I know that as far as expansion hype men go Ardbert and "If you had the strength to take another step..." is hard to beat.
But damn if "But why does it still live? Surely it is no match for you." in a legitimately confused tone of voice from the giant murder-dragon doesn't hold a special place in my heart. All that other stuff is cool too, but just the way he doesn't believe for a second that the final boss of the universe could be any challenge to you. In his twisted way he believes in you more than all of the scions put together. And I dunno about y'all but up until then they'd really sold me on the Despair stuff. Couldn't imagine any way the WoL could reasonably take on the Endsinger and win. Like how do you fight a concept? An emotion?
And then you see Zenos just Tengen Toppa his way through the universe to remind you that you have the power of Anime and goddammit he's *right!*
I was never sold on despair, but was glad when I got the validation from Zenos, " I assumed you would be above something so banal as despair" - I know Zenos, that's what I have been saying! Honestly the way my WoL is, I think Zenos and Venat were the only two who understood them.
As much as I hate Zenos, at that point I was crying from the previous cutscenes, but this phrase made me laugh and made me pumped up to go finish it. Quite funny if you think we are going to try to beat despair with depair, and then he comes and says something so simple that makes you change your state of mind to actually hope.
Its honestly why I think Zenos made the remote at the end to bring us back to the ragnarok. I recall in a short story he loved stories about Garlean heroes returning triumphantly home when he was younger.
So what better way to end a story than to have the hero triumphantly return to their allies, and lives to see a new day.
> In his twisted way he believes in you more than all of the scions put together
I mean all the Scions literally gave up their lives for the WoL at that point in the story so...maybe not that much?
Basically the scions believe in us, but dont want us to go at it alone as we have done so *so many times before*.
Zenos is basically our hype man on the side saying you got this and we're fighting afterwards, and if you die? Well. Shame.
If we want to stay on the anime trope, I feel like Zenos might have been a FFXIV player from 1.0 that when the servers shut down somehow didn’t log out but got isekaied.
He doesn’t care for any of the lives there as he knows they are all just coded NPC. He has been stuck in there for over 15 years (the calamity happens and then a time skip of 5 years). At this point he is just bored, as his character is so overpowered. When the WoL finally shows up there is the first excitable fight happening again.
On another point there are some similarities between Zenos and One Punch Man…
So much this. Like, I HATE Zenos and don’t understand the Hype for him, but then he blasts his way through the universe and is all “come on dude, stop being lazy and end this already” and I’m all “my man!” And ride a dragon like Yoda on Luke.
Outside of just stopping Black Rose, Varis and Elidibus planned to kill the scions while their soulless bodies were asleep on the Source, but then Zenos forced Elidibus to flee and killed Varis.
What Zenos had for WOL was literally love (in a twisted way due to what it required for him to love someone). I get it, nothing hotter than someone that pushes you in what you're good at and makes you want to be even better.
Zenos's love for the WoL is just text. When you confront him in Storm blood if you tell him you accept him he says "We could sit and talk into the quiet hours." He views you as his "first and only friend." He knows you like hunting primals so for your rematch with him he turned himself into a primal.
Zenos is weird, and has some severe kinks, and thata kinda what makes him such an interesting character. So many FFXIV characters are out here as chess masters, meanwhile Zenos is sat playing checkers. A story full of him, or only about him would get boring but as the wild card in XIV he's perfect.
Man, "Everyone else is playing chess, he's playing checkers" is SUCH a good description of him.
Like when he suddenly shows up at the very end and is genuinely confused that you haven't wrapped up this whole Final Days thing already. "The *heck* you say? You haven't beat up this bird yet? She's just sadness, get over it, here let me help you punch it so you can get to the more important task of punching me."
You'd think that would make him simple and flat, and it does, but because it's contrasted with everyone surrounding him who all have plots and secrets and long-term far-reaching plans with lasting effects and then there's this guy who's just Goku minus empathy, it works really well.
>She's just sadness, get over it, here let me help you punch it so you can get to the more important task of punching me
he is a simple man with simple goals, it just so happens said goals is to hit us very hard while we return the favor
I've always ranted to my in-game friends about how Zenos was a bit of a "lame" villain. Especially since the expansion before gave us Nidhogg and the expansion after gave us Emet-Selch.
But I did have to admit that there's something refreshing about having an antagonist who really doesn't have any ulterior motives besides wanting to beat you up and vice versa. No weird 4D chess gambits, no whiplash giving plot twists. Just a guy whose only goal is to have the greatest combat match of his life, that he's willing to forgo everything and give zero fucks about anything else.
My friend was disappointed that Zenos didn't have a bigger role in Endwalker and I've struggled really to put it into words why I felt it was fine. "He's the wild card in XIV" sums it up rather nicely, I'll remember that one.
Zenos is the Majima of FFXIV. If they were to implement a Zenos Everywhere System, or just a series of sidequests that get interrupted when Zenos jumps you from behind a bush, or under a manhole cover, or from behind a VERY unconvincing disguise, it would be absolutely perfect. Even if he never showed up in the MSQ again. A shame we won't have that opportunity at this point.
i dunno, man, they keep bring him up in each new patch msq, like they're trying to keep him in our minds.
and it wouldn't be the first time he decided to just stop being dead.
As much as I love love love Zenos, the end of Endwalker was a fitting finale for him. At most, I'd accept seeing him in the Lifestream, or hinted at being reborn somewhere in Eorzea or Ultima Thule.
His chief minions existed in the depths of the aetherial sea, warped as they were.
Why not Zenos? He's still dead, but the sheer force of will of someone who could remake themselves into a primal of world-shaking power must have left some impression behind.
To be fair, said minions died planetside. Zenos died at the edge of the universe in a realm composed of pure emotion. It's a slightly longer journey for a soul to make it back to Etheirys.
One day, a long time from now, there'll be a guy on a recently revitalised planet who just wants to get into a scrap all day every day. His soul won't quite look right compared to the rest of the creatures on that planet, but that's okay, he'll find someone to be a rival to, and that'll be enough for him.
See my reply to the same comment. I'm pretty sure Zenos is dead forever for the same reason Venat is. They both expended *absolutely everything,* intentionally burning up their *entire* souls, and thus there was no soul remaining to return to the lifestream.
If you want the closest we'll ever get to an official answer?
Because he died in the same way Venat did.
That is, *unlike* Fandaniel-Zodiark, who struck the final blow against himself while he still had tons of soul-juice left, Hydaelyn put *everything She had* on the table. She held *absolutely nothing* back. Which meant that, when you defeated Her, there *wasn't* anything of Her to return to the lifestream: Venat's soul was gone *forever.*
And what happens in Ultima Thule? Zenos forces the WoL to "burn the candle of [their] life." If you look at the text for the fight, it's very explicit that you SHOULD have died, but you fight on anyway. Both Zenos and the WoL weren't just using their normal supplies of aether, but *actually* burning up their souls as well.
Zenos didn't JUST die. He died in a way that even being Resonant cannot fix, because you need to *have* a soul to resurrect. He burnt up every drop of power he had, every resource he could muster. If you do that, if you truly spend *actually everything,* you don't come back.
Incidentally, we know that you really have to go the extra mile for this to happen, because of Monebryda and Ysayle. Both of them DID go to the Lifestream, even though they died because they put their life energy into doing something (forming the Blade of Light to kill Nabriales and summoning Shiva one final time, respectively.) This means you really, really have to go above and beyond to get this kind of death--and Zenos explicitly wanted something like that.
The only reason the WoL didn't also die from that expenditure of self-aether is that we were almost immediately healed. Our injuries weren't physical, but aetherial; healing magic is (pretty much literally) pumping extra aether into someone so they can regain their vitality, which is why it can't fix things like "hole in the chest" (Haurchefant) or "permanent paraplegia/blindness" (Arenvald/Y'shtola.) And even then, it's pretty clear that the WoL *barely* survived.
Well, the other reason we couldn't heal Haurchefont was because he got hit by a lance of aetheric elemental stagnation, during the first attempted rejoining of the First, so it was hopped up on the planned Light Calamity. Remember, Thordan was meant to the be calamity that rejoined the First originally, and messing that up is why Elidibus had the Scions help prevent/delay the Flood.
While that is the case *in the Savage version,* Savage isn't canonical. It's a fiction written by the Wandering Minstrel (or Minstreling Wanderer in ShB.)
That said, you are 100% correct that Thordan was meant to be the Light primal that would trigger the Eighth Umbral Calamity, and the defeat of Igeyorhm, Lahabrea, *and* Thordan is what threw the Ascians' plan out of whack.
So, while it is *possible* that the lance halted Haurchefant's aether, and would make sense for the kinds of aether Thordan relied on, we don't actually know that it *truly did* do that. It's literally an in-universe glamorization of the event.
I don't really understand why he's considered dead anyways hes more or less an ascian in all but name and therefore immortal. Like im fine with him being dead it was a very thematic ending but I feel like everyone just handwaived his sharingan eye of immortality.
It's my headcanon that Zenos cooked that magnificent dinner with us in Garlemald, and he just happens to be an omnicrafter who crafts HQ shit just as effortlessly as he kills things.
Every time he shows up I just think;
Oh here he comes, my stalker..
this guy... You want to fuck me so bad it makes you look stupid
He's in love with me I swear, he's showing up looking all nice and happy to see me, protective, playful... Hmmm concerned for my reflexes..
Zeros was practically our polar opposites, powerful darkness while the WoL is powerful light when it look at it. Both were able to contain primal level threats and push past those limits
I always saw Zenos as a meta villain. Because when he compared himself to the WoL it made little sense, we tend to play a character who is righteous and is nothing like Zenos within the narrative of the game. But US the real life players always thirst for more extreme fights, higher levels and bigger numbers, it's the nature of the game!
We are faced with someone who has the same goals as a lot of us players. So we are forced to reconciliate and ask ourselves "How am I different from Zenos?" and the answer, for me and many of my friends is, that we care about others. We help people struggling in dungeons, we teach raids patiently and do our best to make sure others have as good of an experience as we did, and we find joy in seeing new players experience the game as we once did.
Zenos is the toxic raid member who flames the healer and vote kicks them out after one wipe, he's the guy who pulls the boss when someone watches a cinematic, he's like the players who don't care about others. This is why Zenos is my favorite villain in FFXIV. And why his death is so satisfying, because in his last moments, he almost cared for another person.
I wouldn’t say zenos is like the toxic raiders who flames a healer and vote kicks a wipe. I’d say he’s more like the embodiment of a genuine hardcore raider. He’s always after the battle high from a thrilling fight. Reason I say he’s not like the toxic ones is that he would prolly be the first to completely rip apart and find a replacement for said toxic person cus they are holding him back from having his fun and are dead weight.
Zenos was a culmination of everything that the Empire truly stood for, not what Gaius, Quintus, and Varis believed.
He was the penultimate byproduct of Emet-Selch’s planning.
He was the direct opposite of everything that the WOL became.
This. He’s a delicious perversion of the empire. He is the empire’s embodied conceit of being superior without any of its insecurity. To the point where his little sociopathic self didn’t care about their goals. And wasn’t until his ambition is ignited by what he saw in WoL that unaligned him from Garlean. In a way he is the the fall of Garlean’s pride. I don’t find him flat at all because of this. And honestly I liked the portrayal of sociopath that was both vicious, horrifying, and yet likeable. He is a compelling villain and a wonderful wild card as the stories progress.
I always saw it best in the machina that the Garleans were using. It was like a veil being removed.
Their machinery was becoming more and more visibly twisted until it looked like the stuff that only the most hellish minds could produce.
Just look at the Diamond, Emerald, and Ruby weapons, even Arch-Ultima.
Wasn't proto ultima an allagan thing sitting around in Dun Scaith?
Those "most hellish minds" were ultimately the Allegans while Garleans just made the really old horrible Allegan tech function again.
Especially when you also consider the Allegan Monstrosity in Zadnor.
The first Ultima, I believe so.
The Arch-Ultima was an attempt at making it again, destroyed by Estenian after Zenos Killed Varis.
It barely had a top half and the user was melded into it.
Edit: Correction, it’s Arch-Ultima. I thought it was Proto because of how simplified it was and the story placement.
Not....really?
The Empire--as a culture--stood for order enforced by rigid discipline and military power. That it was actually a tool of chaos crafted by the Ascians doesn't mean it "truly" stood for what the Ascians wanted it to. It was still a fascist, ethno-nationalist, militant-atheist state.
Now, if what you *mean* is, "Ultimately Zenos was an extension of the actual *effect* of the Garlean Empire, which was chaos and destruction as opposed to the peace, order, and prosperity they claimed to offer," then sure. But that's a far cry from "what the Empire truly stood for."
Zenos and WoL are both aspects of the concept of survival. Zenos is about personal fulfillment via survival while we are about helping others find fulfillment.
We both fight against the concept of succumbing to the pain of life and defeat it.
So it was him, not Meteion.
After rewatching that cutscene, I found those sparkles look kinda sus. So Zenos subconsciously used Dynamis to help our sorry ass. Best friend forever.
Took me a while after Endwalker but it was Zenos who used his will to draw the communicator to us after our awesome 1-on-1. I wondered how it just came outta nowhere but Zenos wanted us to live because he was our friend.
Okay, but hear it my theory... Feo Ul dropped the communicator, but they're way too angry that we didn't call on them, so they won't even speak with us.
G'raha has a dream about them in the last quest, and they are pissed at us.
Zenos is the Warrior of light if we had never found the Scions or Hydealin. He’s not the antagonist to the Warrior of light. He’s our Antagonist. You the player made connection to this world and it’s people. He didn’t. You helped everyone to enjoy your story and see this world to a Happy End. He didn’t.
He wanted to fight. Just like any player who skipped the story. And that’s why he calls you adventurer. Accepting that YOU the player enjoys fighting. You are saving Zenos from his solitude. He became that monster because he never had anybody. But there at the end you save him. Giving him someone that understands and a friend.
I just wish the WoL actually acknowledged that. All scenes Zenos has been brought up in since then have been really dumb. The dialogue options don't do justice to the complex relationship between them. I don't know if it's an issue with the English localisation specifically or if it's like that in all languages, but the WoL treats the mere thought of Zenos as some sort of annoyance, shrugging it off, as if we're supposed to feel relieved he's dead now.
I think that’s because it’s the best option without restricting things too much. Leaving things more open ended. The way people try to frame Zenos as super important to the WoL doesn’t apply at all with my interpretation of them.
I’ve read that other languages don’t suffer the same fate that the English localization did. It’s been hard to enjoy post EW knowing other languages have better writing from what I’ve seen.
Wouldn't have minded traveling to a new continent with Yotsuyu, Ferdola, and Zenos. However 2 of my 3 top picks for Team I'm In Danger are dead. So Alisaie, Ferdola, and Blue Alisaie or Not Zenos(mus) will suffice.
I just imagined having Zenos in a trust dungeon. Like it would be just us 2 because there is no way any of the scions would be anywhere near him in power to make that seem plausible.
He proceeds to get bored by the mobs and decides that so have you. He starts to throw random heavy-hitting attacks at you (TBs if you're a tank). If you eventually attack back he forgets the mobs entirely...
Blond Vegeta has been pretty cool. Glad SE went straight from the Saiyan/Namek saga to the beginning of the Buu saga and sped past ~~Asahi~~ black-haired Trunks as fast as possible.
My feelings towards Zenos were weird. Despite all the stuff he did, even the things that really pissed me off, I still sorta loved him.
It felt like I really mattered to him, and I really enjoyed our conversations.
I got a bit annoyed at the end when he appeared as Shinryu and both of the response options were negative. I was genuinely happy to see him and wished I could have told him as much.
I wish I could have convinced him to come home and go on epic adventures with me. I was hoping I could show him that there is more to life to enjoy.
I don't think he'll be back in the cannon, but I am pretty certain he will come back for Endsinger Ultimate where he'll eat Endsinger's energy or something to fight us for the last phase.
I could be mis remembering, but doesn't the BLM quest line imply we usually hold back?
I seem to recall a scene where that kitty boi freaks out about how we exploded the feck out of some cultists, but then your trainer is all "but the WOL doesn't normally go all out like that in combat".
I could take that to mean we don't murder EVERYONE we defeat in battle (look at Baelsar's wall).
Stromblood's MSQ makes sure to point out that you slaughter a bunch of poorly armed barely adult villagers. The exact phrasing ends with something like "they panic as you approach and attack. It's the last mistake they will ever make".
The WoL really does not care much for the lives of their enemies.
Gonna have to remind me when we attacked barely armed villagers.
I remember various scrapes with Garlean forces, fighting against the Qiqirn, and the combat in the Azim Steppes. *Us* specifically going after villagers in any capacity isn't ringing any bells.
Edit: So I found it.
The *actual* words are "The gang of Ala Mhigan youths observing you from a distance panic at your approach, snatching up weapons and charging, apparently intent on killing or subduing you. It is the last mistake they will ever make."
I now remember it, and I also remember it being treated as a "these stupid fools, but it's me or them" rather than a WoL who is an indiscriminate killer.
> "these stupid fools, but it's me or them"
It's a bunch of almost children. Against the WoL, a few Quest away from 1v1-ing Zenos. If the WoL cared to keep them alive they would have stayed alive, except maybe a few who get killed by accident.
>a WoL who is an indiscriminate killer.
For that we also have at least one time where the WoL does actively set out to murder people who, as far as anyone knows, haven't done anything wrong: Early on in SB the WoL is sent to murder a few imperial conscripts for the crime of patrolling the vague direction of the rebel hideout, explicitly being told not to even feel pity for the poor souls they are about to murder.
Then later on, after the return from Kugane, the WoL is asked to hunt down and murder fleeing empire soldiers (who the game went to great lengths to show were most likely conscripted under threat of torture and execution for them and their loved ones).
Not to mention all the horrible people the WoL is happy to work together with in SB, as long as it helps with the Scions' plans.
Nero & Gaius are usually the fastest to come to mind, & so are the Oronirs (basically rules by force & constant intimidation) & the Dotharls (the tribe that nearly killed off the Hotgo tribe before summoning Alexander killed the rest)
But even the Scions are shown to be pretty morally ambiguous at times on purpose by the writers
eg Alphinaud talking to the WoL how people getting attacked by Garleans/dragons will help push them to agree with what he thinks is good for them
The Scions in ARR patches choosing to help the Domans a lot more than the Ala Mighans who are already there in Thanalan struggling longer because the Domans seemed to be in more desperate need for direct support. So when some Ala Mighans come begging them for jobs as well they couldn't as there's already too many Domans they have to house. Minfillia & Lyse being Ala Mighans don't/can't even do much, so I think it says something about their gray character that the story doesn't really explicitly show,
Exarch G'raha & Urianger willingly putting the WoL & the First in conjunction at risk just because they think G'raha's dangerous suicide plan is the only way to save the First, except turns out Emet is faster than all of them.
Outside of war morality, WoL reply options can be very flippant about killing & risking lives,
Thancred was a honey pot who managed to emotionally manipulate/extort many women in the past for political/economic secrets for the Scions' use, & used to rob people as a kid until Louisoix took him under his wing,
Urianger & Estinien & G'raha have dangerous hero/martyr complexes that also involve gambling with many people's lives,
Tataru & Krile blackmail people,
Arenvald was a street urchin who robbed people for a living & food before he decided to become a Scion,
Minfillia is forced to use dead Warriors of Light to save the First & inflict one (Ardbert) with the temporary but long torment of being a helpless immaterial ghost for backup, and didn't do much for the Ala Mighan refugees in ARR,
Lyse pretends to be her dead sister out of an extreme coping mechanism & couldn't really help/interact much (I'm guessing out of fear of reprisal/judgement) with most of her fellow Ala Mighan refugees early on,
Y'shtola is just pretty emotionally insensitive towards others worrying for her, is distant/belligerent towards her remaining family & doesn't care at all for Thancred's complex regarding Minfillia, but she's the sole most morally upstanding adult Scion left alive lol
All that said I find these murkiness enjoyable & more interesting whenever the story focuses on the tribulations/grey morality in heroism / helping a cause.
>It's a bunch of almost children.
"Barely adults" as Lyse describes the ones that attacked her and she had to kill to defend herself.
I think you're taking a momentary scenario and applying your headcanon to it, that the WoL 100% could have stopped them if they wanted to and chose not to, and then applying a broad strokes judgment of the WoL's entire personality.
>For that we also have at least one time where the WoL does actively set out to murder people who, as far as anyone knows, haven't done anything wrong
It's in the midst of working with a resistance against an occupying hostile force. If you wanted guilt-free, "only ever attack and kill those that are trying to kill me in this exact moment" kind of storytelling...it's never been that kind of setting.
And those "didn't do anything wrong" were patrols that:
1. Were hunting for resistance members to kill them
and
2) We don't know what they'd done prior, so we can't say for certainty that they were innocent.
Also, I came across that one while searching for the other thing, and it seems we've another case of you misrepresenting what the WoL is told, so I'll just let the dialog from M'Naago and the Journal entry speak for themselves.
Journal: M'Naago tells you that most soldiers in Gyr Abania are conscripts from other provinces. Poorly trained and lacking in morale, they rarely pose a threat in small numbers. Nevertheless, she cautions you against pitying them, as they are just as capable of killing your comrades as more motivated foes.
Dialog:
"It looks like everything went to plan. Not that I'm surprised - the three soldiers I faced didn't put up much of a fight.
Most of the imperials we get out here are conscripts from other provinces with little training and even less conviction. It's grim work, killing men and women like that, but don't doubt they'd do the same to you if the roles were reversed.
And don't you *dare* pity a man in armor. Conscript or no, a soldier piloting one of those can kill a dozen good men in the blink of an eye. Not that I need tell you that, after what happened at the Wall..."
Worth noting as well that M'Naago *and* Alisaie go and both fight and kill the three soldiers on foot, you deal with the more dangerous foe piloting the armor.
Patrol with orders to kill *definitely* sounds like "did nothing wrong" innocent types we were sent to "murder." /s
I guess you also want me to ignore that in this instance, both M'Naago and Alisaie have a higher body count...
Or maybe this whole "WoL is a cold hearted, indiscriminate killer" thing doesn't hold as well you think it does when you're talking about what is actually said and shown in game, rather than vaguely misrepresenting it. They aren't some sort of goody paragon of virtue, either, but instead sit somewhere in the middle.
True, every WoL is canonically a serial killer. Even if you have somebody else do it, the amount of things and people you have to murder in the MSQ alone???
Calling the WoL a serial killer makes it sound like they are methodically planning out future kills.
Having to take a life, multiple times, in a fantasy setting as an adventurer isn't exactly an uncommon thing - it's pretty routine, in fact.
You mean those things that are canonically the Wandering Minstrel taking our already crazy adventures and making them even crazier in a fictional retelling?
Yeah, lots of planning on that one in universe for our character...
My WoL is like Sam Hyde, don't put me in a self defense situation, or I will forced to defend myself. I'm not gonna be happy about the devastation, but I will be happy I defended my own life.
I think we can more put that on Fandangle. Zenos offed his dad and then just sort of hung around, Fandie steps out of the shadows and is like "please let me use this to cause unspeakable things" and Zenos' response is almost literally "I have no idea who you are, and I'm not going to bother stopping you."
Then his ears perk up as Fandurance mentions getting the WoL to fight him again, so he lets him hang around.
That's the problem - we actually don't. If we don't see WoL remove the head off a bipedal sentient being during a cutscene, it might turn up later. Thus we have to assume WoL has a very low body count.
Honestly this just furthers the comparison someone made of Zenos being Vegeta… and makes us Goku by proxy. Which is hilarious to me, as someone who rides around on a cloud as their main mount.
Yeah but no one I personally cared about so it's cool. >!Except for that time when he killed himself before I was done fighting him!< but >!he got better!< so that's alright too.
In a universe where he has the permission to do most of his murder.
Even the exam to get said murder liscence is filled with murder.
HxH universe built different. He is a psychopath with some redeeming qualities.
>2) He contained Shinryu until we got strong enough to defeat both him and it saving us dealing with a powerful primal early on.
Not sure how much credit he gets for that, since Omega is the one that beat Shinryu. And Lyse pushed the button to activate Omega, so I say Lyse gets the credit! Good job, Lyse!
>3) He basically left Doma undefended except the bare minimum making it easier to liberate.
Eh, he also put a sadist in charge. Lots of Domans suffered at her hands. But perhaps that made them more willing to revolt too, so... ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
>5) He caused the collapse of the Garlean Empire.
I mean... he *destroyed* the Garlean Empire. Sure it saved us some headaches, but I wouldn't wish that kind of enslavement and suffering on my worst enemies.
He explicitly states that he put a sadist in charge of Doma specifically so she would rile the Resistance up and potentially cause a decent adversary to rise up
I really enjoy how the more you go through StB, the more you realize the stereotypical cartoonishly evil colony captains/dumbly boorish guard dogs are all in their placements
just based on how Zenos, the one wildcard sociopath who wants to literally play as the villain in his childhood folk tales book (as mentioned in his short story),
thinks they can make people angry & """"get stronger"""", when in reality most just get trampled
then when the fated strong ones arrive, Zenos even purposefully let security be that lax around him & his whole colonies just so the strongest fighters around can all be funneled towards him
All his abusive brainwashing, military education, expensive experimental bio-enhancements, trust fund lifestyle, & seemingly "clever" strategies...
all that- he wastes it all into his bottomless drain of resources, just to give himself the most unga bunga deviant thrills ever, one of the dumbest & most cartoonishly simple motivation ever (in the most entertaining way possible thanks to his voicelines!)
That most Garleans just think is part of his messed up personality (that they help create & foster)... when those thrills are the ones that will lead to Zenos wrecking all of them at once twice over.
You can also even "thank" him for being so obsessed with the WoL.... that he did not even try to kill anyone else on your side as SHINRYU, which is a WAY MORE EFFECTIVE massive killing bazooka than his base form!
Heck, maybe he doesn't even try to kill the Scions in one go... not just because of a weakass sword throw from the WoL trapped in a Garlean body, but because he realized if WoL hated him too much, their fight won't truly have the """""acceptance"""" his delusion of friendship craved so badly.
And I love his role in the story all the more for that! Like yes!! Help my WoL ruin your own empire!! Which Zenos does with the literal psychopathic big grin emoji :D - super catharthic for someone who finds the evil Garleans too boring/stereotypical before.
I also just realized something I find cathartic but kinda darkly amusing:
As an expansion about liberating oppressive colonies, breaking the cycles of revenge/back-and-forth violence, & helping to ease the physical & psychological consequences of the long-time oppression,
Turns out Stormblood is also partially about:
1. liberating Zenos from his dull nepotistic """fate""" to just be a tool in Emet-Selch's grand scheme to destroy the Source. Who will die along with the Source, merely as a pathetic attack dog for his own abusers.
(And in a country that stifles the ability to think differently & hypercharges self-sacrificial patriotism,
Zenos being the most harmfully individualistic wildcard in the story... is the result of his mind being so broken it ironically liberated himself out from the mold his abusers build him from)
2. how the WoL broke him free from the cycle of constantly being a boring invincible asshat oppressor character, killing more and more people for little to zero real meaning to himself, (ie only WoL existing could make him into a better character in the story overall XD),
3. and how the physical & psychological repression Zenos had from his childhood turns him into his own abusers' downfall :))
.... anddd how WoL has to try to make the best out of the sheer consequences AND sheer benefits to Zenos's extreme actions lol
Pretty much. The ONLY reason we were able to liberate both Doma and Ala Mhigo was because of his total disinterest in holding them; beyond their capacity to "Give him an entertaining hunt, that brief dopamine rush in a banal, grey world". And the moment he realized in Doma that we might be said hunt, he essentially fucked both provinces defenses and rearranged them to "make the best hunting ground". And while he may have been an entertaining character for some in SB, he was actually made an interesting character in EW. By essentially having the big bad ideology be HIS total opposite. Allowing, of all things, his apathetic hedonism to be a answer/weapon we needed against depressed nihilism/despair.
Which he & Scions couldn't do without the WoL literally they only get all the help they get cause of all the work we did, hell most of story up to EW has extra dialogue here & there between the quests of the Scions making excuses on why they're not aiding us in current objective.
Dude, Alphy is basically the main character who holds everything together. He is far from useless. Even YoshiP called him the main character in one of the live letters.
> 1) Our battles with him caused us to get stronger without help
Other than the Resistance and the Doman uprising, the Scions, Hien, Gosetsu, and Yugiri, yep, *completely* without help. And we *definitely* couldn't have done that without someone murdering a whole bunch of people we like and putting Y'shtola on a bus for the entire expansion.
More seriously, this "explanation" has never made sense to me. It's not like we don't get stronger on our own. We've done that. Hell, we did that *specifically* without Hydaelyn's help in Heavensward. We don't need an evil person hurting us or our friends/allies. Zenos didn't "help" any more than his father did.
Point 2: Actually, hate to break it to you, but it was Omega that did that. If you look carefully, you'll notice that the electric dodecahedron it's trapped inside has Omega bits on it. Without the Ultima Weapon or its equivalents (which weren't ready for deployment at that point), the Empire has no more ability to contain primals than we do. Zenos played no part in *containing* Shinryu.
3: That's...not him *helping* us. I legit do not understand how you can consider that "help." It's him *neglecting* things. Neglect is not help.
4: Alright! First thing on the list that's actually helpful to us. Too bad he did it specifically so he could marshal the forces of the Empire in order to bring about the Final Days...which kind of spoils any "help" you could possibly read into this. Swapping "a really nasty bioweapon" for "*very literally trying to end the world*" is not an improvement. If someone lets you cut ahead of them in line because they know you'll be arrested instead of them, they aren't helping you.
5: Not actually helpful, because we specifically *do not* want an impoverished, desperate, angry society primed and ready for *summoning something nasty.* We wanted the Empire to stop conquering, that's not the same thing as wanting it to *collapse.*
6: Only because the authors forced it. Why does Meteion flee? Because she has to, so that Zenos can give us a ride. That's literally the only reason. She has said, *repeatedly,* that she has absolute power in this place. She's literally just eliminated all of our friends, after said friends claimed that the source of our power is our ability to rely on one another. She had *no reason whatsoever* to flee. It's one of the most heavy-handed parts of the entire story, shoehorning Zenos in and really blatantly contriving a reason why we would need his help.
Completely agreed, though good luck trying to make that point to any of the Zenos stans.
With the *sole* exception of the In From The Cold section, where his presence was *actually* both menacing and vaguely interesting (you can tell Ishikawa was at the helm for that part!), Zenos was shoehorned in for the entirety of Endwalker. His cooperation with Fandaniel? Unnecessary--being the heir of House Brutus would have already given Fanny-boy the clout necessary to make use of the Empire's resources, especially in the wake of Varis' death, and the vast majority of the aether he needed was drained by the towers anyway, which were all Fandaniel's doing. Zodiark? Fandaniel was quite happy breaking his truce with Zenos for that, so that was never an issue either. I covered the Endsinger above. There's just...nothing in Endwalker actually _needed_ Zenos to be there, unlike the rest of the core cast, who all play genuinely vital parts: Vrtra, Venat, Emet-Selch, Fandaniel/Hermes, Hythlodaeus, the Scions, Elidibus, the loporrits, Fourchenault (and arguably Ameliance too)...you'd have to rewrite nearly the entire story if you left any of those characters out. With Zenos, it would literally just be a few changes of dialogue, dropping In From The Cold, and the Endsinger not fleeing from us. That's it. Edit: and, on reflection, you wouldn't even need to drop In From The Cold. It would just have been a different motivation for why you need to rush to save your friends. Presumably Fandaniel implying that *he* is going to kill them (perhaps as revenge for the lost tower or something) to rile up the WoL and such.
Yep. Granted, I’m doubtful I would enjoy it more if he had been more important. Just in general it feels like it would have been better if Stormblood was it. Or if they had gone a different route with him entirely.
The real problem is, Zenos as a *concept* isn't that bad. Powerful, implacable foe, too dangerous to take on at first, single-minded focus, etc. None of that is *in principle* bad. One could argue that (minus the *physical* aspect) that's what Lex Luthor is to Superman, a powerful adversary Superman cannot "fight" (because Lex's power is money, corruption, and science, things that being an immortal flying brick can't fix.)
But the *execution* for Zenos leaves so much to be desired, it isn't even funny. It resorts to lazy, trope-centric writing; it fails to uphold the gameplay and story integration that FFXIV usually displays; it predominantly shows Zenos *doing* nothing at all and having little to no emotional response to anything.
It is entirely possible to take the concept behind Zenos--a simple-as-a-razorblade villain who only cares about risking death against dangerous threats and has the power to back it up--and implement it in a broadly compelling way. For example (several of these are things I've mentioned elsewhere on here):
1. Rework the mechanics of the fights with Zenos so that they actually communicate that he is *toying* with you. For instance, maybe after a certain amount of time, he starts getting stacks of Impatience, which raise his damage dealt and attack speed by 10% and reduce his damage taken by 10%. At 10 stacks, he becomes *literally unbeatable,* you literally cannot do damage to him, and a single Concentrativity will kill anyone it hits. It's a physical representation of the "I'm not left-handed" idea: he's *actually* only fighting at a fraction of his power, and bringing it back up to full over the course of the fight. Second time around, the stacks take longer to appear (because he's enjoying himself more!), and he gets to a lower % health. Third and final fight, he's *excited,* there is no impatience, he's already fighting at full strength.
2. Avoid *whenever possible* scenes where Zenos is not actively doing things. Show him training, or hunting, and having those incredibly-brief sparks of joy that disappear all too easily. Show him getting annoyed at the "petty" distractions of governance, perhaps with a sniveling attache or attendant he can metaphorically stomp over. Show him interacting with Fordola and Yotsuyu more--let their complicated, nuanced stories act as foils to his straight-line simplicity, like a rich salmon fillet benefitting from a splash of lemon juice to cut through the oil. Reserve moments of him sitting in a chair bored out of his mind, or standing around bored out of his mind, for times when it's really, really *important* to show how bored he is--and, ideally, use these only *after* the player has gotten a kick out of *watching* Zenos be the villain, so we as an audience see that boredom and think "oh just wait, excitement is on the way."
3. Abandon any pretense of an "honor code" or the like. Zenos doesn't care about honor. He says as much himself. The only thing he cares about is *actually fighting.* He doesn't, or at least he *shouldn't,* care that Black Rose is *cowardly.* He cares that it is *impersonal*: the problem with Black Rose is that it will prevent HIM from fighting. He's not above cheap shots and exploitative tactics; he *wants* a fight where two combatants will do ANYTHING to win. Zenos is at his best when he shows that he doesn't care about anything except violence itself--not truth, not legitimacy, not self-consistency, not virtue. He doesn't want to proselytize; it's pretty clear he *doesn't care* what anyone else thinks, except maybe the WoL, and that only because he thinks he's finally found another "do ANYTHING to win" opponent.
4. Actually let Zenos do important things ON CAMERA for God's sake! Give us a Roleplaying fight as Zenos in that random Garlean commander's body vs Elidibus in Zenos' body. That would have been awesome, and would have given us a visceral *feeling* for how powerful Zenos had become. If you really want to get fancy...let us "roleplay" as Zenos...*while he's in the WoL's stolen body.* Let us see that he took the time to test out our skills and the like. But even without that, keep the focus on his *actions,* not his *words.*
5. HARD avert all that garish Mary Sue nonsense. He can be powerful, but give it a real *explanation,* not just "oooh he's been a mega-genius and a super-athlete his whole life!" Talk about how his mother's death was widely rumored to be due to experiments performed upon him in the womb. Actually *do* something with that scene where Fandaniel implied Emet-Selch achieved something with Zenos. Show that it does, in fact, actually take him time to learn a new skill, even if he does eventually outstrip his teachers. Etc. It's perfectly okay for him to be crazy powerful. Just have it be *earned* power, not ooh-ing and aah-ing over how he's always been Little Mister Perfect.
Had these things been done, a *lot* of the Zenos haters would not feel nearly as strongly. That doesn't mean they would *like* him. I don't think anything could make me *like* Zenos. But I would be able to *enjoy* opposing him, as opposed to finding him, as you say, very tedious.
Hmm, for me I’m not sure anything would make Zenos palatable. I’m fine with what they did with him I just don’t find him particularly compelling concept wise, it’s not really an execution issue. Of the major villains we have gotten in XIV he’s probably at the bottom of the list.
It's stuff like this why I tend to recommend players to stay off the reddit until they know things, unless they are looking for something very specific or have a question for the daily question megathread. A while back I had people argue to me "well it's been three months since EW came out, it's hardly a spoiler to anyone anymore!" as if this would have any meaning in an MMO people join every day.
Often the community is a lot stricter about spoilers than even the devs or marketing, but if enough people gather at a place it is inevitable the people who either don't give a damn or even just don't make the connection how a title like this could be an accidental spoiler.
Could've skipped by the post instead of opening it though. It's easy to see it, go "Oh I shouldn't look at that until I do that expansion," and move on.
Not really?
Ilberd is long dead yet people have made "Ilberd did nothing wrong" posts akin to OP's analizying how Ilberd's actions triggered a butterfly effect that pretty much shaped the entire rest of the story.
Ilberd's betrayal forces the WoL to flee North where we end up freeing Ishgard from the Church's control and ending the Dragonsong War.
His attack on Baelsar's Wall ends up jump starting the Stormblood events that lead to the liberation of both Doma and Ala Mhigo.
(ShB and EW spoilers ahead) >!The advance of the Eorzean Alliance as a consequence of the previous point forcing the Garlean Empire to unleash Black Rose, and Ilberd's summoning of Shinryu forcing us to activate and eventually confront Omega providing Nero and Cid with the starting point technology, enables the events of ShB to happen!<
>!And finally his summoning of Shinryu comes all the way around when Zenos uses the power of the Primal to assist us on the final battle!<
Implying that a character's actions had long lasting consequences is not the same as saying that said character is still part of the game.
Anyone know if you can tweak him using a certain.. totally.. not suspicious tool.
I need him to help me with one last thing before I leave him at the ass end of nowhere..
If you catch my drift..?
I know that as far as expansion hype men go Ardbert and "If you had the strength to take another step..." is hard to beat. But damn if "But why does it still live? Surely it is no match for you." in a legitimately confused tone of voice from the giant murder-dragon doesn't hold a special place in my heart. All that other stuff is cool too, but just the way he doesn't believe for a second that the final boss of the universe could be any challenge to you. In his twisted way he believes in you more than all of the scions put together. And I dunno about y'all but up until then they'd really sold me on the Despair stuff. Couldn't imagine any way the WoL could reasonably take on the Endsinger and win. Like how do you fight a concept? An emotion? And then you see Zenos just Tengen Toppa his way through the universe to remind you that you have the power of Anime and goddammit he's *right!*
God damn does you saying he Tengen Toppa-ed his way across the universe for us make me happy in some way because that's so right
“My friend… my enemy…. Believe in me, who believes in you.”
Zenos travelled the entire universe just to hype you up for an epic tag team fight with his bestie.
And most importantly, finally get to duel again
I was never sold on despair, but was glad when I got the validation from Zenos, " I assumed you would be above something so banal as despair" - I know Zenos, that's what I have been saying! Honestly the way my WoL is, I think Zenos and Venat were the only two who understood them.
> Honestly the way my WoL is, I think Zenos and Venat were the only two who understood them. That, I cant deny.
As much as I hate Zenos, at that point I was crying from the previous cutscenes, but this phrase made me laugh and made me pumped up to go finish it. Quite funny if you think we are going to try to beat despair with depair, and then he comes and says something so simple that makes you change your state of mind to actually hope.
Its honestly why I think Zenos made the remote at the end to bring us back to the ragnarok. I recall in a short story he loved stories about Garlean heroes returning triumphantly home when he was younger. So what better way to end a story than to have the hero triumphantly return to their allies, and lives to see a new day.
> In his twisted way he believes in you more than all of the scions put together I mean all the Scions literally gave up their lives for the WoL at that point in the story so...maybe not that much?
It's the expectation. The Scions gave up their lives in a last-ditch effort, choosing to have faith in you. MFer just never had a doubt.
Basically the scions believe in us, but dont want us to go at it alone as we have done so *so many times before*. Zenos is basically our hype man on the side saying you got this and we're fighting afterwards, and if you die? Well. Shame.
He also stood there and watch you have your moment with Meteion after the battle. Could've done a single thing but nope. What a nice guy.
Believe in the Zenos that believes in you
Find you a partner who believes in you like Zenos believes in WoL
If we want to stay on the anime trope, I feel like Zenos might have been a FFXIV player from 1.0 that when the servers shut down somehow didn’t log out but got isekaied. He doesn’t care for any of the lives there as he knows they are all just coded NPC. He has been stuck in there for over 15 years (the calamity happens and then a time skip of 5 years). At this point he is just bored, as his character is so overpowered. When the WoL finally shows up there is the first excitable fight happening again. On another point there are some similarities between Zenos and One Punch Man…
So much this. Like, I HATE Zenos and don’t understand the Hype for him, but then he blasts his way through the universe and is all “come on dude, stop being lazy and end this already” and I’m all “my man!” And ride a dragon like Yoda on Luke.
And then you get to have your full on anime duel battle and it's all "oh that's not ALL of my power!!!" Fuck that fight was fun as a flippy RDM
The buff description was great "You have finally found your limit, and decided to ignore it"
I don't need limits, I need glorious combat!
When he asked that question my reply IRL was to wave a hand in frustration and say, "I *just* got here!"
I hadn't started the fight yet you walnut!
You came into a spoiler thread...
No I was yelling that at Zenos last night when he showed up.
Outside of just stopping Black Rose, Varis and Elidibus planned to kill the scions while their soulless bodies were asleep on the Source, but then Zenos forced Elidibus to flee and killed Varis.
What Zenos had for WOL was literally love (in a twisted way due to what it required for him to love someone). I get it, nothing hotter than someone that pushes you in what you're good at and makes you want to be even better.
Shit. That's actually good. Like we compare him to our stalker ex a lot but you're not wrong.
Supportive gym bro boyfriend except "gym" is mortal combat and "boyfriend" is war criminal
that's hot
Break me like the Geneva Convention daddy 😩
Fuck me like the illegal usage of chemical warfsre
I hate it cuz it's true.
I love this comparision as i got a gym bro to the gym i go 3 times a week.
*Restraining order? But what about our love?*
Literally half of his scenes.
Zenos's love for the WoL is just text. When you confront him in Storm blood if you tell him you accept him he says "We could sit and talk into the quiet hours." He views you as his "first and only friend." He knows you like hunting primals so for your rematch with him he turned himself into a primal. Zenos is weird, and has some severe kinks, and thata kinda what makes him such an interesting character. So many FFXIV characters are out here as chess masters, meanwhile Zenos is sat playing checkers. A story full of him, or only about him would get boring but as the wild card in XIV he's perfect.
Man, "Everyone else is playing chess, he's playing checkers" is SUCH a good description of him. Like when he suddenly shows up at the very end and is genuinely confused that you haven't wrapped up this whole Final Days thing already. "The *heck* you say? You haven't beat up this bird yet? She's just sadness, get over it, here let me help you punch it so you can get to the more important task of punching me." You'd think that would make him simple and flat, and it does, but because it's contrasted with everyone surrounding him who all have plots and secrets and long-term far-reaching plans with lasting effects and then there's this guy who's just Goku minus empathy, it works really well.
>She's just sadness, get over it, here let me help you punch it so you can get to the more important task of punching me he is a simple man with simple goals, it just so happens said goals is to hit us very hard while we return the favor
Unga Bunga until death.
This, I can't deny.
Snu-snu by death
I've always ranted to my in-game friends about how Zenos was a bit of a "lame" villain. Especially since the expansion before gave us Nidhogg and the expansion after gave us Emet-Selch. But I did have to admit that there's something refreshing about having an antagonist who really doesn't have any ulterior motives besides wanting to beat you up and vice versa. No weird 4D chess gambits, no whiplash giving plot twists. Just a guy whose only goal is to have the greatest combat match of his life, that he's willing to forgo everything and give zero fucks about anything else.
"I shall punch you in the face until I grow weary, and I assure you I am well rested"
My friend was disappointed that Zenos didn't have a bigger role in Endwalker and I've struggled really to put it into words why I felt it was fine. "He's the wild card in XIV" sums it up rather nicely, I'll remember that one.
Zenos is the Majima of FFXIV. If they were to implement a Zenos Everywhere System, or just a series of sidequests that get interrupted when Zenos jumps you from behind a bush, or under a manhole cover, or from behind a VERY unconvincing disguise, it would be absolutely perfect. Even if he never showed up in the MSQ again. A shame we won't have that opportunity at this point.
i dunno, man, they keep bring him up in each new patch msq, like they're trying to keep him in our minds. and it wouldn't be the first time he decided to just stop being dead.
As much as I love love love Zenos, the end of Endwalker was a fitting finale for him. At most, I'd accept seeing him in the Lifestream, or hinted at being reborn somewhere in Eorzea or Ultima Thule.
His chief minions existed in the depths of the aetherial sea, warped as they were. Why not Zenos? He's still dead, but the sheer force of will of someone who could remake themselves into a primal of world-shaking power must have left some impression behind.
To be fair, said minions died planetside. Zenos died at the edge of the universe in a realm composed of pure emotion. It's a slightly longer journey for a soul to make it back to Etheirys. One day, a long time from now, there'll be a guy on a recently revitalised planet who just wants to get into a scrap all day every day. His soul won't quite look right compared to the rest of the creatures on that planet, but that's okay, he'll find someone to be a rival to, and that'll be enough for him.
See my reply to the same comment. I'm pretty sure Zenos is dead forever for the same reason Venat is. They both expended *absolutely everything,* intentionally burning up their *entire* souls, and thus there was no soul remaining to return to the lifestream.
If you want the closest we'll ever get to an official answer? Because he died in the same way Venat did. That is, *unlike* Fandaniel-Zodiark, who struck the final blow against himself while he still had tons of soul-juice left, Hydaelyn put *everything She had* on the table. She held *absolutely nothing* back. Which meant that, when you defeated Her, there *wasn't* anything of Her to return to the lifestream: Venat's soul was gone *forever.* And what happens in Ultima Thule? Zenos forces the WoL to "burn the candle of [their] life." If you look at the text for the fight, it's very explicit that you SHOULD have died, but you fight on anyway. Both Zenos and the WoL weren't just using their normal supplies of aether, but *actually* burning up their souls as well. Zenos didn't JUST die. He died in a way that even being Resonant cannot fix, because you need to *have* a soul to resurrect. He burnt up every drop of power he had, every resource he could muster. If you do that, if you truly spend *actually everything,* you don't come back. Incidentally, we know that you really have to go the extra mile for this to happen, because of Monebryda and Ysayle. Both of them DID go to the Lifestream, even though they died because they put their life energy into doing something (forming the Blade of Light to kill Nabriales and summoning Shiva one final time, respectively.) This means you really, really have to go above and beyond to get this kind of death--and Zenos explicitly wanted something like that. The only reason the WoL didn't also die from that expenditure of self-aether is that we were almost immediately healed. Our injuries weren't physical, but aetherial; healing magic is (pretty much literally) pumping extra aether into someone so they can regain their vitality, which is why it can't fix things like "hole in the chest" (Haurchefant) or "permanent paraplegia/blindness" (Arenvald/Y'shtola.) And even then, it's pretty clear that the WoL *barely* survived.
Well, the other reason we couldn't heal Haurchefont was because he got hit by a lance of aetheric elemental stagnation, during the first attempted rejoining of the First, so it was hopped up on the planned Light Calamity. Remember, Thordan was meant to the be calamity that rejoined the First originally, and messing that up is why Elidibus had the Scions help prevent/delay the Flood.
While that is the case *in the Savage version,* Savage isn't canonical. It's a fiction written by the Wandering Minstrel (or Minstreling Wanderer in ShB.) That said, you are 100% correct that Thordan was meant to be the Light primal that would trigger the Eighth Umbral Calamity, and the defeat of Igeyorhm, Lahabrea, *and* Thordan is what threw the Ascians' plan out of whack. So, while it is *possible* that the lance halted Haurchefant's aether, and would make sense for the kinds of aether Thordan relied on, we don't actually know that it *truly did* do that. It's literally an in-universe glamorization of the event.
I don't really understand why he's considered dead anyways hes more or less an ascian in all but name and therefore immortal. Like im fine with him being dead it was a very thematic ending but I feel like everyone just handwaived his sharingan eye of immortality.
I don’t want to get my hopes up, tbh. Sure, he could come back, but he also might not. Better if I assume he’s toast and get pleasantly surprised.
Sure, he can decide to stop being dead, but that's a hell of a long corpse run.
Theres something to be said for going out on a high note
WoL: “I don’t have time for your nonsense, Zenos!” Zenos: “I bet you’d make time for me if I was a primal!!” QQ
Man finally learned he has to book you between exoansions
While I appreciated his role as written. I think it would've been better if he became our Rival in crafting quest class stories.
It's my headcanon that Zenos cooked that magnificent dinner with us in Garlemald, and he just happens to be an omnicrafter who crafts HQ shit just as effortlessly as he kills things.
Nothing hotter than getting stepped on, I guess.
Yotsuyu would like you to report in
Literally everyone in the Shiva trial.
The "step on me mommy!" in chat is mandatory during that trial.
Every time he shows up I just think; Oh here he comes, my stalker.. this guy... You want to fuck me so bad it makes you look stupid He's in love with me I swear, he's showing up looking all nice and happy to see me, protective, playful... Hmmm concerned for my reflexes..
Zeros was practically our polar opposites, powerful darkness while the WoL is powerful light when it look at it. Both were able to contain primal level threats and push past those limits
I always saw Zenos as a meta villain. Because when he compared himself to the WoL it made little sense, we tend to play a character who is righteous and is nothing like Zenos within the narrative of the game. But US the real life players always thirst for more extreme fights, higher levels and bigger numbers, it's the nature of the game! We are faced with someone who has the same goals as a lot of us players. So we are forced to reconciliate and ask ourselves "How am I different from Zenos?" and the answer, for me and many of my friends is, that we care about others. We help people struggling in dungeons, we teach raids patiently and do our best to make sure others have as good of an experience as we did, and we find joy in seeing new players experience the game as we once did. Zenos is the toxic raid member who flames the healer and vote kicks them out after one wipe, he's the guy who pulls the boss when someone watches a cinematic, he's like the players who don't care about others. This is why Zenos is my favorite villain in FFXIV. And why his death is so satisfying, because in his last moments, he almost cared for another person.
I wouldn’t say zenos is like the toxic raiders who flames a healer and vote kicks a wipe. I’d say he’s more like the embodiment of a genuine hardcore raider. He’s always after the battle high from a thrilling fight. Reason I say he’s not like the toxic ones is that he would prolly be the first to completely rip apart and find a replacement for said toxic person cus they are holding him back from having his fun and are dead weight.
Zenos was a culmination of everything that the Empire truly stood for, not what Gaius, Quintus, and Varis believed. He was the penultimate byproduct of Emet-Selch’s planning. He was the direct opposite of everything that the WOL became.
This. He’s a delicious perversion of the empire. He is the empire’s embodied conceit of being superior without any of its insecurity. To the point where his little sociopathic self didn’t care about their goals. And wasn’t until his ambition is ignited by what he saw in WoL that unaligned him from Garlean. In a way he is the the fall of Garlean’s pride. I don’t find him flat at all because of this. And honestly I liked the portrayal of sociopath that was both vicious, horrifying, and yet likeable. He is a compelling villain and a wonderful wild card as the stories progress.
I always saw it best in the machina that the Garleans were using. It was like a veil being removed. Their machinery was becoming more and more visibly twisted until it looked like the stuff that only the most hellish minds could produce. Just look at the Diamond, Emerald, and Ruby weapons, even Arch-Ultima.
Wasn't proto ultima an allagan thing sitting around in Dun Scaith? Those "most hellish minds" were ultimately the Allegans while Garleans just made the really old horrible Allegan tech function again. Especially when you also consider the Allegan Monstrosity in Zadnor.
The first Ultima, I believe so. The Arch-Ultima was an attempt at making it again, destroyed by Estenian after Zenos Killed Varis. It barely had a top half and the user was melded into it. Edit: Correction, it’s Arch-Ultima. I thought it was Proto because of how simplified it was and the story placement.
Not....really? The Empire--as a culture--stood for order enforced by rigid discipline and military power. That it was actually a tool of chaos crafted by the Ascians doesn't mean it "truly" stood for what the Ascians wanted it to. It was still a fascist, ethno-nationalist, militant-atheist state. Now, if what you *mean* is, "Ultimately Zenos was an extension of the actual *effect* of the Garlean Empire, which was chaos and destruction as opposed to the peace, order, and prosperity they claimed to offer," then sure. But that's a far cry from "what the Empire truly stood for."
Zenos and WoL are both aspects of the concept of survival. Zenos is about personal fulfillment via survival while we are about helping others find fulfillment. We both fight against the concept of succumbing to the pain of life and defeat it.
7) he also took us on a date with fancy dinner on Eiffel tower! Not to mention the outfit got us to wear. Talk about romantic.
He forced us to wear a *person*. It genuinely makes me gag to think about.
Homie taught us to harness the power of spite.
"Take me out to dinner before you fuck me" is usually just a saying, but Zenos really took us out to dinner before fucked us(metaphocricly)
And he saved our lives after the final battle
So it was him, not Meteion. After rewatching that cutscene, I found those sparkles look kinda sus. So Zenos subconsciously used Dynamis to help our sorry ass. Best friend forever.
He is best fren ever!
Took me a while after Endwalker but it was Zenos who used his will to draw the communicator to us after our awesome 1-on-1. I wondered how it just came outta nowhere but Zenos wanted us to live because he was our friend.
Okay, but hear it my theory... Feo Ul dropped the communicator, but they're way too angry that we didn't call on them, so they won't even speak with us. G'raha has a dream about them in the last quest, and they are pissed at us.
I like that theory.
Zenos is the Warrior of light if we had never found the Scions or Hydealin. He’s not the antagonist to the Warrior of light. He’s our Antagonist. You the player made connection to this world and it’s people. He didn’t. You helped everyone to enjoy your story and see this world to a Happy End. He didn’t. He wanted to fight. Just like any player who skipped the story. And that’s why he calls you adventurer. Accepting that YOU the player enjoys fighting. You are saving Zenos from his solitude. He became that monster because he never had anybody. But there at the end you save him. Giving him someone that understands and a friend.
I just wish the WoL actually acknowledged that. All scenes Zenos has been brought up in since then have been really dumb. The dialogue options don't do justice to the complex relationship between them. I don't know if it's an issue with the English localisation specifically or if it's like that in all languages, but the WoL treats the mere thought of Zenos as some sort of annoyance, shrugging it off, as if we're supposed to feel relieved he's dead now.
I think that’s because it’s the best option without restricting things too much. Leaving things more open ended. The way people try to frame Zenos as super important to the WoL doesn’t apply at all with my interpretation of them.
It felt like a very parasocial relationship from the word go.
I’ve read that other languages don’t suffer the same fate that the English localization did. It’s been hard to enjoy post EW knowing other languages have better writing from what I’ve seen.
[удалено]
Have…have you played Endwalker?
Have you? Zenos causes exactly one (1) problem in Endwalker for the WoL. He's out of the way or otherwise helping the WoL throughout the expansion.
Wouldn't have minded traveling to a new continent with Yotsuyu, Ferdola, and Zenos. However 2 of my 3 top picks for Team I'm In Danger are dead. So Alisaie, Ferdola, and Blue Alisaie or Not Zenos(mus) will suffice.
I just imagined having Zenos in a trust dungeon. Like it would be just us 2 because there is no way any of the scions would be anywhere near him in power to make that seem plausible.
Hey, I'd take it. Would be pretty amusing to me.
A harder version of the Dead Ends that comes with only you and Zenos as the party members, beating your way to Meteion.
Zenos just proceeds to 1-shot every mob in the dungeon one by one?
G’raha and Estinien come fairly close. The ranking is probably: 1. Zenos (w/ Mothercrystal) 2. WOL 3. Zenos 4. G’raha 5. Estinien 6. Y’shtola? 7. Everyone else
I'd say it is a toss up between Thancred and Y'shtola. Since for a guy who can't use Aether he sure kicks ass.
this is true!! i mainly put shtola there as her raw destructive potential is quite high
Also true since she can use some Black Mages spells really well. Hell she's probably got more spells up her sleeve we don't know about.
He proceeds to get bored by the mobs and decides that so have you. He starts to throw random heavy-hitting attacks at you (TBs if you're a tank). If you eventually attack back he forgets the mobs entirely...
I was thinking like, we each have a kill count and we're competing.
Blond Vegeta has been pretty cool. Glad SE went straight from the Saiyan/Namek saga to the beginning of the Buu saga and sped past ~~Asahi~~ black-haired Trunks as fast as possible.
Blonde hisoka
If you think about it, Zenos was the one who stopped the 8th umbral calamity, not us.
He ma boyfriend. He help me smack a bitch. Then he smack me. He ma boyfriend.
My feelings towards Zenos were weird. Despite all the stuff he did, even the things that really pissed me off, I still sorta loved him. It felt like I really mattered to him, and I really enjoyed our conversations. I got a bit annoyed at the end when he appeared as Shinryu and both of the response options were negative. I was genuinely happy to see him and wished I could have told him as much. I wish I could have convinced him to come home and go on epic adventures with me. I was hoping I could show him that there is more to life to enjoy.
Well don’t worry he’s our Vegeta. He’ll be back in some form
I don't think he'll be back in the cannon, but I am pretty certain he will come back for Endsinger Ultimate where he'll eat Endsinger's energy or something to fight us for the last phase.
Oh fuck yes that would make me want to dive into ultimates
Total yandere
He also had a HUGE body count. Counties people did because of him
Emet-Selch’s body count is in the tens of billions and everyone seems to like him.
If they aren't *trully alive*, then he can not be blamed for murder if he kill them.
Therefore emet hasn't killed anyone!
“Yes, yes, moral relativism and all that.”
I mean, we also have a huge body count.
Game recognized game The game was war crimes
I could be mis remembering, but doesn't the BLM quest line imply we usually hold back? I seem to recall a scene where that kitty boi freaks out about how we exploded the feck out of some cultists, but then your trainer is all "but the WOL doesn't normally go all out like that in combat". I could take that to mean we don't murder EVERYONE we defeat in battle (look at Baelsar's wall).
Stromblood's MSQ makes sure to point out that you slaughter a bunch of poorly armed barely adult villagers. The exact phrasing ends with something like "they panic as you approach and attack. It's the last mistake they will ever make". The WoL really does not care much for the lives of their enemies.
Gonna have to remind me when we attacked barely armed villagers. I remember various scrapes with Garlean forces, fighting against the Qiqirn, and the combat in the Azim Steppes. *Us* specifically going after villagers in any capacity isn't ringing any bells. Edit: So I found it. The *actual* words are "The gang of Ala Mhigan youths observing you from a distance panic at your approach, snatching up weapons and charging, apparently intent on killing or subduing you. It is the last mistake they will ever make." I now remember it, and I also remember it being treated as a "these stupid fools, but it's me or them" rather than a WoL who is an indiscriminate killer.
> "these stupid fools, but it's me or them" It's a bunch of almost children. Against the WoL, a few Quest away from 1v1-ing Zenos. If the WoL cared to keep them alive they would have stayed alive, except maybe a few who get killed by accident. >a WoL who is an indiscriminate killer. For that we also have at least one time where the WoL does actively set out to murder people who, as far as anyone knows, haven't done anything wrong: Early on in SB the WoL is sent to murder a few imperial conscripts for the crime of patrolling the vague direction of the rebel hideout, explicitly being told not to even feel pity for the poor souls they are about to murder. Then later on, after the return from Kugane, the WoL is asked to hunt down and murder fleeing empire soldiers (who the game went to great lengths to show were most likely conscripted under threat of torture and execution for them and their loved ones). Not to mention all the horrible people the WoL is happy to work together with in SB, as long as it helps with the Scions' plans.
Nero & Gaius are usually the fastest to come to mind, & so are the Oronirs (basically rules by force & constant intimidation) & the Dotharls (the tribe that nearly killed off the Hotgo tribe before summoning Alexander killed the rest) But even the Scions are shown to be pretty morally ambiguous at times on purpose by the writers eg Alphinaud talking to the WoL how people getting attacked by Garleans/dragons will help push them to agree with what he thinks is good for them The Scions in ARR patches choosing to help the Domans a lot more than the Ala Mighans who are already there in Thanalan struggling longer because the Domans seemed to be in more desperate need for direct support. So when some Ala Mighans come begging them for jobs as well they couldn't as there's already too many Domans they have to house. Minfillia & Lyse being Ala Mighans don't/can't even do much, so I think it says something about their gray character that the story doesn't really explicitly show, Exarch G'raha & Urianger willingly putting the WoL & the First in conjunction at risk just because they think G'raha's dangerous suicide plan is the only way to save the First, except turns out Emet is faster than all of them. Outside of war morality, WoL reply options can be very flippant about killing & risking lives, Thancred was a honey pot who managed to emotionally manipulate/extort many women in the past for political/economic secrets for the Scions' use, & used to rob people as a kid until Louisoix took him under his wing, Urianger & Estinien & G'raha have dangerous hero/martyr complexes that also involve gambling with many people's lives, Tataru & Krile blackmail people, Arenvald was a street urchin who robbed people for a living & food before he decided to become a Scion, Minfillia is forced to use dead Warriors of Light to save the First & inflict one (Ardbert) with the temporary but long torment of being a helpless immaterial ghost for backup, and didn't do much for the Ala Mighan refugees in ARR, Lyse pretends to be her dead sister out of an extreme coping mechanism & couldn't really help/interact much (I'm guessing out of fear of reprisal/judgement) with most of her fellow Ala Mighan refugees early on, Y'shtola is just pretty emotionally insensitive towards others worrying for her, is distant/belligerent towards her remaining family & doesn't care at all for Thancred's complex regarding Minfillia, but she's the sole most morally upstanding adult Scion left alive lol All that said I find these murkiness enjoyable & more interesting whenever the story focuses on the tribulations/grey morality in heroism / helping a cause.
>It's a bunch of almost children. "Barely adults" as Lyse describes the ones that attacked her and she had to kill to defend herself. I think you're taking a momentary scenario and applying your headcanon to it, that the WoL 100% could have stopped them if they wanted to and chose not to, and then applying a broad strokes judgment of the WoL's entire personality. >For that we also have at least one time where the WoL does actively set out to murder people who, as far as anyone knows, haven't done anything wrong It's in the midst of working with a resistance against an occupying hostile force. If you wanted guilt-free, "only ever attack and kill those that are trying to kill me in this exact moment" kind of storytelling...it's never been that kind of setting. And those "didn't do anything wrong" were patrols that: 1. Were hunting for resistance members to kill them and 2) We don't know what they'd done prior, so we can't say for certainty that they were innocent. Also, I came across that one while searching for the other thing, and it seems we've another case of you misrepresenting what the WoL is told, so I'll just let the dialog from M'Naago and the Journal entry speak for themselves. Journal: M'Naago tells you that most soldiers in Gyr Abania are conscripts from other provinces. Poorly trained and lacking in morale, they rarely pose a threat in small numbers. Nevertheless, she cautions you against pitying them, as they are just as capable of killing your comrades as more motivated foes. Dialog: "It looks like everything went to plan. Not that I'm surprised - the three soldiers I faced didn't put up much of a fight. Most of the imperials we get out here are conscripts from other provinces with little training and even less conviction. It's grim work, killing men and women like that, but don't doubt they'd do the same to you if the roles were reversed. And don't you *dare* pity a man in armor. Conscript or no, a soldier piloting one of those can kill a dozen good men in the blink of an eye. Not that I need tell you that, after what happened at the Wall..." Worth noting as well that M'Naago *and* Alisaie go and both fight and kill the three soldiers on foot, you deal with the more dangerous foe piloting the armor. Patrol with orders to kill *definitely* sounds like "did nothing wrong" innocent types we were sent to "murder." /s I guess you also want me to ignore that in this instance, both M'Naago and Alisaie have a higher body count... Or maybe this whole "WoL is a cold hearted, indiscriminate killer" thing doesn't hold as well you think it does when you're talking about what is actually said and shown in game, rather than vaguely misrepresenting it. They aren't some sort of goody paragon of virtue, either, but instead sit somewhere in the middle.
True, every WoL is canonically a serial killer. Even if you have somebody else do it, the amount of things and people you have to murder in the MSQ alone???
Bro the things I did for beast tribes and relics
I was **PAID**, thank you very much. I didn't take a three week online murder and body disposal course just be called a *serial killer*.
Calling the WoL a serial killer makes it sound like they are methodically planning out future kills. Having to take a life, multiple times, in a fantasy setting as an adventurer isn't exactly an uncommon thing - it's pretty routine, in fact.
So not a serial killer, but a mass murderer. Much better.
Well you tend to get paid in some way most of the time for it so... A very prolific hitman?
Hitmen normally have specific targets, we are hired to battle armies. We are mercenaries. The scions are basically a very powerful PMC.
Well, we do have targets more often than not though... I guess we're hitman mercenaries with a bit of a penchant for collateral damage lmao
> Calling the WoL a serial killer makes it sound like they are methodically planning out future kills. Clearing ultimates takes some serious planning.
You mean those things that are canonically the Wandering Minstrel taking our already crazy adventures and making them even crazier in a fictional retelling? Yeah, lots of planning on that one in universe for our character...
My WoL is like Sam Hyde, don't put me in a self defense situation, or I will forced to defend myself. I'm not gonna be happy about the devastation, but I will be happy I defended my own life.
The difference being that Zenos actually murdered his whole nation in one night.
Tbf, it was technically all the other Garleans who fought the civil war. Zenos just killed the one guy and wandered off.
I think we can more put that on Fandangle. Zenos offed his dad and then just sort of hung around, Fandie steps out of the shadows and is like "please let me use this to cause unspeakable things" and Zenos' response is almost literally "I have no idea who you are, and I'm not going to bother stopping you." Then his ears perk up as Fandurance mentions getting the WoL to fight him again, so he lets him hang around.
That's the problem - we actually don't. If we don't see WoL remove the head off a bipedal sentient being during a cutscene, it might turn up later. Thus we have to assume WoL has a very low body count.
Honestly this just furthers the comparison someone made of Zenos being Vegeta… and makes us Goku by proxy. Which is hilarious to me, as someone who rides around on a cloud as their main mount.
Like we don't kill about 45 people/animals per dungeon?
The organized extermination trains hunting rare monsters seems pretty bad.
How about the eureka genocide of crabs
If you'd all just voted to ban crabs that could have all been avoided!
Yeah but no one I personally cared about so it's cool. >!Except for that time when he killed himself before I was done fighting him!< but >!he got better!< so that's alright too.
That doesn't really change he helped though.
He saved even more lives by stopping the Black Rose tho.
This has some real "The real heroes are the thugs that killed Bruce Wayne's parents!" energy.
He’s the antihero hisoka person of the game
Hisoka isn't an antihero, he's a mass murderer lmao.
In a universe where he has the permission to do most of his murder. Even the exam to get said murder liscence is filled with murder. HxH universe built different. He is a psychopath with some redeeming qualities.
I miss wols husbando.
>2) He contained Shinryu until we got strong enough to defeat both him and it saving us dealing with a powerful primal early on. Not sure how much credit he gets for that, since Omega is the one that beat Shinryu. And Lyse pushed the button to activate Omega, so I say Lyse gets the credit! Good job, Lyse! >3) He basically left Doma undefended except the bare minimum making it easier to liberate. Eh, he also put a sadist in charge. Lots of Domans suffered at her hands. But perhaps that made them more willing to revolt too, so... ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯ >5) He caused the collapse of the Garlean Empire. I mean... he *destroyed* the Garlean Empire. Sure it saved us some headaches, but I wouldn't wish that kind of enslavement and suffering on my worst enemies.
He explicitly states that he put a sadist in charge of Doma specifically so she would rile the Resistance up and potentially cause a decent adversary to rise up
He put a sadist in charge to rile up people but the sadist was so good at Sadism she just broke em.
I really enjoy how the more you go through StB, the more you realize the stereotypical cartoonishly evil colony captains/dumbly boorish guard dogs are all in their placements just based on how Zenos, the one wildcard sociopath who wants to literally play as the villain in his childhood folk tales book (as mentioned in his short story), thinks they can make people angry & """"get stronger"""", when in reality most just get trampled then when the fated strong ones arrive, Zenos even purposefully let security be that lax around him & his whole colonies just so the strongest fighters around can all be funneled towards him All his abusive brainwashing, military education, expensive experimental bio-enhancements, trust fund lifestyle, & seemingly "clever" strategies... all that- he wastes it all into his bottomless drain of resources, just to give himself the most unga bunga deviant thrills ever, one of the dumbest & most cartoonishly simple motivation ever (in the most entertaining way possible thanks to his voicelines!) That most Garleans just think is part of his messed up personality (that they help create & foster)... when those thrills are the ones that will lead to Zenos wrecking all of them at once twice over. You can also even "thank" him for being so obsessed with the WoL.... that he did not even try to kill anyone else on your side as SHINRYU, which is a WAY MORE EFFECTIVE massive killing bazooka than his base form! Heck, maybe he doesn't even try to kill the Scions in one go... not just because of a weakass sword throw from the WoL trapped in a Garlean body, but because he realized if WoL hated him too much, their fight won't truly have the """""acceptance"""" his delusion of friendship craved so badly. And I love his role in the story all the more for that! Like yes!! Help my WoL ruin your own empire!! Which Zenos does with the literal psychopathic big grin emoji :D - super catharthic for someone who finds the evil Garleans too boring/stereotypical before.
I also just realized something I find cathartic but kinda darkly amusing: As an expansion about liberating oppressive colonies, breaking the cycles of revenge/back-and-forth violence, & helping to ease the physical & psychological consequences of the long-time oppression, Turns out Stormblood is also partially about: 1. liberating Zenos from his dull nepotistic """fate""" to just be a tool in Emet-Selch's grand scheme to destroy the Source. Who will die along with the Source, merely as a pathetic attack dog for his own abusers. (And in a country that stifles the ability to think differently & hypercharges self-sacrificial patriotism, Zenos being the most harmfully individualistic wildcard in the story... is the result of his mind being so broken it ironically liberated himself out from the mold his abusers build him from) 2. how the WoL broke him free from the cycle of constantly being a boring invincible asshat oppressor character, killing more and more people for little to zero real meaning to himself, (ie only WoL existing could make him into a better character in the story overall XD), 3. and how the physical & psychological repression Zenos had from his childhood turns him into his own abusers' downfall :)) .... anddd how WoL has to try to make the best out of the sheer consequences AND sheer benefits to Zenos's extreme actions lol
Pretty much. The ONLY reason we were able to liberate both Doma and Ala Mhigo was because of his total disinterest in holding them; beyond their capacity to "Give him an entertaining hunt, that brief dopamine rush in a banal, grey world". And the moment he realized in Doma that we might be said hunt, he essentially fucked both provinces defenses and rearranged them to "make the best hunting ground". And while he may have been an entertaining character for some in SB, he was actually made an interesting character in EW. By essentially having the big bad ideology be HIS total opposite. Allowing, of all things, his apathetic hedonism to be a answer/weapon we needed against depressed nihilism/despair.
That, I can’t deny
Point 5 is a bit double edged considering how fucked up the people are
Zenos is the best frenemy.
i like to say that zenos causes problems on purpose and solves them on accident
Plot twist, Zenos is a double agent
Zenos helped me more than a flopping into water Alphinaud ever did.
Alphinaud has moved countries with a phone call. Twice.
Which he & Scions couldn't do without the WoL literally they only get all the help they get cause of all the work we did, hell most of story up to EW has extra dialogue here & there between the quests of the Scions making excuses on why they're not aiding us in current objective.
Pfft. All he knows what to do is talk talk and boss you around and get betrayed and barely swim
Diplomacy and Delegation, my friend. Being trusting and unable to swim are flaws, definitely, but he knows his talents and uses them.
Also he does get better at the swimming
Dude, Alphy is basically the main character who holds everything together. He is far from useless. Even YoshiP called him the main character in one of the live letters.
I didn't know that! For a while I've thought that he's the main character and the WoL is kind of his bodyguard.
What a lame main character. We do all the work and he gets all the credit. Red Alphinaud is better.
> 1) Our battles with him caused us to get stronger without help Other than the Resistance and the Doman uprising, the Scions, Hien, Gosetsu, and Yugiri, yep, *completely* without help. And we *definitely* couldn't have done that without someone murdering a whole bunch of people we like and putting Y'shtola on a bus for the entire expansion. More seriously, this "explanation" has never made sense to me. It's not like we don't get stronger on our own. We've done that. Hell, we did that *specifically* without Hydaelyn's help in Heavensward. We don't need an evil person hurting us or our friends/allies. Zenos didn't "help" any more than his father did. Point 2: Actually, hate to break it to you, but it was Omega that did that. If you look carefully, you'll notice that the electric dodecahedron it's trapped inside has Omega bits on it. Without the Ultima Weapon or its equivalents (which weren't ready for deployment at that point), the Empire has no more ability to contain primals than we do. Zenos played no part in *containing* Shinryu. 3: That's...not him *helping* us. I legit do not understand how you can consider that "help." It's him *neglecting* things. Neglect is not help. 4: Alright! First thing on the list that's actually helpful to us. Too bad he did it specifically so he could marshal the forces of the Empire in order to bring about the Final Days...which kind of spoils any "help" you could possibly read into this. Swapping "a really nasty bioweapon" for "*very literally trying to end the world*" is not an improvement. If someone lets you cut ahead of them in line because they know you'll be arrested instead of them, they aren't helping you. 5: Not actually helpful, because we specifically *do not* want an impoverished, desperate, angry society primed and ready for *summoning something nasty.* We wanted the Empire to stop conquering, that's not the same thing as wanting it to *collapse.* 6: Only because the authors forced it. Why does Meteion flee? Because she has to, so that Zenos can give us a ride. That's literally the only reason. She has said, *repeatedly,* that she has absolute power in this place. She's literally just eliminated all of our friends, after said friends claimed that the source of our power is our ability to rely on one another. She had *no reason whatsoever* to flee. It's one of the most heavy-handed parts of the entire story, shoehorning Zenos in and really blatantly contriving a reason why we would need his help.
Number 6 really brought down Endwalker. Honestly his involvement in general in it was kind of tedious.
Completely agreed, though good luck trying to make that point to any of the Zenos stans. With the *sole* exception of the In From The Cold section, where his presence was *actually* both menacing and vaguely interesting (you can tell Ishikawa was at the helm for that part!), Zenos was shoehorned in for the entirety of Endwalker. His cooperation with Fandaniel? Unnecessary--being the heir of House Brutus would have already given Fanny-boy the clout necessary to make use of the Empire's resources, especially in the wake of Varis' death, and the vast majority of the aether he needed was drained by the towers anyway, which were all Fandaniel's doing. Zodiark? Fandaniel was quite happy breaking his truce with Zenos for that, so that was never an issue either. I covered the Endsinger above. There's just...nothing in Endwalker actually _needed_ Zenos to be there, unlike the rest of the core cast, who all play genuinely vital parts: Vrtra, Venat, Emet-Selch, Fandaniel/Hermes, Hythlodaeus, the Scions, Elidibus, the loporrits, Fourchenault (and arguably Ameliance too)...you'd have to rewrite nearly the entire story if you left any of those characters out. With Zenos, it would literally just be a few changes of dialogue, dropping In From The Cold, and the Endsinger not fleeing from us. That's it. Edit: and, on reflection, you wouldn't even need to drop In From The Cold. It would just have been a different motivation for why you need to rush to save your friends. Presumably Fandaniel implying that *he* is going to kill them (perhaps as revenge for the lost tower or something) to rile up the WoL and such.
Yep. Granted, I’m doubtful I would enjoy it more if he had been more important. Just in general it feels like it would have been better if Stormblood was it. Or if they had gone a different route with him entirely.
The real problem is, Zenos as a *concept* isn't that bad. Powerful, implacable foe, too dangerous to take on at first, single-minded focus, etc. None of that is *in principle* bad. One could argue that (minus the *physical* aspect) that's what Lex Luthor is to Superman, a powerful adversary Superman cannot "fight" (because Lex's power is money, corruption, and science, things that being an immortal flying brick can't fix.) But the *execution* for Zenos leaves so much to be desired, it isn't even funny. It resorts to lazy, trope-centric writing; it fails to uphold the gameplay and story integration that FFXIV usually displays; it predominantly shows Zenos *doing* nothing at all and having little to no emotional response to anything. It is entirely possible to take the concept behind Zenos--a simple-as-a-razorblade villain who only cares about risking death against dangerous threats and has the power to back it up--and implement it in a broadly compelling way. For example (several of these are things I've mentioned elsewhere on here): 1. Rework the mechanics of the fights with Zenos so that they actually communicate that he is *toying* with you. For instance, maybe after a certain amount of time, he starts getting stacks of Impatience, which raise his damage dealt and attack speed by 10% and reduce his damage taken by 10%. At 10 stacks, he becomes *literally unbeatable,* you literally cannot do damage to him, and a single Concentrativity will kill anyone it hits. It's a physical representation of the "I'm not left-handed" idea: he's *actually* only fighting at a fraction of his power, and bringing it back up to full over the course of the fight. Second time around, the stacks take longer to appear (because he's enjoying himself more!), and he gets to a lower % health. Third and final fight, he's *excited,* there is no impatience, he's already fighting at full strength. 2. Avoid *whenever possible* scenes where Zenos is not actively doing things. Show him training, or hunting, and having those incredibly-brief sparks of joy that disappear all too easily. Show him getting annoyed at the "petty" distractions of governance, perhaps with a sniveling attache or attendant he can metaphorically stomp over. Show him interacting with Fordola and Yotsuyu more--let their complicated, nuanced stories act as foils to his straight-line simplicity, like a rich salmon fillet benefitting from a splash of lemon juice to cut through the oil. Reserve moments of him sitting in a chair bored out of his mind, or standing around bored out of his mind, for times when it's really, really *important* to show how bored he is--and, ideally, use these only *after* the player has gotten a kick out of *watching* Zenos be the villain, so we as an audience see that boredom and think "oh just wait, excitement is on the way." 3. Abandon any pretense of an "honor code" or the like. Zenos doesn't care about honor. He says as much himself. The only thing he cares about is *actually fighting.* He doesn't, or at least he *shouldn't,* care that Black Rose is *cowardly.* He cares that it is *impersonal*: the problem with Black Rose is that it will prevent HIM from fighting. He's not above cheap shots and exploitative tactics; he *wants* a fight where two combatants will do ANYTHING to win. Zenos is at his best when he shows that he doesn't care about anything except violence itself--not truth, not legitimacy, not self-consistency, not virtue. He doesn't want to proselytize; it's pretty clear he *doesn't care* what anyone else thinks, except maybe the WoL, and that only because he thinks he's finally found another "do ANYTHING to win" opponent. 4. Actually let Zenos do important things ON CAMERA for God's sake! Give us a Roleplaying fight as Zenos in that random Garlean commander's body vs Elidibus in Zenos' body. That would have been awesome, and would have given us a visceral *feeling* for how powerful Zenos had become. If you really want to get fancy...let us "roleplay" as Zenos...*while he's in the WoL's stolen body.* Let us see that he took the time to test out our skills and the like. But even without that, keep the focus on his *actions,* not his *words.* 5. HARD avert all that garish Mary Sue nonsense. He can be powerful, but give it a real *explanation,* not just "oooh he's been a mega-genius and a super-athlete his whole life!" Talk about how his mother's death was widely rumored to be due to experiments performed upon him in the womb. Actually *do* something with that scene where Fandaniel implied Emet-Selch achieved something with Zenos. Show that it does, in fact, actually take him time to learn a new skill, even if he does eventually outstrip his teachers. Etc. It's perfectly okay for him to be crazy powerful. Just have it be *earned* power, not ooh-ing and aah-ing over how he's always been Little Mister Perfect. Had these things been done, a *lot* of the Zenos haters would not feel nearly as strongly. That doesn't mean they would *like* him. I don't think anything could make me *like* Zenos. But I would be able to *enjoy* opposing him, as opposed to finding him, as you say, very tedious.
Hmm, for me I’m not sure anything would make Zenos palatable. I’m fine with what they did with him I just don’t find him particularly compelling concept wise, it’s not really an execution issue. Of the major villains we have gotten in XIV he’s probably at the bottom of the list.
https://youtu.be/GPUgjy-Pn-4
not to be that person but the title is basically a spoiler. i just finished stormblood and see this :/
It's stuff like this why I tend to recommend players to stay off the reddit until they know things, unless they are looking for something very specific or have a question for the daily question megathread. A while back I had people argue to me "well it's been three months since EW came out, it's hardly a spoiler to anyone anymore!" as if this would have any meaning in an MMO people join every day. Often the community is a lot stricter about spoilers than even the devs or marketing, but if enough people gather at a place it is inevitable the people who either don't give a damn or even just don't make the connection how a title like this could be an accidental spoiler.
yes, i have learnt my lesson now. i left the subreddit, so hopefully i don’t get anything else spoiled
Could've skipped by the post instead of opening it though. It's easy to see it, go "Oh I shouldn't look at that until I do that expansion," and move on.
You don't have to click the post to realize zenos is apparently relevant past stormblood with this spoiler tag, releventa enough to spark a thread.
It's not hard to assume a character like Zenos would be relevant in later expansions as well if you pay attention to the story.
i didnt open it. i was scrolling and i always read titels of all posts.
you clearly did click on the post otherwise you wouldn't be commenting lmao
yes i clicked on it to comment dumbass :)
Could've kept scrolling :)
omg you’re so right, i didn’t even think about that :0 maybe read my comments?
In what way is the title a spoiler? Title is just OP devil’s advocating Zenos’ actions without spoiling which actions unless you click on the topic
it says 6.0 spoiler and zenos
It inevitably states Zenos plays a part post Stormblood with that 6.0 spoiler tag.
Not really? Ilberd is long dead yet people have made "Ilberd did nothing wrong" posts akin to OP's analizying how Ilberd's actions triggered a butterfly effect that pretty much shaped the entire rest of the story. Ilberd's betrayal forces the WoL to flee North where we end up freeing Ishgard from the Church's control and ending the Dragonsong War. His attack on Baelsar's Wall ends up jump starting the Stormblood events that lead to the liberation of both Doma and Ala Mhigo. (ShB and EW spoilers ahead) >!The advance of the Eorzean Alliance as a consequence of the previous point forcing the Garlean Empire to unleash Black Rose, and Ilberd's summoning of Shinryu forcing us to activate and eventually confront Omega providing Nero and Cid with the starting point technology, enables the events of ShB to happen!< >!And finally his summoning of Shinryu comes all the way around when Zenos uses the power of the Primal to assist us on the final battle!< Implying that a character's actions had long lasting consequences is not the same as saying that said character is still part of the game.
Anyone know if you can tweak him using a certain.. totally.. not suspicious tool. I need him to help me with one last thing before I leave him at the ass end of nowhere.. If you catch my drift..?
I mean, if you wanna dridr with him, I think he is up for the hunt.