Well, really, according to the job's lore, they use the power of love to harness the abyss. It's just an idea I've been wondering, so... Yeah.
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Well, really, according to the job's lore, they use the power of love to harness the abyss. It's just an idea I've been wondering, so... Yeah.
I'm the only one allowed to protect them!
- The last words the static's co-tank ever heard...
That isn't a largely known feature of the DRKs powers. It is how the existing powers can be refined, yes, but it doesn't seem limited to a particular emotion, only that it is felt strongly and directed to purpose(something or someone). A yandere DRK would be pretty much what it sounds like: powerful, but unstable, and possibly unreliable since the foundation of their power is one person.
Love isn't the bonafide source of their strength. That's just the Moogles spinning a bunch of BS. And it's more playing at Sidurgu's love of the Elezen girl. It's more a strong conviction to fulfill their task that they harness dark arts to complete their duty even doing things that a Paladin wouldn't who might be bound by code or even laws. Love is just one of the many emotions DRK's can use to tap into their powers.
A DRK can draw equal power out of simply wanting thing to die, an intense hatred for something or a strong feeling of perseverance. List goes on. "Love" is simply an easy term to associate that with. And at times is very misleading. DRK's enforce justice where the Paladin simply wouldn't.
Wait, isn't that just the actual plot?
Tee hee to the people writing off DRK's use of love as a motivating factor. Is the lovey-doveyness not edgy enough for you? :p
Being serious though, (um, spoilers I guess?) the whole point of that quest line is about discovering one's "flame in the abyss," that single factor that is strong enough to motivate you and give you dominion over the darkness to bend it to your will. It's not specifically about love of another person--just something the DRK is passionate enough to risk diving into the abyss for. That could be another person, it could be lots of other people, it could be the DRK themselves, it could just be pure old vengeance. Finding that single, bright flame is necessary to be your guiding point, your central focus to keep you on the right track, otherwise you could just wander off into the dark and lose yourself forever... You could basically say that Dark Knights, since they walk so close to the dark, have to more aware of the light in the dim than anyone else.
I think part of the point of the moogles trying to hammer home Sidurgu's care for Rielle was because his own "flame" wasn't clear--his own motivations were confused and that was making it impossible for him to succeed in his mission. Was he out for revenge for his parents, for Fray, etc.? Or was he doing all these things because he genuinely wanted to protect Rielle? Until he got his own priorities straightened out, they were just living from fight to fight, aimlessly wandering down a unhappy path. His character development was all about him realizing that the abyss doesn't just respond to pain and power. Its strength can be summoned up by many other means as well, including truly noble causes.
Ah, it's nice to see people who actually pay attention to storylines.
I know the 51-60 DRK storyline is very much overshadowed by the 30-50 journey, but I feel that the differences between each arc are very important. Before Sid entered the picture, the player had no true motivation for touching the dark. This led to the creation of Fray as a construct who steadily worked to take control of everything the player did. To feed the player's understandable resentment at having to do everything for everyone into something sinister, angry, and dark. This is representative of failing to control the Abyss and falling into its clutches. Note that Fray was never happy with how much the player tapped into the darkness... s/he always asked for more; to make the player fall deeper and lose more control. Once the player pulls themselves from the brink of being completely lost, Sid enters the picture.
Whereas the 30-50 arc showed the consequences of tapping into the Abyss without the guiding light that sarehptar describes, the 51-60 arc teaches the player how to find that light. Sid ultimately finds that light in his affection for Rielle. At the end of this arc, you get to declare to Sid your motivation for tapping into the darkness. Your choice here is your own; what truly matters is that you finally have that guiding light as well.And then you wipe one million times in Alex Savage and get really angry at everything again
TL;DR: The Dark Knight story is great.
its a good place to start a character, see as how the yandere personality trait would make a DRK seem powerful, but in actuality would have some real weaknesses in it that character development could work out. (or in a villain, make worse)
Hmmm. Now I wonder how Alphinaud would react when he realizes that he's paired with a DRKyandere.
I wish lol. Right now I feel like a weaker DRK compare to Sid because SE refuses to let us outright kill in the game. We only kill in self-defense which isn't the same as taking someone out because you felt like it. Darkside is living proof that the Darkness within our hearts is close to none. Image if we were allowed more than 10% of the Darkness we hold? That aura would be oozing with death and despair.
Absolutely agreed. I've done all but two of the 50-60 quest lines now, and nothing comes close to DRK. To me, both parts of the story were great... The first part, with Fray, was just fantastic writing because it taps into not only realistic thoughts of your WoL character but also your own thoughts ("Why do I have to keep doing these crappy fetch quests?"). Although I agree that the 30-50 arc shows the dangers of tapping into the abyss unchecked, I also think there was another element to its message too: Fray, especially in that last cutscene, was all about you learning to accept your pre-existing darkness. The whole thing came off, to me at least, like the WoL's own inner-abyss (lol that sounds so emo) crying out due to being so intensely repressed. The WoL has to be this shining beacon of goodness--there's no room or time for resentment, negativity, selfishness, or anything we associate with the Dark. The WoL kept pushing all this stuff aside in order to present more "Light" by the day, but being completely light isn't healthy. Shutting down anything that isn't "perfect" only causes you to literally tear yourself in two, and I felt like Fray, while trying to draw the WoL deeper into darkness, was also just trying to stop the pain of constant self-rejection and contradiction between the light and dark halves. Learning to accept the darkness at 50, made us, in a sense, a healthier person overall, which is why even though we were untrained, we were the ones who were able to basically lead Sid along and help him figure things out.
51-60 was just damn adorable IMHO. There was so much potential to try and overload the grit and edginess and despair, and instead they took a route that looks at the connections between people a lot more retrospectively. There were so many slightly-more-subtle elements (like how Sid "used to talk more" when Fray was around, and the dragon lamenting her lost love through Rielle) that gave the story a lot more resonance than many of the other job quest lines. The intersecting elements of loss, betrayal, familial ties (both blood family and found family), and balancing a desire for vengeance with a desire to protect added up to a lot of wonderful nuance that I didn't expect in a "I stare into the abysssss" stylistic job. I felt like the 51-60 quest line really tried to challenge players' long-built-in conceptions of how darkness is supposed to "work" and who and how it is used. The enemies are the "good guys," the supposedly righteous ones, and here we are picking flowers and poking moogles and raising smol elf daughters to tap into our inner void, rawr! It was really refreshing compared to how wangsty it could have been.