeeper and the Monetarists then it would've been fine.
I don't know, I think having an ORDER of FREE paladins kinda defeats the purpose of them. They're supposed to spread and be a singular example of a noble hero and inspire others to be the same as opposed to dark knights that are meant to strike fear into the evil of the world by assuring them that they are not safe from righteous fury.
Basically paladins are Spiderman/Superman, and dark knights are Batman/Punisher.
Honestly I actually love the gld/pal quest from 1-70. It's got a very wearing it's heart on it's sleeve vibe that is sorely lacking in modern media. Everything today wants things to be dark, gritty, depressing, and cynical, so I was really happy that it ends with you checking back in with your friends and just being a good and noble person.
I'm not going to lie: I kinda didn't remember what even happened in the PLD quest line. I didn't dislike it, it just didn't stick. Doesn't help the DRK quest line was so wild.
I did not keep the paladin class after unlocking heavensward. I think the paladin 30-50 is the perfect starting lore for a fall into the dark knight.
Yes the start 30-50 ends well but it showed just how much corruption had taken hold of the paladin order. So after the ending events of ARR I feel like it was thematic to go from a shining protector of order and peace to a shadow clad defender of the people who pursued those who misuse their authority. To hunt corruption.
I don't know if you made this point later in your video but I stopped early in case I want to go back and pick up the paladin story again.
I hated the paladin quest chain for this simple reason: it was sooooo boring and nonsensical
I honestly forgot what it was about until watching this video. Even though I read every bit of dialogue, it was so lackluster and dumb that I forgot everything it tried to portray. The Heavensward portion was disgustingly bad lol
Something that annoyed me about pld is the EW has ala mhigan flourishes so I thought it would of been interesting if paladins branched off amdapor white mages. In FF11 pld whm and mnk all have a common ancestry.
Also on a related note: Poor Jenlyns. For a major npc in a job quest to try so hard to be good and yet never really get anywhere was kind of sad, and it never really felt… Fair? He's been training for years, and after the lvl 50 quest does indeed try to be the best he can, and is hard at work trying to reform the sultansworn, and then this new guy who barely had any training shows up and steals the spotlight.
For a job mentor, it really does feel he got handed one of the worst deals out of any of them for very little narrative payoff…
I felt the closest to a true paladin class quest we got was the tank role quests in shb.
The PLD job quests bored the absolute s* out of me for most of it. The 30-50 stuff was…blegh. The 60-70 basically didn't exist. 50-60 gave me so much hope, and then died at the end.
People rip on WAR but it was a good questline. PLD just….like what happened?
Historically in FF games they've been pretty inconsistent with calling a class Paladin vs Knight. Generally what players expect is Knight to be a powerful sword and shield tank style class with no magical abilities, while Paladin is that with holy magic sprinkled in. What I've read from various places online is that calling it paladin was a misunderstanding and its essentially the knight class. I don't know how accurate that is, but it feels like it makes more sense when you start using terms like "Sultansworn Knight" and "Free Knight". Paladin was my first job when I started and I love playing it still, but it does have in my opinion the worst storyline of any job after leveling them all, but I think a big part of that is expectation vs what we actually got because as you said Paladin is a popular fantasy concept and it didn't hit what folks expect.
I would have liked an expansion of what that Paladin order looks like. Good call.
But also, I appreciate the return to gladiator in the back end of the Paladin quests. It mirrors this idea of a world warrior / Ryu from Street Fighter like quest for increasing power (to best defend people). It also links paladins back to Ul’dah nonsense (which, it just is a part of)
Also, considering the full arc of a particular competition/ conflict/ obsessed with battle character, it provides a sympathetic counter part to that character. When it came to the end of Endwalker, the Ul tournament and the 80 quest felt relevant. How could I not agree with that last fight villian? Why yes, I am in it for the contest!
So yeah, it uneven. But, not without some merit imo.
I love the fantasy “earnestly selfless knight in shining armor” Paladin archetype when done well and damn did the PLD job quests fail to live up to that. I’m glad DRK was pointed out, because it did “wandering knight helping the helpless” far better.
To be honest, I don’t think the weakness in the PLD questline can be laid at the feet of going back to the gladiator side or dropping the Oathkeeper plot because…honestly I just could not care about the Oathkeeper stuff and going back to the arena for a tournament arc felt more like a reaction to whatever reception the Heavensward PLD quests got. Like Heavensward’s setting was so rich for a truly engaging Paladin plot line examining faith, duty, actual justice vs letter of the law, etc. But all we got was actual nonsense about bros needing to establish who was the alpha because of soul crystal reasons that come out of nowhere as explained by the worst job mentor who needlessly obfuscates. Seriously, I was left wanting to drag Constaint aside and tell him to forget everything he learned from the other two and just do his own thing. I couldn’t be mad that we went back to the arena simply because the cast and plot were far less frustrating.
It’s just…these job lines fail to live up to the flavor promised by what the Paladin can actually do. We see nothing in the story that touches on the implications of Holy Circle or Passage of Arms and so forth.
As far as I’m concerned, Heavensward and Endwalker MSQ were the real PLD job quests. They gave me something much closer to what the job evokes.