Question about LV50 Dark Knight quest *Spoilers*

[MilesSaintboroguh]

After beating your dark side into submission, it says you can call on them whenever you want to drop the charade. Your dark self seems...happy when it says this, but I kind of don't understand why. Help me?

[Cilia]

All just my personal interpretation, but...

Our dark side is essentially our psychological shadow archetype; everything present in our psyche that we deny (that we're sick and tired of being everyone's tool for fixing problems, and the psychological damage we suffered in the wake of 2.x). Going with the pseudo-Persona thing DRK 30-50 has going on, our shadow doesn't want us to deny it; despite attacking us, our shadow wants us to accept it as a part of us.

The shadow only exists because we denied what it represents in our psyche. If we accept it, there's no reason for it to be angry with us. The fight was, essentially, a veiled test of our strength.

[Aeliott]

^Indeed. You could see it as "accepting" that part of ourselves, acknowledging its feelings, but choosing not to succumb to them. Our "dark side" is content with this after the battle, which I guess is partly why they're smiling, but gives us a parting reminder that if we ever really really get sick of it all, (s)he's still going to be there ready to turn his/her back on all the crap you didn't ask for, like they frequently suggested throughout the quests. I get the impression that side of us is very confident we won't be able to resist that urge forever and is feeling kinda happy about that thought.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

That's kind of creepy to know, though I think the idea will probably never be revisited since it's "concluded".

[Eisen-Zorn]

The "Darkside" is actually the Self-Esteem of the character. They are the embodiment of the character's feelings of self-worth, and the Dark Knight stone gave it the power to take form in Fray's body and its own form at the end. The reason why your character accepts the "Darkside" at the end of the quest is because it was already a part of you. The Warrior of Light has probably been harboring resentment and animosity towards the people of Eorzea, secretly, for some time. The constant demands and ungrateful attitudes of the citizens of Eorzea would definitely weigh on people over time.

This is why your Esteem becomes enraged when the merchant and others take you for granted. The "Darkside" basically loves you more than anyone, and it finally decides that, to protect you from others, it needs to become dominant. It believes, at first, that it can convince you to allow this because of your desire to learn the ways of the Dark Knight. However, your good and compassionate nature proves too strong to allow your "Darkside" to take over completely.

You fight your "Darkside", and, in the end, come out victorious. The Esteem, however, still worries that the people of Eorzea will abuse you and use you only as their weapon. Still, it is willing to try it your way, but with the promise that if you ever get tired of being used by the people, it will be there to take over and protect you from the world. You reconcile with your "Darkside" and the two of you become one once again.

I put "Darkside" in quotations because, to be honest, the Esteem personality isn't so much dark as it is protective. Its flaw was that it, being the embodiment of your self-worth, valued itself above all others. However, that's not necessarily a dark quality, but more of a preservationist quality considering your history.

[MilesSaintboroguh]

Protecting you from yourself huh?

[Cilia]

Well, it's your shadow; everything you deny and repress in your psyche. Think of it as a photo-negative of the Warrior of Light's personality: the WoL will constantly and willingly throw themselves into danger for others, so the shadow would rather avoid unnecessary conflict because it's risking your life. It's fight or flight, and we always choose to fight, so our shadow has no problem fleeing any unnecessary conflict.

Your shadow just wants to make you happy, and as your repressed "darkness" (selfishness, among other things) wants you to live for yourself. Its relationship with you is... complicated, to say the least, but that's going to happen when you make a character something besides "Eorzea's hope."

[Fenral]

2.X had a tiny little problem with self-sacrifice. It was more than a little obsessed, and completely and utterly genre-blind in it's portrayal of those sacrifices, which would be great, if the notion of the stoic self-sublimating hero hadn't been prime deconstruction fodder in fantasy RPGs for the past fifteen-odd years. I mean, it's great that Yoshida had the whole team play WoW when working on this game, but would it have killed him to look at a modern JRPG or three while he was at it?

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.

[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.)

[Fenral]

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).

Uh, Tales of Phantasia would like to have words with you (granted that was more of a final knife twist than a full deconstruction, and even then not the first), but you're more or less correct about how, in-series, hero deconstructing started with VII. I certainly would never try to imply that FF14's writers haven't played any Final Fantasy beyond FF1 up to Matoya's Cave, FF3 up to the end of the Floating Continent, and the World of Balance arc of FF6, because that would just be a cheap shot. XIV doesn't really count as a reconstruction of anything, because aside from the DRK storyline, any obviously unfortunate implications are either handwaved or ignored entirely. A reconstruction only happens when those implications are faced head-on and addressed properly.

Can't comment on NPCs, because that's up to their character, who I don't write.

2.0 lived and (violently) died by the idea that NPCs exist solely to reflect an image onto the player. They may have had a complicated childhood, burgeoning powers they barely understand, be your only link to a shadowy organization that surely can't be totally irrelevant to the ongoing plot, or even a fellow chosen one, but none of that actually matters. Even if Minfilia's every (in)action negates what characterization she's been given, what matters is that you understand your role in shaping the future, and that someone with strictly informed importance is telling you how important you are.

3.0 is all about how there's a better way, and that NPCs can be more than just people who order you around. Arguably it needed 2.0 in order to enhance the contrast, but ultimately, those same people who proved to you that they, too, could do things on their own were rewarded by a half half dozen oddly-shaped bridges falling on them simply to ensure that, when the dust settles, you are still the only one left capable of doing anything positive for anyone.

So we're still stuck as the one and only hero, but they're trying. I think.