[Spoilers] Why Zenos is the most important character moving forward

If you read the previous post (which was edited before response - returned after I grabbed cuppa), the point is less about 'comparisons are bad' and more about criticising this notion that they are the same character. They're so far apart it's not even funny.

"The Edax Test," or: "Villains without ulterior motives for their conflict with the protagonist are always poorly written."

While I don't particularly care for Zenos as a character, the level of writing he has is appropriate. Unlike every other villain in the story Zenos is a simple beast with simple desires; he doesn't need complex writing. That doesn't mean he's poorly written; on the contrary, if you read into some of his meta-text he's actually pretty interesting (as commentary on some players, specifically those who don't care about the story and just want to get to endgame content).

"Some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn."

Replace "watch the world burn" with "have a good fight," and you have Zenos in a nutshell. That doesn't mean he's poorly written.

(Case and point: despite his psychosis, Zenos is staunchly against using Black Rose and continuing the war because it will deny him his entertainment.)

Regardless of how we think of Zenos personally, what is clear is that he cannot be the same as he was in Stormblood. Back then, he felt like a force-of-nature type of character, whose motivations and power reflected more on the WoL than on himself. A great obstacle perhaps, but not the most fascinating character on the face of Hydaelyn.

However, if he's being built up as the main antagonist of the whole story, I wouldn't mind much. He was the first to have felt like a genuine threat, as most of the WoL's encounters left their enemies bewildered by their super awesome protagonist powers. To have someone put them in their place felt oddly refreshing. But his rather straightforward motivations made him less enjoyable to observe as a character in the end, so all that carried him was how he chewed the scenery. Basically, he pulled through on spectacle alone.

That's why I see his return as an opportunity to expand upon his character. After all, remember what we thought of the Ascians in the past and how ShB have turned everything on its head. Whose to say our Garlean boi won't receive the same treatment?

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Originally Posted by KingOfCheese

After all, remember what we thought of the Ascians in the past and how ShB have turned everything on its head. Whose to say our Garlean boi won't receive the same treatment?

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The problem with Zenos is that we already know all about his past and why he does... pretty much everything. With the Ascians, we literally knew nothing about their motivations until ShB.

The fact is, Zenos' past is super boring and has nothing interesting going on in it. He's the spoiled, coddled son in the royal family of Garlemald and was the Ace at everything he did. To the point that he never got challenged anywhere by anyone and he was perpetually board. The only time he wasn't board was when he was a teenager and someone from the provinces who was his sword tutor tried to semi-humiliate him with a fighting style that made use of aether attacks. Zenos did a bunch of homework on how that fighting style worked and jury-rigged a way for him to use aether even though he was a Garlean. This so infuriated his tutor that he dropped his cover as a tutor and tried to kill Zenos. Zenos killed him instead though and realized that in the brief moments of trying to figure out how his tutor/assassins aether attacks worked was the most challenged he had ever been. And he missed that feeling.

Ever since then, he has been searching for someone who could hope to match his battle prowess and actually cause him to get an adrenaline rush while fighting. The only person who has ever managed to give him any trouble was the WoL and Zenos promptly commits suicide afterwards rather then never feel that good again.

Even after he's come back to life, he's still obsessed with getting a bigger and better combat rush. Even if that basically means undoing the forces that are holding reality together as we know it.

And that's literally all there is to Zenos' motives.

Like... if you are going to be fighting over if the current reality should go on existing or not, at least make the reason reality might not exit not be that someone was just looking for a bigger and better combat high. That would be the most stupid reason I've ever heard for someone destroying the world.

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Originally Posted by ObsidianFire

The problem with Zenos is that we already know all about his past and why he does... pretty much everything. With the Ascians, we literally knew nothing about their motivations until ShB.

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It was more of a presentation aspect I was referring to. Indeed, the mystery kept them relevant, but before it was revealed to us, Ascians were pretty simple too. They dressed in black robes with spikes, their mission was to cause mass murder and destruction to bring back their dark god, all while doing an evil laughter every once in a while. None of that really screams "We're a broken and desperate people longing to bring back our loved ones". All that was hidden was their interior motive, which ended up mattering more than we thought.

As for the Zenos backstory, I wasn't aware of it. The encyclopedia, I assume? Anyways, this does tell us a lot of him, but nothing says that this is everything. Granted, this is all we have and we can paint a full picture out of it. But just because something looks finished doesn't mean that it is.

Nothing is certain, of course, but I doubt they brought him back just to do the same dance routine as SB. How this will manifest, who can say?

It would probably change most players perspective of him if we actually did get to see some of his past history in the game to see how he got shaped into who he is. Right now I am sure a lot of people think he is basically powerful for no effort when he did put effort into getting strong. Sure it wont be huge earth shattering revelations but fleshing him out a bit even if he does not change much would improve some views of him.

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Originally Posted by Cilia

"Some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn."

Replace "watch the world burn" with "have a good fight," and you have Zenos in a nutshell. That doesn't mean he's poorly written.

(Case and point: despite his psychosis, Zenos is staunchly against using Black Rose and continuing the war because it will deny him his entertainment.)

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Sure, you can have a good antagonist that just wants "a good fight", but this is not a shonen fighting anime nor are we in a tournament arc. After all we have learned in the First, Zenos doesn't fit the role of "main antagonist". In a storyline that has foretold the death of the Warrior of Light and the devastation of the Star, the main villain that emerges is nothing more than a junkie chasing a high. It doesn't fit.

Some might call the Joker a great antagonist, but you can't just put him in any movie. The Joker is often well written facing off against Batman because he fits those stories, but make him the antagonist of Saving Private Ryan and then he become very badly written. He'd have unrelated motivations to the story and would seemingly just be an obstacle placed in front of our protagonists.

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Originally Posted by ObsidianFire

The problem with Zenos is that we already know all about his past and why he does... pretty much everything. With the Ascians, we literally knew nothing about their motivations until ShB.

The fact is, Zenos' past is super boring and has nothing interesting going on in it. He's the spoiled, coddled son in the royal family of Garlemald and was the Ace at everything he did. To the point that he never got challenged anywhere by anyone and he was perpetually board.

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He wasn't spoilt and coddled, though, he was emotionally neglected by his family and abandoned to the care of servants and tutors and given no goals to aspire towards but Get Gud.

I think there's potential in that, not in Zenos inherently, but more in watching the Ascians' remaining schemes fall apart because now there's this super-powered wrecking-ball on a chaotic rampage all because Emet-Selch didn't hug his great-grandson enough.

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Originally Posted by Rufalus

Contrary to most people here I think Zenos is the villain we need. If you hate him and want him to die then he's doing his job. Many of the single player FF games used the same kind of arch nemesis, one that is a true black lunatic with no redeeming qualities, killing indiscriminately, allied to nobody, too powerful to defeat in our first encounters with them, gradually amassing power on their journey to reach a zenith of evil power which they achieve in their final form. This is a very FF antagonist. Important to note that his story is in progress so there may be revelations that alter your perception of him a bit.

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The issue is that a lot of the criticisms of Zenos I have is not that I hate him and want him to die. It's more that I want him to go away, and am willing to admit that I don't actually care how, as long as he ceases to impinge upon the story. If this is achieved with his death, then fine. If this is achieved by his summoning another version of Bismarck and flying to the moon to tilt against Zodiark for the next twelve thousand years, also fine.

I feel that this means Zenos has failed to be an engaging character, and thus doing the job he was designed to do.

Zenos has simply failed to make me care about what happens to him, as opposed to what happens to his victims. He hasn't sufficiently sold his importance to our story, because he's so self-absorbed that he doesn't see it as "our story", but instead "his story", where this story consists of only the words "FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT". Not very compelling reading.

It's possible that this will change in the future, but right now, after an entire expansion dedicated to him (and then some), I still don't care about him. He rates as an annoyance more than a nemesis: someone who should be removed if he causes trouble for us, but otherwise we really don't have a reason to even think about him.

And if he does create more victims in order for us to care about him, well, that kind of runs into the whole issue that we don't care about him, we only care about making him go away.

Obviously, Zenos is not the only instance of this happening, even in just the Final Fantasy series. Of the ones I've played, Zeromus kind of springs to mind.

To expand on YianKutku, Zenos is a character who makes me groan and roll my eyes every time he appears. I don't dislike him because of his in-story actions, I dislike him because he's so incredibly one-note. When a character gets that sort of reaction from the reader, especially if that character is the villain, then the writers have failed.