I’m between videos at the moment but wanted to make something fast and easy for everyone to enjoy or think on. I do hope everyone is having a wonderful week and looks forward to what else I have planned! Take care of yourself for me!
#ffxiv #endwalker #jobs
source
Half the reason why I even leveled Dark Knight was for the quest line.
Second
Dark Knight is my least favorite tank but it's by far my favorite tank storyline.
Another part that hits home about Myste being the WoL's regrets? He looks like the love child of Ysayle and Haurchefant
As a Tank class, DRK is a class I've done little with. That said, from Post-2.3 to pre-StB, I ran with a dedicated partner who crossed to DRK when we got to HW and was thrilled with it. They told me a lot of it. While I do try to move on through it, tank classes just can't keep my interest.
My favourite element was Sid being effortlessly cool and ruthless in cutscenes and then harangued to the end of his tether by Rielle. The duality of man.
Thank you so much for this video! I just finished the DRK quest line and was so confused on what was going on exactly. I feel like im too dumb for this game's writing sometimes haha
I actually more drawn to the WAR quests, it's themes of masculinity and letting rage control you. Not to mention how few roegadyn main characters there are in the game WAR quests have so many broes in it.
yeah, DRK questline is top quality. I love all the follow up quest you can do once you complete certain MSQ quest.
“Serve, Save, Slave, Slay.”
Gods, revisiting the dark knight quest chain after endwalker makes it hit soo much harder too! Fray flat out telling the wol they can't handle all of this mounting pressure long term, and then having shadowbringer and endwalker happen.. It truly hit it home for me
I'm astonished there aren't more quests that explore the wol's character, like I would've loved if stormblood bard had Jehantel help the wol deal with their doubts and fears, just like how they helped him in ARR! Or hell, why can't warrior actually have cutscenes with the inner beast threatening to take over the WoL or something? ;;
The level 80 quest after Shadowbringers hurt me in a good way. A walk back down the path, one final farewell to your other self.
Myst is also a hybrid of Ysayle and Harshefan
I love the whole drk story but i have a special fondness for the 30-50 quests. The WoL during ARR was a glorified errand boy/girl. They quickly become this accomplished warrior and people acknowledge that but still send you on mundane tasks constantly, that frustrated me. So the fact that the WOL was canonically frustrated with all that bs made me very happy.
Mega spoilers incoming!
When it comes to Myste, many people speculate that he's a simulacra of both Ysayle and Haurchefant, the two people who's passing supposedly impacted the WoL the most throughout the events of the Dragonsong War.
The shock of losing such a warm and kind-hearted companion, who put his own status and even life on the line multiple times for the WoL's sake without asking anything in return, until it ultimately claimed his life. The tragedy of iceheart, with a pure and fervent desire for true and long-lasting peace between Ishgardians and dragons, yet chose to sacrifice herself to help mend the suffering that her misguided beliefs had wrought.
That depth of personal loss for the greater good was the first and greatest we had seen up until that point, so it's no wonder that after everything was over and said that the WoL's Dark Knight soulstone had split in two.
I avoided the Dark Knight questline for a long time thinking it was going to be some cheesy edgy fanfic – and what wound up happening was me adopting it into my WoL's own story, to the point even though I don't normally tank, I still consider Dark Knight one of my core classes.
My cute little Au Ra never asked to be a hero to start with, never asked to be famous, never asked to be Eorzea's errand girl; they just wanted to travel and maybe set up a shop to hear of everyone else's travels. The Dark Knight questline gives such a great way to show the weight and toil those expectations take, and I'm truly happy I played it.
The level 80 capstone quest was my absolute favorite, i'm surprised you didn't mention it.
The lv 50 quest immediately made me think about Persona 4. Part of the reason I vibed with it so much. Not to mention I found out later about the notes within your journal being written by Fray. Really nice touch
These were exactly my thoughts when first playing dark knight. I started the game as arcanist. At 30 I switched to scholar for queue times. The whole way through ARR I was honestly miserable, forced to play the errand girl for everyone when I was meant to be THE warrior of light! I can kill primals why am I doing a 12 part fetch quest for some asshole lalafell in Costa del Sol? I was also disillusioned with playing Scholar. All solo content was miserable I have one button to press on repeat for dps and a dot to upkeep.
As soon as I reached heavensward I immediately jumped at the chance to play dark knight. Im a bit of an edgelord and id heard tank queues were almost as good as healer queues so I decided to give it a try. I fell in love immediately. The very first job quest I immediately felt like I was doing something important, I was starting something that had meaning (a wonderful change from the lalafell drama of Scholar). A story where my mindset towards the NPCs who make me a postman was reflected on my character! Since i completed the lv30-50 DRK job quest I have always called DRK my favourite class in the game even though I admittedly dont main the job.
One of my favourite moments in this game was going back and speaking to Sidurgu after finishing Endwalker. He gives you some wonderful advice that I actually quoted down because it spoke to me on a personal level.
I disagree with your take on miste. If fray is the ego a shadow the true self. Then miste is the wols inner child. Which likely means they had not processed the deaths of ysayle and haurche. I feel the wol also has not processed the loss of venat as well so this could come up again later.
Frey is to the Warrior of Light what Zangetsu (both White and OMZ) is to Ichigo.
For me, it's that it matches my character's fiction almost to a T. So much so that I decided to merge it with my head canon for my character. Fray & Myst are summonings / creations of a broken mind (Myst consumes the aether of a soul crystal, breaking it, when summoned), born from the struggles that years of combat, loss, responsibilities, hopes & fears have created. Through these quasi-primals the WoL comes to terms with certain aspects of themself & their life. I legitimately had an "oh my god" moment when I realized how on-point the entire quest line was, right down to writing messages to yourself in the quest log.
The WoL is an entity with PTSD & a broken mind, and they know it. With hallucinations, and they know it. Yet they also know that they live in a world where belief and aether are the only things necessary to summon things, and what does the WoL have? A surfeit of aether. They live in a world where their fears haunt them, the shadowy forms of their hallucinations take form and hunt them and play with them – and they play with them right back. The WoL knows what they are, but they're not whole things, just broken things. Like them.
I don't know what i'm missing but i always thought the quest was w/e. replayed it after hearing the praises but it's still just meh. Then again, I do rate stormblood higher than heavensward
i feel like the timing of these quest lines was important as well.
when do we meet Fray? not long after we are framed for regicide.
when do we meet Myst? not long after the events of the Dragon Song War and Baelsars Wall.
IE the two points in the story where the WoL would probably the most frustrated with their own inability to as many people as they probably thought they could, or the most enraged with 'supposed allies' and feeling the most isolated, and would likely need some one to talk to, to sort how their feeling about things out.
This is why, as far as my head cannon for my character goes, Dark Knight is one of the two job crystals she has, (the other being Red Mage.) She never wanted to be some great hero, she just wanted to wander around, see things, and poke around the odd ruin or cave. Which is why she ended up joining the Scions, they sounded like they where offering what she wanted, just on a bit grander scale, and things kinda just spiraled from there … and she wasn't really mentally prepared for it. Becoming a Dark Knight ultimately gave her the tools she needed to cope with her new life. As she is now. she's much less reserved then she was at the beginning, she will 100% drop all expression from her face in a 'really ….' look, if you hit her with a request to do something inane and she not buttering up the locals to get information out of them, and she has at no point ever forgiven the Monitarists of Uldah for what amounts to betrayal in her mind. She tolerates them at best, and probably isn't gonna let go of that grudge anytime soon.
Fray: "I should have let Leviathan drown you all! At least then I wouldn't have to listen to your incessant whining!"
Me: Wait a minute…
You forgot the best part where it’s a nihilist edgy quest line to a “My Two Dads” quest line
Apart from my love of the Edgelord style & characters, the Dark Knight storyline is engraved deep into my WoL…
Mine became one after the Ul'dah incident…
What would have been shady business I'd have to resolve a bit later, it got mega-personal mega-fast, with the perceived death of first-friend Nanamo (I started in Ul'dah), being blamed for it the moment she collapsed, and then immediately my Scion friends being scattered to the winds, and all so soon after dealing with the XIVth Legion, risking my life for this foreign world (my character's an Isekai Protagonist), gave me the feeling of being used and discarded… Until the power of the Darkness woke the beast within… and it wasn't happy…
"Maybe Gaius was right, and I should become a ruler, that way this won't ever happen again!" and "we will find those responsible and rend them into as many pieces as there are seconds since Nanamo has been dead!" we're the kind of thoughts that would roil in my mind, and now, with the power of Darkness and a *Berserk CLANG* sword, I could have my revengance!
And even though Nanamo was revealed alive, and our names cleared, the scars remain, and the Darkness will ensure it doesn't happen again…
Thanks for sharing; take care
The Dark Knight quest line to me is proof that the WoL would benefit from being a little less open ended character wise.
………………
…………………
…………………….
……………………………
Just sit right there, I'll be back.
If I may be a bit personal in my comment I’d appreciate you allowing me the moment. So on top of your excellent analysis for Frey and Myste and their relationship to our WoLs they also relate to us, the players, as humans.
I personally live in the US and I’m a white gay guy who’s doing what little he can to take care of my friends and myself. Frey specifically spoke to me bc of the incandescent rage that boils over from him watching more and more people take advantage of the WoL bc as a renowned hero and good guy tm we are “just supposed to” help. Which was very similar (to me) in the way that as a gay guy I can be married now and I’m “just supposed to” be kind and patient to idiots pushing laws to hurt me or people who put their emotional baggage on me bc I’m good at listening and my issues aren’t real.
Which is a fucking trip that’s spiraled so far out of control I finally pulled on my rage to confront my family as I made myself clear that I’m out and it’s not going to change despite how dangerous my situation becomes. Again the self esteem/Frey directing righteous anger to finally get me to keep myself safe for once in my miserable life. It’s cathartic you know, when you finally wield the anger inside you to set boundaries and to remove toxic people. People don’t like to mention it bc it’s not pretty but neither was Frey willing to murder for our behalf. The sense of self preservation is strong.
And Myste is our regret and our fears, our sorrows about what could have been and our trepidation at what tomorrow brings. Meteion could never defeat us personally as dark knights have had to face their own despair hand in hand with their selfish rage. That’s an idea in my head from comparing the situations anyways.
No Myste made me cry bc I’ve always done my best to care for my friends and my family. I’ve taken a fair many beatings to protect my brother when we were younger and then he decided to turn his own ire on me. I was a lynchpin in pain and tragedy as I was constantly reminded. I despised myself for every little thing I thought I should have done to make things better.
These hateful emotions were obviously misplaced but it was only years afterwards that I was finally out from the worst of the situation that I could see that yes sometimes I was a butt head but I was also a fucking child. And I actually wasn’t as terrible as I thought bc again I was a kid or immediately out of school a teenager with no life lessons and a morality scaling pulled desperately out of books.
And when we face Myste I wasn’t mad at him. I didn’t believe in what he was saying but if anything I was mad at the shade of Rielles mother bc I didn’t like her from last time. It clicks the Myste is our sorrow and despair and regrets, that he’s the louder voice I listened to regularly as I chipped away at my self esteem before.
I remember I cried at the moment Frey pulled Myste around and they forgave each other bc I’d been letting my personal Myste hurt me for awhile bc I thought I deserved it. I’d weathered so much before what was a bit more regret for someone like me? But Myste was proven wrong, by the manifestation of ourself our self esteem, Frey. Proven wrong and forgiven for trying to do the right thing the only way they knew how, and at the end it’s stated blatantly that despite everything who else could we love but ourselves?
I’d warrant that’s what ends up breaking a lot of people. Nowadays more and more of our politicians, parents, managers, and just assholes with power over us hurt us and do so while blaming us. They insinuate that there’s something inherently wrong that we could’ve fixed if we had been different on another level. A lot of us will never get the catharsis of having calm conversations with understanding people who hurt us, instead our rage and indignant sense of self and our despair and regret grow until they get out of hand.
Like Frey and Myste we can end up letting them get away from us and it can actually hurt people. But we don’t have to let it. We can take a moment and agree that we deserve to be seen as humans and to no longer ignore our own emotions in the face of hardship to a toxic amount. We can take a moment to face our regrets wracked by tears and acknowledge that while this pain and regret is real, we don’t deserve this emotional torture. Not from anyone but especially not from ourselves, even if we mean well and want to use our regrets as a way to keep us safe.
We do not get these moments of clarity and emotional honesty from ourselves very often. Considering how the world is I’m not surprised. But when given a medium with which we can see facsimiles of our own pain make peace with ourselves, that WE can choose to make peace with them (we are finishing these quests after all) it resonates with us as an audience and as individuals.
And of course I was going through some shit tm and everyone will have different emotional attachments to the situation, so it may be very different for the next person. But I just needed a catalyst to start healing at the time and power leveling dark knight really paid off. Okay emotional tidbit over sorry for the length
Legit I loved the Myst story not just for who Myst is based off. However Myst's choices to summon against me made no sense. Maybe cause I ended up hating many of those choices and had no guilt cutting them down. They should have summoned people we got killed by mistake. Not Illbert who back stabbed us then did well all that murder to summon Shinryu. I felt Elidubus did it better having us fight false Scions during the lead up to his big fight.
i did not like the dark knight quests. i'm watching this video in hopes that a deeper analysis will bestow me with an appreciation for it.
I loved the Dark Knight story questline. From start to finish.
However a favorite part will always be when Sidurgu tells the moogles to Piss off.
Dark Knights aside, however many don't find it interesting, the Scholar Questine will always hold a special place in my heart. Be it that Scholar for the longest time was my main job I can't say but the whole story about the Scholars of Nym, Tonberries and also gives a reason to why The Wanderers Palace changes from Normal to Hard difficulty and you still don't fight the Tonberries.