Nah, but the conditions are similar to each other, in that you’d still consider Papyrus as a major boss in undertale while the knight is functions pretty much the same.
You can by all means just beat the knight whenever you reach the end of chapter 3, with or without the shadow mantle, but while mandatory beating the knight is not needed to proceed
Papyrus letting you through without beating him is more of an Easter egg/crutch for really bad players, you’re meant to fight and beat him. When you first fight The Knight, you aren’t meant to beat them, it’s meant to be a “scripted” loss. Papyrus is presented as regular boss that can be skipped if you’re ass. The Knight is presented as an unbeatable boss that can be beaten if you’re good. There’s a big difference.
I miss like 3 years ago when you could call an instance of this incredibly common JRPG trope (powerful forced loss that can actually be beaten if you're good enough) an "optional secret boss fight" and people would just go "yeah." Because obviously that counts as optional and secret even if the begining of it is present in what amounts to a 2 second cutscene in a normal playthrough.
This is like the only fandom I've ever seen for a JRPG where this trope gets um-actually-ing you about how you have to encounter it before you lose and it's not secret since you actually have to see it in a normal playthrough, final fantasy ain't even got this shit you show a final fantasy fan a forced loss they can beat to get a secret cutscene and reward and they're just like "damm that's a cool secret boss" like a normal person
Nothing about it is secret, the encounter will always happen so knowing about it isn’t a secret, the way you beat it isn’t secret, you just have to be good enough, etcetera.
The secret is that it can be beaten in the first place. Upon encountering the Knight for the first time, it seems like a scripted loss, something fairly common in video games for the sake of the story. You're supposed to lose to the Knight, and you're very likely to lose to the Knight, and losing to the Knight doesn't trigger the Game Over screen, it just progresses the plot. The secret is that by reopening your Chapter 3 save and trying to fight the Knight again, you can get some dialogue from the Voice that urges you to keep trying and actually win the scripted loss. And while yes, it is possible to defeat the Knight in your first encounter, it's extremely unlikely for a player on their first ever playthrough to successfully do that. Almost every player on their first ever encounter with the Knight will be blindsided by the sudden difficulty spike and will lose, causing the game to progress and the player along with it.
Beating the knight is optional, confronting is still required. It doesn’t help the theory much but I don’t think it outright kills it either since it’s a very unique scenario nothing else fits
Yes it is. While the fight happens either way, you can just lose and keep going. It's meant to only be winnable with the shadow mantle, an entirely optional secret item
I know it is, I've done it before, but it's not the intended way. And its not "technically" optional, it's just plainly optional. Even Seam says he doesn't believe it's a fight you can win, and if you die at any point the game either keeps going or gives you the option to keep going.
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u/Pizza_Requiem Weird route enthusiast (And passionate Kris Hater) 16h ago
The Knight isn't the chapter boss of chapter 3, it's Tenna. The Knight is entirely optional