Originally Posted by
Cilia
While I am very keen on the idea of Zenos being a wayward ally, I'm fine with his story ending the way it did. He didn't find happiness in anything other than duels to the death that pushed him to the limits of his ability, and given his willingness to do whatever it took to set up those sorts of situations I can't agree leaving him alive would have been a wise course of action. Asking the PC to risk their life every encounter with him seems... more than a tad unreasonable.
(Plus he was pitifully easy to finally beat after the Endsinger. I didn't even come close to going down except when he used his scripted moves.)
Emet-Selch gets a free pass because what he's doing is good from his perspective, while Zenos knows what he's doing wrong but doesn't care.
All the people and civilizations Emet-Selch is responsible for the annihilation of would beg to differ, no doubt, but they're not around to give us a sob story about it.
In regards to Zenos being screwed up, that's heavily implied to be a mess of natural psychopathy, parental neglect (Varis was too busy with his military career to raise Zenos, and his mother died when he was very young), being born into utmost privilege, and his natural talent leaving Zenos with little to nothing to aspire to. Thus he found happiness in the one arena he wasn't guaranteed to succeed in: mortal combat, and even that took finding a worthy opponent to match him before he found happiness in it.
Emet-Selch is responsible for creating the authoritative, militaristic Garlean culture that shaped Zenos to a degree, but he's not wholly responsible for how he turned out.