It is time to fulfill our Dark Knight potential.
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0:00 – Introduction
0:33 – QUEST: “Heroic Reprise”
11:09 – QUEST: “Declaration of Blood”
20:21 – QUEST: “Our Answer”
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Edited by Daniel Floyd
♫ “Pray Return” by Chris Logsdon
https://lnkfi.re/pray-return
#PlayFrame #FFXIV #FinalFantasyXIV #Heavensward
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Ah yes, a shadow. The true self.
Boy, I lost count of the times I sounded exactly like Fray…
Also, of course you need to slay a bunch of Jar Jar Binks as you embrace your dark side.
I do love the Dark Knight Lv30-50 questline. It is the only one where your character is unquestionably the focus and is the only one that gives your blank-slate protagonist any character development. Even if it's mostly focused on an "inner darkness" proxy.
Also for those of you not familiar with Dark Knight, maybe rewatch the "Job 201" video. See if one of the Dark Knight moves Durmin shows off takes new meaning with this video's context.
While the DRK questline is indeed great and a step up than most. I think the true "next level" job quests start with the Rogue (coincidentally written by the same writer)
The swashbuckling nature of your Rogues crew with their adventures and their competition with the Yellow Jackets and funny shennanignas makes for a great little story. A shame that compared to that when the class upgraded to Ninja, the quality drops since a different writer took charge.
Do you have a job story mode? I'm loving your videos and you do such a great job I was hoping to listen to you read the jobs story's too… Black mage here…
What world do you play in?!!
(Spoilers for the end of this video ahead)
Dark Knight: come for the Batman with a sword, stay for the melancholy exploration of trauma and what it does to a person.
Always did love this. Fray was such a different job mentor to begin with, and then seeing my character's name at the top of the speech bubble was….shocking. Seeing myself clad in DRK artifact gear….fantastic moment.
The first rule of Dark Knight Club… don't talk about Dark Knight Club.
I AM THOU, THOU ART I
This reminds me heavily of celeste in terms of theme
Dan: "The other Heavensward job quests are better as well."
For the most part, sure… but then there is the level 60 Paladin quest which BY ITSELF was so inconceivably AWFUL (to the point the localisation pokes fun at it on multiple occasions), that it not only tarnished an otherwise boring but standard set of 50-58 quests, but also caused the Stormblood Paladin quests to shift the focus BACK TO THE GLADIATOR QUEST CHARACTERS (something literally no other job quests do)!
Though at least the Stormblood Paladin quests were actually pretty good.
Funny gender shenanigans that Durmin is unable to experience: if you play with a female WoL, Fray's pronouns discreetly change to match your own !
The corpse who is thrown into the Brume, and who is to be interred at 33:30, remains invariably referred to has he/him. Only the Fray who accompanies you has her pronouns changed.
Now Fray's body type does not change to reflect that, and she's almost never referred to in a gendered way; you'll probably go through most of the quest with he/him in mind anyway, and that confusion actually helps drive the point home.
I believe the first truly unmissable occurrence of a gender is at 17:18, ("Forgive me my insolence, madam"), right after Fray speaks as if he was the one who had slain Leviathan. Having this moment being the perceived shift in pronouns made me consider that maybe those NPCs weren't talking to Fray, that they couldn't see him, and that his words were actually coming out of my character's mouth.
For the most explicit trace of that shift in pronouns, you have to go dig into the description of the completed quests in the journal. The description for the starting quest, Our End, reads as such:
« […] The accused wielded a massive sword, and worked his dark arts against his foe. In the end however, he was no match for his opponent, who ran him through a chorus of cheers. Seeing no need to afford the man a proper burial, the Temple Knights mean to dispose of the corpse by leaving it in the Brume. […] When you open your eyes, you find the woman standing before you, hale and healthy. She calls herself Fray, and it would seem that reports of her death were greatly exaggerated. […] »
Sort of an odd quest line, probably more because of how helpful Dermin is, so the shadow seems to be making a lot of assumptions about the players state of mind. Maybe there are more hints of character vs player in other quests?
Spoilers for the Video
It seems sometimes that when Fray is talking the NPCs even react like it was the WoL who was actually speaking… Which is interesting, is Fray EVER actually speaking or do we just hear it?
*swirls this storyline in a wine glass * Ahh, that's some good Final Fantasy writing.
Seems Youtube ate my comment, welp!
So I really love this quest series. There are some really neat details about it that I want to draw attention to, including one that wasn't even visible in this playthrough. I'm mostly going to just say what I wrote on the discord, but I figure it's worth mentioning here too.
–Spoilers in case you haven't watched the video yet, so do that first before coming back!
Something very neat to watch is how NPCs interact with Fray. None of them ever so much as look at him until after he speaks to them. In fact, no NPC ever acknowledges Fray as a separate person at all. It's especially clear in the 45 quest, where NPCs react to Fray's dialogue as if Durmin were the one to say it, even addressing him to respond. Another little detail is one we didn't actually see in this episode, because it's only apparent if your player character is a woman. Anyone talking about Fray adjusts the way they refer to him to match the player. If your character uses she-her, then NPCs talking about Fray will also use she-her, despite Fray being referenced as a man at the very beginning of the questline (though this will only really be noticeable from the 45 quest onwards, since before that point no-one really talks about Fray directly). It's some really lovely foreshadowing, and it actually allowed me to piece together what was going on during the conclusion of the 45 quest, specifically, for me everything clicked when Fray mentions Leviathan. With the benefit of hindsight, these details seem much more obvious, but they're just subtle enough to brush off when playing for the first time. In fact, I distinctly remember seeing an NPC referring to Fray as a woman for the first time, and thinking "wait, I thought they were a man, did I just misremember?"
These quests are excellent (though I can see why they're not everyone's cup of tea), and they're a great example of what Natsuko Ishikawa, the writer for these quests, is capable of. She will return to write some of Stormblood, and then fully take the reigns as lead writer for Shadowbringers and Endwalker, where she'll really flex her writing muscles – look forward to it!
in my head canon this is just before the rememberance trip, and is a direct reason for it.
…wait a second, if THAT was the Dark Knight questline, then who are those two randos getting sparkle-posed in the Forgotten Knight?!
I was a big fan of the Scholar questline back in ARR, personally, and it's had a lot of lore implications and insights into several things you wouldn't get otherwise- but not a whole lot on the main story…
Until very recently, anyway, when the Mhachi and voidsent are suddenly super relevant again.
Fray absolutely saw that… xD
"But know that when you tire of this charade, I shall be here…waiting to take the reins…"
This bit… this bit will echo in further Dark Knight job quests and I love it.
Spoilers:
You can echo those words and say "I tire of this charade!" in a future job quest and they will come to help.
🎶 Heed the Dark within your being, turn away! disobey! Iam the End & the beginning! the answer every soul is seeking Say my name! SAY MY NAME!!🎶… man, Sephirot's edgy theme really is just a song version of this quest
16:53 if it wasn't obvious before, Strylona is very specifically apologizing to Durmin, not Fray. but Yeah sometimes the best therapy is to summon your intrusive thoughts as a physical being & smack it with a giant Sword… well Mail if you're the Froyo delivering Bug Knight
Playfriends, it's time to address what Dark Knight truly is. Things are starting to Fray. This is your spoiler free lore comment.
You might notice as the quests go on that NPCs primarily address Durmin, not Fray, and when they do, it's only after Fray makes a pointed comment. Players who have alts, or have viewed a friend playing these quests will also note that Fray's gender & pronouns match that of the player character. And finally, the big hint: Fray's frustration boils over, and claims that they should have left La Noscea to drown beneath Leviathan's waves. While Leviathan has been summoned before, Fray's description of a friend getting on a big boat matches the ship of crystals used as bait.
And this is what I love about the Dark Knight class: Fray gives voice to Durmin's dark mirror, his frustrations, his misanthropy, his bloodlust. The counterbalance to The Warrior of Light, the all loving hero and snack deliverer. But Durmin doesn't banish this part of him. Because Fray IS him. The quite moments of grief, and the bottled frustration. Durmin accepts Fray, or rather, Esteem, and that he's not a perfect person. He's going to have dark thoughts, he's going to want to scream and yell and eat the cookies instead of delivering them. That's part of him. Even if he keeps it away from others, that part of him exists.
And if you haven't seen the Dark Knight quest journal, by the end of this quest line, it's clear that it's Fray/Esteem/Durmin writing the quest journal and the commentary.
This quest line does leave some notable questions. Who was the corpse that Durmin gathered the Dark Knight soul crystal from? Presumably some of that person's experience has influenced Durmin, provided him with the philosophy of the Dark Knights, and their techniques. Given that Durmin has been training with a dark mirror of himself, is he fundamentally different than other Dark Knights? The darkness that Durmin wields seems to be the manifestation of his own emotions, do other Dark Knights do the same, or do they tap into some other source of power? Do others face a corporal manifestation of their mind in a duel? I somehow doubt that they receive the support of comrades to help them past these mental blocks. Durmin is a unique case, and maybe the Warrior of Light isn't a good example of what a Dark Knight really is.
Next time! We re continuing the MSQ, but we're still sticking with Natsuko Ishikawa's writing, since she was also the writer for patch 3.4!
What I love about this questline is that it absolutely doesn't work if you haven't already done a job quest, or a couple, and understand the rhythm of it, which is why it's so useful that you can only do it once you get to Ishgard.
So, as someone with almost 0 experience with the Batman, this was… a trip.
Fray started off as being the kind of entity I could jive with, then became kinda edgelord grating. Then the ending happened, and I remembered this is a FF14. It didn't read as your character's "voice" at the end, just someone who was fed up with being the hero, which felt weird to me, but I'm also not used to having this weird "it's not really an RPG, but is RPG- adajecnt" thing. I'm not used to a character having basically no voice and then getting one (the PC is a "Yes Man" and "good guy" the whole of ARR, and most of Heavensward, to me).
Video content spoilers ahead.
You know,this Black Knight questline would be right at home in Persona 4,with only a few minor and aesthetic details were changed. Esteem is even a dead ringer for a Shadow Self!
This job quest line is such great character study and development for the Warrior of Light!
Cause of course you'll get tired after a while, some jobs will feel more like chores and people will abuse your kindness. Yet you'll have to smile and bear with it, cause as a hero you'll have to treat everyone equally. But it's also important that you don't forget yourself…
That was so good!
DRK is SO GOOD!!! Lol. You really need to do a reading of the journal entries for those quests. Absolutely amazing and gives a LOT more insight into what all is happening to you.
27:48 So that's what Dan thinks Durmin sounds like.
Remember the really good Dark Knight skill, Living Dead? This last quest is what unlocks it.
Gives the skill a whole new meaning.
This job quest line fascinates me. Without getting into spoilers, it hints at the broader story and it's the only quest line that focuses solely on the PC.
This is just the tip of the dark knight iceberg. We got 2 more expansions of Dark Knight job quests to do (the HW 50-60 job quests and 60-70). Dark Knight Durmin will return!