About Zoraal Ja (DT Spoilers)

I feel like a lot of the write ups about Zoraal Ja are people who just skipped all Zenos cutscenes or something. Even if half of these imagined speculations were in the game, they wouldn't exactly be fresh. But you have to speculate because they barely use him for most of the game. It's all crammed into the end and not satisfying at all. I literally did not care when he was defeated and his existential crisis seemed like a joke. I didn't know why he was born either.

And I could totally appreciate him being a very non talky take on a Zenos archetype villain except that's just not what we got. Writers just failed and people are filling in holes for them.

I never got the sense that he was strong enough to care about (which may well have been intentional/something they could leverage). Even in the duel against his dad he gets soundly defeated until the cheat engine kicks in. Sure he’d be 50 odd at the time, but given the technological edge he had and the pivotal moment to his character it’s meant to be, scraping a victory there with an unfair edge would still allow the “was it really *his* victory?” angle while not making him look so bad. It could even have been a moment for WL’s tendency to impulsively insert herself to have negative consequences- a cheap shot after the duel allowing the cheat engine to activate and as consequence for this zorool ja could order the previously standard around threateningly soldiers to make a nuisance of themselves (rather than showing up guns blazing). It should also have been an echo vision so it’s too late by the time the wol finds out rather than having to sit around like a pudding in cutscene.

The boss form with the missing second head was a nice bit of visual storytelling though.

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Originally Posted by HighlanderClone

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I whole heartly disagree, tho i'd say he has potential to be one

He was my favourite until s9 happen
He is no longer a stoic brave general with dark philosophy view
He's just a wuss who refuse to fight anyone even the house cat without spare soul at his disposal
He became a coward gecko who broke his own oath and honor to duel 1v1 and made a call to arm to involve citizen without finishing the fight he started
He even using the child as a shield just to save his skin

AND last if not least, he has no philosophy left in him by the end, just and inferiority complex lizard

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Originally Posted by ReynTime

A less subtle way of explaining to the player why Zoraal Ja is the way he is would be with the WoL's echo.

Instead all you get is Krile's echo telling her he has a lot of scary hate. This probably makes most of the playerbase see him as simply a really evil person who is evil just because.

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Honestly, this moment made me laugh because I went "oh he's Anakin Skywalker".

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Originally Posted by Titor

The whole time I was like "this is just lizard zenos"

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Is he, though? Zenos is a massively-messed-up-in-the-head Blood Knight trope. The game itself doesn't really present us with a whole lot of his backstory, so he seems like just a crazy psycho with a weird fixation on us because we're the first person who has been able to make him feel something in a long time. If you do look into his backstory through the short stories and Ecyclopaedia Eorzea, you find out his father was completely cold and uncaring, his trainer abused him and there are strong hints at him being experimented on. It doesn't excuse his actions, but it does at least partially explain why he wouldn't be completely "normal".

Zoraal Ja would, I guess, fall into being a Well Intentioned Extremist trope? His motivation for being evil and refusing to see reason is that he...is a gifted kid? It's like dude, I get it. I'm also a former gifted kid. I know what it feels like when it seems like everyone expects the world from you. It does tend to lead to depression, anxiety and generally feeling like you're a failure, which was hinted at with some of his lines at the end. However, I don't see Galool Ja Ja being that kind of parent at all. He is constantly portrayed as incredibly wise and kind. I don't know if Namikka only raised Lamat or the other children as well, but she seemed really kind as well.

The only explanation for him going insane we get is Krile feeling some kind of "darkness" inside his heart, which feels exactly as stupid as it was when Star Wars used it to explain Anakin Skywalker turning to the Dark Side.

I originally thought we would be able to make him see reason. I thought it would end up with Lamat on the throne, Koana in charge of technology and Zoraal Ja as the head of the guard/defensive army. He could have his big heroic moment when S9 invades.

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Originally Posted by PercibelTheren

I originally thought we would be able to make him see reason. I thought it would end up with Lamat on the throne, Koana in charge of technology and Zoraal Ja as the head of the guard/defensive army. He could have his big heroic moment when S9 invades.

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Yes. They spent so much time building up Sareel (the underling) that I was almost groaning "aw gawd another ascian manipulating people"... I mean glad it wasn't one, but what was the point of building up this Kefka-like character if he's just killed in moment of "eh, don't need 'em". Why wasn't that slimeball the bigger bad?

I was expecting him to have raised Zoraal in a similar vein to Lamat's "mother figure", but poisoning his mind/filling him with hatred. For him to have maniuplated the entire expedition to the Gold City (writing letter, convincing Reason to make the treasure hunt). All a super long-game ploy to get HIS hands on the throne. Again, was hoping for a Kefka.

But nope! He was just a useless tool that got disposed of.. apparently.

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Originally Posted by Bellybell

I whole heartly disagree, tho i'd say he has potential to be one

He was my favourite until s9 happen
He is no longer a stoic brave general with dark philosophy view
He's just a wuss who refuse to fight anyone even the house cat without spare soul at his disposal
He became a coward gecko who broke his own oath and honor to duel 1v1 and made a call to arm to involve citizen without finishing the fight he started
He even using the child as a shield just to save his skin

AND last if not least, he has no philosophy left in him by the end, just and inferiority complex lizard

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Frankly I prefer it that way. A prefer a villain that doesn't have some "philosophy" behind him and is evil because of "human factors".

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Originally Posted by kaynide

Yes. They spent so much time building up Sareel (the underling) that I was almost groaning "aw gawd another ascian manipulating people"... I mean glad it wasn't one, but what was the point of building up this Kefka-like character if he's just killed in moment of "eh, don't need 'em". Why wasn't that slimeball the bigger bad?

I was expecting him to have raised Zoraal in a similar vein to Lamat's "mother figure", but poisoning his mind/filling him with hatred. For him to have maniuplated the entire expedition to the Gold City (writing letter, convincing Reason to make the treasure hunt). All a super long-game ploy to get HIS hands on the throne. Again, was hoping for a Kefka.

But nope! He was just a useless tool that got disposed of.. apparently.

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Oh yeah! I was also expecting him to be some kind of an éminence grise, trying to puppetteer the new rulers from the shadows. And then he just...died. With no fanfare. Very disappointing.

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Originally Posted by kaynide

Up to around the second act, I had thought his underling Sareel was manipulating him (and thank god it wasn’t an Ascian in disguise..ugh).

I was hoping that a) it would be Sareel that took control of S9/Everkeep, and b) that Wuk would try to redeem Zoraal but c) he is just too far gone mentally, leading her and us to deal with the “can’t save everyone” line. Maybe at best for Zoraal to die as a hero ina last ditch Vader kinda thing.

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Same, I thought he was going to be endgame and the three siblings would work things out and defend their home together.

Yeah… I mean it’s SE’s story, so they can do what they want to do, but this is a second time they’ve just done a “and now for the actual big bad” in the late late 2nd act of the story.

Meteion I could accept even if I didn’t really like it..but now once again after the main part of the story is done, “oh yeah btw cloud-ai-queen is real hangry” is..meh.

If Zoraal being born at all is such a miracle, why not expand that thread. (Example, have papa enter the city 80 years ago, decide it’s too dangerous and put it into sleep mode, but also get himself a clone to hatch some years later). Why not have a Zidane moment for Zoraal where he realizes he’s just a clone and that’s why he goes mad.

Or for the trials to reach a result where “this tech exists (military might, future tech, etc) and you could use it, but to realize you don’t need it for your country to succeed”

Again, giving Zoraal a Vader moment where he can redeem himself at the end by taking out Sareel who has transitioned to metal.

I’m fine with the story, but it feels like a solid B- when there was a solid A+ just right there.

It doesn’t have to be a AAA movie, but sometimes you really just should lay out villains and goals in act 1. We are going to Mordor to throw the ring into the fire. We are going to hunt us a man eating shark. Even Indiana Jones 3 had the courtesy of introducing the villain in like…the first 20 minutes. Even if we didn’t realize he was, we knew generally what we were in this to do.