Question about LV50 Dark Knight quest *Spoilers*

[Cilia]

The Dark Knight story is just one tiny baby step towards acknowledging an entire genre that was more or less ignored by the entirety of 2.X, but I'm hoping it doesn't stop there.

Unfortunately, after the mask is forcibly ripped off by the shadow during the 50 quest, you put it back on and go back to being the all-loving, humble doormat of a hero you've always been. The closest you get to actually being able to play the proper role of a Dark Knight during 3.0 is swearing to kill Zephirin in revenge, and even the DRK 50-60 quest is rather like every other job quest in the game (you go back to helping out someone else). It is a bit more cerebral than most Job quests (just a bit), but the 50-60 line is ultimately not about you, which (I think) was the best thing about the 30-50 line.

Funny enough, deconstructing the "epic hero" archetype started back with VII's Cloud before fanon turned him into an angsty brooding loner. 2.x was a reconstruction of that archetype on the surface in regards to the PC, but the DRK 30-50 line takes the archetype and rips it to shreds, showing just how little self-worth someone like the Warrior of Light probably has (even after the shadow offers to set you free, the Warrior of Light chooses to remain everyone's "Weapon of Light" because, arguably, it's the only worth they find in themselves).

Unfortunately most people play the game to be a superhero, not a real hero, so it's unlikely we'll ever get a full deconstruction of the altruistic, self-sacrificing hero role the Warrior of Light is cast in. Remember the complaining about how 2.5.5's ending made the WoL fallible again? It'd be that but 10x worse if we ran into something we were too psychologically stressed to deal with.

(Can't comment on NPCs, because that's up to their character, who I don't write. But given the WoL is designed to be a tabula rasa on which the player can project themselves, and most people play this game for the heroic fantasy, it's unlikely the WoL will ever be truly vulnerable. Thus, acting like a real person invites scorn on the writing.)