Zenos: The Big Bad (The Feedback Thread, Part 1)

I really hope we get to smack zenos down like an afterthought. He has always been a plot device rather than a character and his disposal at the end of sb should have been the end of him as he was a rubbish boring villain even in SB. More often than not he doesn't even do anything- the black rose suddenly having more production sites out of nowhere only to to be destroyed by zenos seemed to be an excuse for him not to show up. The last few times he's appeared, he basically seemed to voice the playerbase's disdain for Fandaniel, not that he's immune from it himself what with cutting down varis before we could have our confrontation or begrudging alliance to stop the ascians.

As things stand though, Fandaniel is not going to be final boss material either even if he does reveal some curious information through that annoying voice of his. Zodiark would make for a climax boss or trial in all likelihood if he doesn't get hit by a deus ex machina

I fear all the "friend" talk really means we are friends. Friends as in the Ancient sense. Like Zenos's Ancient self was a friend and follower of Azem.

All of the cultures on the star have a form of Azem worship but those stories never have him alone. It is clear that Azem, and by extension the WOL, not only adventured and solved problems but also took allies with him.

So we could say entities like "The Twelve" are probably Azem and friends solving ancient problems. Zenos's Ancient self is most likely one of these followers/friends.

Taking it a step further, now that Zenos has "transcended" he has either come to understand what the dreams of Amourot mean or is very close to realizing it.

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Originally Posted by Recon1o6

I really hope we get to smack zenos down like an afterthought.

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Honestly yes, I can see him being used like a pokemon Team Rocket villain at this point. He would show up and we'd wipe him out effortlessly because we have been through so much more than the threat he embodies (same for Fandaniel in a sense too). It feels for me that we will spend more time fixing the consequence of their actions rather than actually defeating them both.

My prediction is Zenos absorbing Zodiark somehow, and we would have to defeat him then in a two birds-one stone thing. I hope it isn't that though, but that would be the only way to make Zenos actually relevant at this point.

I didn't like Zenos through Stormblood, but I've done a 180 and now I love him. There's a lot to that, and I may not present it here in the correct order.

One thing that was important to me to realize: Zenos in Stormblood is not bland. He's depressed. As Dark Goku, Zenos' driving force in life is to fight a greater power. When we meet him in Stormblood he hasn't met one in a long time, and has almost given up hope on ever doing so.

By the end of Stormblood, in the speech on top of the menagerie, we get the first glimpse at the Zenos "awake". And he's not an idiot, or bland! He's a poet. To him, violence is beauty, and he spends a lot of time ruminating on his relationship with violence. Ultimately it leads him to an amoral conclusion that allows sacrificing other life for the sake of the contest.

After this, Zenos' journey to come back is fun to watch, but I wouldn't say these add much to the character other than reinforcing that he's "awake" now.

I think the next important turning point for Zenos doesn't actually include him at all - it's Elidibus' dreamlike tour of our past battles. To Elidibus, we are a being that seeks violence for its own sake, that takes flimsy justifications to interfere and destroy others regardless of their goals.

To Elidibus (and some of our other enemies), our WoL is Zenos.

Now, Elidibus is wrong. It's important that he's wrong, and Alphinaud and the gang make the reasons for this clear in their confrontations with Emet Selch and Elidibus. However, there is some of Zenos in us, both in the WoL character and in us the players as we push for ever greater contests.

It's for this reason that Zenos is the perfect foil for our WoL. Our main verbs in XIV are related to violence. Zenos main ideal is violence. This juxtaposition should force us to question our own actions and work to conclude that we are, in fact, different.

From here we come to Zenos' revival. At this point, Zenos is fully awake, and simply preparing for the final conflict. In our contest with him, we will defeat him and prove that our violence has another cause behind it and is just, while his is ultimately a form of empty lust. But he will (and has) spend ever on-camera opportunity delightfully chewing his dialogue about his amoral philosophy, and I'll enjoy every minute of it.

Lusavari's earlier post was spot on. Zenos is not a dumb tool for Fandaniel. He's a distant philosopher/poet warrior who believes he has ascended beyond concern for the mortal realm. As long as Fandaniel facilitates Zenos' final confrontation with us, they can coexist. Unlike Lusavari, I do think Zenos is evil because his philosophy is evil, but I agree that he is not malicious.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned here - Zodiark is conspicuously missing its heart since we trapped Elidibus in the tower. People seem confident that Zenos will eat Zodiark, but I think more likely he will take Elidibus' place in the core of the god.

He was fine as the big bad villian for stormblood. His fight was nice and he himself was happy with how it ended. I did not need him back and 100% not want him as one of the big bads. Even if he is eaten at the end by Zodiark I still would not like it. Honestly I wished that Elidibus got his own full expansion and would have been the endboss. He was someone we knew from ARR and just like Emet he deserves to have a whole expansion just for himself and not be offed like he was in a side patch...

I also dont like how the one that always loved fighting fair in some ways (he after all killed his father only because the poison would have killed us) has now the goal to just absorb a primal..(not like that already failed once..) How is that fighting with his own power?

So no I dont like it at all what they have done with him...

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Originally Posted by Lusavari

That's part of the problem though. You're trying to apply a word to Zenos that is not applicable. He's not Evil. Nor is he good. Zenos merely IS. If you separate him from a Dungeons and Dragons morality system, it's much easier to appreciate. If he's anything, he's Chaotic Neutral. But even then, I don't think it captures who he is. Zenos was just acting as part of the Garlean Army because it was something to do. He cares little about the goals of the army. It just gave him a way to seek out fights and those quickly became boring to him. You need to see him as an unaligned entity. Because that's what he is.

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I mean it were the devs that said that they created Zenos as someone just purely evil. Not someone with maybe some sympathetic reasons to feel for, no he was outright made to be hated. IMO he is evil because he knows exactly what his actions will do. He put Yotsuyu in charge because he knew what she will do, he left people alive because he knew that this might increase his fun later.

He kills for his own amusement. Its not like he loves fighting and thus challenges new people everywhere and sometimes they sadly die. No he mows them down. Look at how he just killed his own underlings or how he just destroyed the whole city that he grew up with. He kills his own father for the petty reason that he would spoil the fun to fight with his prey. How can that not be evil?

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Originally Posted by JeanneOrnitier

He's a plot device.

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...Never thought about it like that...
...Never gonna be able to unthink it, either, lol.

If the team can last-minute flesh out the Ascians into something satisfying (including their own high school AU, essentially), there's always hope for Zenos. But at the moment... huh. Yeah.

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Originally Posted by filkry

At this point, Zenos is fully awake, and simply preparing for the final conflict. <...> He's a distant philosopher/poet warrior who believes he has ascended beyond concern for the mortal realm.

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Now I'm momentarily confused about whether he's a plot device edgelord or a poet edgelord.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

...Part 1!?
Are you planning additional Zenos threads?

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Zenos: The Big Bad (The Feedback Thread, Part 2) will be for after the 6.0 MSQ is complete - retrospective big picture.

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Originally Posted by EaraGrace

I think it’s no coincidence that we’re going to Garlemald precisely when the origin, backstory, creation, etc. of Zenos is suddenly important to the MSQ.

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This is a solid point; one thing Zenos specifically has over other anyone else as a new character doing the same things is the connection to Emet-Selch as the leader of specifically the nation we're going to. That could be leveraged well to tell more than one story-within-a-story.

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

Zenos: The Big Bad (The Feedback Thread, Part 2) will be for after the 6.0 MSQ is complete - retrospective big picture.

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I understand, thanks for clarifying.

Though... considering that it's Zodiark's storyline that's ending, part of me wonders if Zenos isn't being set up to drive the next storyline and we won't quite have all of the big picture yet.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

Though... considering that it's Zodiark's storyline that's ending, part of me wonders if Zenos isn't being set up to drive the next storyline and we won't quite have all of the big picture yet.

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    PART 3
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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

    PART 3
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               I'm sorry, I couldn't resist.

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Jeb is Garlemald's emperor is there anything this man JUST CAN'T WIN?

To me, Zenos is just completely irrelevant as a character and a threat. I hate him, not in an in-universe context, for how he works mechanically in the story because every time he shows up he is a drain on everything around him. In Stormblood, he took away time from the actually interesting villains we had in Fordola and Yotsuyu, usually giving nothing in return. In Shadowbringers, he killed off Varis and seemingly the entire threat of the Garlean Empire. And in Endwalker, I literally can't take him seriously as a threat because he feels like he has been thoroughly dealt with before that I can't feel any menace. I legitimately hope we don't have to fight him in any serious context (Hey Koji, I wasn't afraid of Fandaniel being the last boss, I'm afraid it is Zenos again) because I will be so sucked out of it.

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Originally Posted by Veloran

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Except he really doesn't have the means since all of that was achieved for him either through Garlean scientists or Fandaniel. I won't deny that in-universe he's a serious combatant (or at least was because we've beat a version of his ass like three(?) times now including a time where he could use magic when Elidibus was using his body), but I think it's so weird they prop him up as a big bad guy when his true power is almost always given to him by another force. As for motive, his motive feels so flimsy I'd barely call it one at all. It honestly feels like they're just shoehorning in details so that he stays relevant after Stormblood. I didn't like him there, but at least if they made 4.0's end stick he'd have gone out in a genuinely memorable way. Even now, Fandaniel feels like the mastermind just entertaining Zenos' ego to make him think he's in charge when he's honestly just the dumb muscle. I genuinely thought that Fandaniel would just knock off Zenos once he and Garlemald served their purpose in 5.5 because he seems so extraneous.

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Originally Posted by Cilia

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Not true. Even in Stormblood, you had Asahi hating you for claiming that you killed Zenos. Then you have a chunk of Shadowbringers involving Emet-Selch trying to forge a connection with you in hopes you can prove your worth to him. You could even make the argument that Gaius had personal stakes involved since near the end he wanted to recruit you and Cid to his side.

Not to mention that his personal connection to you means nothing if you don't have a connection to him and while Zenos does a ton of bad shit, most of it doesn't actually directly affect you. He kills off a minor character who you may have remembered from ARR, KOs Y'shtola, and spares you in fights that you probably could have won in-game because video games still haven't figured out how to do boss fights you're supposed to lose yet. Like even the one legatus in HW does more than that and kills off Ysayle and he's not even relevant to MSQ after that. Zenos is probably the least emotionally affecting villain in the game and yet they keep pushing him.