I recently started the Shadowbringers MSQ, and I just wanted to talk about the crazy mental journey of just the introduction to this part of the story when taken from the perspective of someone who always goes through the story as a White Mage.
I enter the First, find it overwhelmed with Light aether. As a Warrior of Light whose entire thing is light-aligned magic, already there's a feeling I'm not quite the right person for the job.
Then the trip to Amh Araeng to reunite with Alisaie makes this ever more apparent. The Light is something dreaded, and with good reason. I'm introduced to people who are sick, and hey, healing is one of the things I'm best at! Except not only can I not heal them, but I get the impression that even trying would be a terrible idea. Due to the nature of their illness, my ministrations could even make things worse. And the thing that gives these people comfort, that gives them the hope to press on, is the idea of a Warrior of Darkness.
By this point I, as the player, am getting the rusty cogs of my brain turning. Okay, so in this part of the story, I have to become a Warrior of Darkness to help these people. Guess the best way to do that would be to slowly transition over to a class like Dark Knight or Reaper as I progress through the story! That might be a satisfying way to go about it, right?
But then I defeat the first Lightwarden. And the Warrior of Light, as a White Mage, absorbs the Lightwarden's aether, and uses it to blast away the oppressive Light sky. And both me as a player and as my WoL know in that moment that there is only one way forward: I have to control the Light in order to banish the Light. Only a Mage of the White, the chosen successor of A-Towa-Cant, can handle this much Light-aligned aether without it destroying them. My power over light isn't a barrier I need to overcome in order to become the Warrior of Darkness; it's the very thing that will allow me to do so.
And yes, obviously this cutscene (and everything before it) would have played out the exact same way regardless of what class I was playing. I could switch to any other class going forward and it would have zero effect on the story. But it still felt really cool to go through this fun little headcanon in real time of my Warrior of Light being unsure whether they could handle this particular crisis, to becoming confident that not only are they the only one who can, but they have been unknowingly preparing for it from the moment they arrived in Gridania on that carriage. It's almost certainly by accident or coincidence, but it's the first time I've felt narratively rewarded in a big way for my choice of main class.
submitted by /u/Gentlekrit
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I enter the First, find it overwhelmed with Light aether. As a Warrior of Light whose entire thing is light-aligned magic, already there's a feeling I'm not quite the right person for the job.
Then the trip to Amh Araeng to reunite with Alisaie makes this ever more apparent. The Light is something dreaded, and with good reason. I'm introduced to people who are sick, and hey, healing is one of the things I'm best at! Except not only can I not heal them, but I get the impression that even trying would be a terrible idea. Due to the nature of their illness, my ministrations could even make things worse. And the thing that gives these people comfort, that gives them the hope to press on, is the idea of a Warrior of Darkness.
By this point I, as the player, am getting the rusty cogs of my brain turning. Okay, so in this part of the story, I have to become a Warrior of Darkness to help these people. Guess the best way to do that would be to slowly transition over to a class like Dark Knight or Reaper as I progress through the story! That might be a satisfying way to go about it, right?
But then I defeat the first Lightwarden. And the Warrior of Light, as a White Mage, absorbs the Lightwarden's aether, and uses it to blast away the oppressive Light sky. And both me as a player and as my WoL know in that moment that there is only one way forward: I have to control the Light in order to banish the Light. Only a Mage of the White, the chosen successor of A-Towa-Cant, can handle this much Light-aligned aether without it destroying them. My power over light isn't a barrier I need to overcome in order to become the Warrior of Darkness; it's the very thing that will allow me to do so.
And yes, obviously this cutscene (and everything before it) would have played out the exact same way regardless of what class I was playing. I could switch to any other class going forward and it would have zero effect on the story. But it still felt really cool to go through this fun little headcanon in real time of my Warrior of Light being unsure whether they could handle this particular crisis, to becoming confident that not only are they the only one who can, but they have been unknowingly preparing for it from the moment they arrived in Gridania on that carriage. It's almost certainly by accident or coincidence, but it's the first time I've felt narratively rewarded in a big way for my choice of main class.
submitted by /u/Gentlekrit
[link] [comments]
Continue reading...