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

[Anonymoose]

I have a feeling the circumstances behind his birth is going to be very important for this. [snip] He outright mentions he has remembered the fall of Amaurot since he was a child

That's where I'm at; that there's some iceberg effect for a big picture here that we're not seeing most of yet. That's what I'm on the lookout for - something that makes sense of it in the game but also in the real world makes one think, "Ah, cool, that's a great idea for a story climax and fits well with what we've been doing since we got here." Something that says more than, "We wanted FFXIV to have a Sephiroth and the end boss of Final Fantasy never makes sense, anyway."

I especially want to feel like, "They're right, Zenos himself was a much better choice than a new character taking the same actions and given the same powers Zenos would have been."

There's an oft-unexplored chasm between "Saturday Morning Cartoon Evil" and "Sympathetic Villain" where you can understand that there was no other way for this to go and think it's a great story but still believe with all your heart, "screw that, tho."

For how long and hard the Ascians fought, I'm glad there was an understandable if not sympathetic angle to it; we all considered ourselves heroes competing for the same set of resources required to preserve the world we knew and loved.

But both "Evil for Evil's Sake" and "Sympathetic" seem like unsatisfying outcomes for Zenos if our boss is gonna be specifically Zenos. How are we going to get to somewhere in the middle? What makes it so much more satisfying that it wasn't anyone else? That's what I'm excited to see. (Or anxious to not see.)