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

[JeanneOrnitier]

I've said my piece on Zenos plenty of times before, but I cannot stand him. And not in a "you love the hate the villain" kind of way; I hate him in the way that whenever he's on screen I completely tune out and groan while he talks and just want him to leave.

He's an awful character, if he even counts as a character at all. He has no personality, he has no motivations, he has nothing at all beyond "muh fight". He's flat. He's a plot device. And after how wonderful Shadowbringers' villains were, I'm not even remotely interested in putting up with him again. Especially not if he's the last boss instead of Zodiark, the actual big bad who we've been waiting years for.

Please, please don't mess this up, Square. Don't end this story on such a sour note with such a horrible character as the villain, not after you just finished one of the best narratives in the entire Final Fantasy series.

[Kesey]

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.

[twocows]

I wanted to leave feedback but there doesn't seem to be any proper mechanism for doing so (or rather maybe this is the mechanism), so I'll just share my thoughts here.

I don't want to be overly negative, but so far my impressions of the EW tie-in story content haven't been good. I just finished 5.4 and while most of the 5.4 content itself was pretty good, I found it very hard to be invested in anything that happened in the last quest, which seems to be the major hook for EW.

It's not so much that we're getting a villain we've already seen before (though that's of course not a great start, but it can work), it's more that we've gone from villains with nuanced and even sympathetic motivations (which I really liked) back to villains with cartoonishly evil motivations. It just feels like a step down to me. I'm sure there's some matter of preference here, but I'm just not excited for any of this, and the story is one of the main reasons I play this game. I dunno, maybe the motivations will be fleshed out more later, but this just doesn't seem like a good start; I'm not hooked, I was more rolling my eyes than anything.

It doesn't help that ShB was just so good. Everything from the setting to the story and characters to the smaller touches like music and worldbuilding (something games often overlook) was all just phenomenal. I want EW to be good, but this story so far ain't doin' it for me. I hope I'm wrong and it turns out great. I see other people are more into it, so maybe it's just a matter of preference.

[Bright-Flower]

I wanted to leave feedback but there doesn't seem to be any proper mechanism for doing so (or rather maybe this is the mechanism), so I'll just share my thoughts here.

I don't want to be overly negative, but so far my impressions of the EW tie-in story content haven't been good. I just finished 5.4 and while most of the 5.4 content itself was pretty good, I found it very hard to be invested in anything that happened in the last quest, which seems to be the major hook for EW.

It's not so much that we're getting a villain we've already seen before (though that's of course not a great start, but it can work), it's more that we've gone from villains with nuanced and even sympathetic motivations (which I really liked) back to villains with cartoonishly evil motivations. It just feels like a step down to me. I'm sure there's some matter of preference here, but I'm just not excited for any of this, and the story is one of the main reasons I play this game. I dunno, maybe the motivations will be fleshed out more later, but this just doesn't seem like a good start; I'm not hooked, I was more rolling my eyes than anything.

It doesn't help that ShB was just so good. Everything from the setting to the story and characters to the smaller touches like music and worldbuilding (something games often overlook) was all just phenomenal. I want EW to be good, but this story so far ain't doin' it for me. I hope I'm wrong and it turns out great. I see other people are more into it, so maybe it's just a matter of preference.

I definitely get that.

Though honestly I wasn't invested in Emet-Selch or the SB post patches either leading into SHB, but I ended up loving SHB, so maybe they'll pull that off again here.

[Mansion]

I definitely get that.

Though honestly I wasn't invested in Emet-Selch or the SB post patches either leading into SHB, but I ended up loving SHB, so maybe they'll pull that off again here.

From experience, I have more fun trying to imagine / reading people's theories about the upcoming expansions than playing X.4 and X.5 MSQ patches. The end of Stormblood was especially dry because of the whole secret they wanted to keep about the 5.0 destination.

I don't expect a lot from 5.5 either, I guess we'll have a tease of the new melee job through Zenos' new weapon, a bit more drama from Fandaniel but no clear guidance about what Endwalker will precisely be about.