Tired of Zenos (spoilers)

[linayar]

You don't have to take sides. Princess Mononoke is fiction and you don't have to take a side in that conflict.

And FFXIV?

[Edax]

And FFXIV?

Not every future story of FFXIV has to be about evil sides.

[linayar]

Not every future story of FFXIV has to be about evil sides.

We'll see, but the Star Wars Emperor and Zenos definitely are.

[Edax]

We'll see, but the Star Wars Emperor and Zenos definitely are.

The point is they don't have to be. Fighting cardboard cutouts of evil people does not make an interesting story.

[linayar]

The point is they don't have to be. Fighting cardboard cutouts of evil people does not make an interesting story.

Fighting not evil people would just be frustrating, especially if the story tries to repeatedly tell me that they're not evil while at the same time asking me to fight or even kill them, especially if it then ends with the power of friendship instead.

[Edax]

That would depend on the story. I am only responding to you saying they are rebelling just because they don't like a form of government that you say is not ruled by an evil person. That means the rebellion is unnecessary.

It's not a matter of disagreeing. It's a matter of the conflict they are causing.

Yes, it is, when you default to think it's ok to just overthrow an existing government because you felt like it. That's anarchy.

Do you consider the United States definitively "evil" for overthrowing British rule? Is it really all so simple?

Surely you are aware of the Declaration of Independence, so your example is not even what we are discussing about unless we've been discussing different topics all along.

Nope, they didn't feel like just wanting to be in a different government for no reason. They felt like the ruling government was unjust. We were talking about the opposite kind of emperor.

The Declaration of Independence is the US stating their reasoning for their war of independence. It was not simply about rebelling because they felt like it.

But you said they felt the ruling government was unjust.

When you create a conflict unnecessarily, then you are evil regardless of your reasoning. If you do not wish to be under a certain form of government, you work within the system to secede from the empire (assuming you are part of a political entity with the same view of government) or you (individually) leave the empire.

Doesn't matter what I think about a historical king, but what the colonists think.

But in fictional story, if you're going to say that the emperor is not evil, then the rebels are either mislead/wrong or outright evil for trying to start a rebellion.

It depends on the story. If you're going to have a conflict with actual killing and you're expecting me to take side, then there must be good and evil, otherwise the conflict is meaningless and just a simple competition between two sides with no killing would have been a better way to frame the story.

You don't have to take sides. Princess Mononoke is fiction and you don't have to take a side in that conflict.

And FFXIV?

I cannot keep up with these moving goal posts.

[linayar]

I cannot keep up with these moving goal posts.

There is no moving goal post. You're just wandering off from FFXIV to Star Wars to US independence to Mononoke, and I'm responding to each.

My point remains that Zenos being the way he is does not make the conflict unnatural or whatever as it serves the plot, just like the Emperor being evil. The US war is irrelevant and stories not having evil also depends on the story and has nothing to do with stories that do have an evil side.

[Saidosha]

and considering he BREAKS Ame-no-Habakiri with just his FOOT - SNAP - in 5.4

Just because I'm bored, realistically, swords aren't as durable as our fantasy media tends to depict. Generally speaking, they're strongest when contact is made along the blade edge or the spine. Significant and sudden pressure to the flat is one of the best ways to break a weapon, and even gave rise to the specific sort of swordbreaker weaponry that emphasized catching a weapon and taking advantage of that weakness through leverage. Otherwise, routine use of a weapon would result in chips, glinting, and rolls within the blade. Aggressive grinding and re-profiling may offer a temporary fix, but a light weapon also has finite material to work with and eventually a complete replacement of the blade proper would be mandated. Tempering and quenching a blade that's already gone through this process further introduces stress fractures within the metal grains that would make a blade repaired in this manner even easier to break.

Well-used or not, basically don't step on your weapons if you own them. Especially if some sort of leverage is granted by the shape of the guard or where it happens to be laying. Otherwise, knowing a tool's specific purpose is paramount to extending its lifespan. You don't use a sword to cut down a tree because the edge of an axe is tailored differently for that purpose. Similarly, swords will last longer if you don't try to chop through bones (or armor/shields) and focus primarily on the vitals. Chopping at ice is also a great way to kill a blade's sharpness, if it doesn't break outright. Things like rapiers may boast more flexibility, but at the same time, their thrusting nature comes at the cost of being poor at broad slashes.

themoreyouknow.gif

As for Zenos, not a fan. There are better ways to depict his one-note nature, but for whatever reason, SE didn't go down that path. I don't hope they try to redeem him, even though the writing is on the wall that he'll probably sacrifice himself to stop a bigger threat to both him and the WoL.

[MarsAstro]

I'll be glad if I end up being wrong but I suspect the final boss will be Zenos-Zodiark versus us juiced up by Hydaelyn.

I don't know if they could pull this off well, but something like the end of the World of Light mode in Smash Bros Ultimate could be neat, where we're fighting Hydaelyn and Zodiark at the same time, while they also fight each other, with the goal of destroying them both for the sake of the realm. I kind of wish that this had happened with Omega and Shinryu too instead of Shinryu just being used to add an iconi FF boss to the end of 4.0.

I see no reason to believe a Zenos-Zodiark where "Zodiark bad, Hydaelyn good" is where the story is going. If you pay attention to Shadowbringers, it seems to be going way more towards the scenario you describe in your second comment.

I mean, all of Shadowbringers was about pointing out how you need balance, that it's bad if you eliminate dark and let light dominate. It shows that Zodiark and Hydaelyn are both destructive primal entities summoned in desperation by Ascians, first to save their world, and then as a response to balance out the dark with light. Removing the dark will just flip the scale to the other end like on the First, we don't want Zodiark dead and Hydaelyn alone. That's why the Ascians had an Emissary whose role was to keep the balance between light and dark.

Then there's the part where we figured out that our "blessing" is actually just us being tempered by Hydaelyn. And there's a long-running plot-line that's finally gotten a pay-off in the newest patch quest, which is that of discovering a cure for tempering. It's been a key part of the story for a long time, and now we've found a cure right before the end of the Hydaelyn and Zodiark story. Zodiark and Hydaelyn are both primals. We need balance. We're tempered by Hydaelyn. We just discovered a cure for tempering.

I don't know, I just don't see this ending up being a super cliche "light good, dark bad", righteous Hydaelyn vs. evil Zodiark kind of thing. It seems an exceptionally weird and trite way to end the story after injecting so much nuance to it during Shadowbringers. I see a lot of people say they suspect it's going that way anyway, but I've seen nobody give any actual reasons for it beyond gut feeling.

As I've said in a different comment, I also have reasons to believe Zenos will not be the big bad. They've never featured big bads in cinematics or live letters/promotional material before, I don't see why they would start now. Seems a weird time to suddenly decide to be more open with how much of the story they give away in advance.

[Bright-Flower]

Zenos wasn't in the SB cinematic but he WAS known to us and was the obvious big bad of the expansion going into it. And pre HW we had cutscenes of the Archbishoip meeting with ascians, so neither of those were exactly huge surprises.

I don't expect Zenos, at least not without hijacking something, to be the final boss, but I do think that he and Fandaniel will be the primary antagonists that have actual goals. They might unleash some terrible monster from the original end days for the final boss or Zodkiark might be unleashed as the final boss etc, but I'll be surprised if they're not the actual proactive agents driving things toward that.

As for us being tempered, when was that said? SHB revealed that Hydaelyn is a primal, yes. And both she and Zodiark are going to need to go, sure. And her 'blessing' can be triggered just by seeing a starshower etc, there's definitely something sketchy going on. But us being tempered, that hasn't been confirmed so far as I can tell.

And while I suspect Hydaelyn is going away with Zodiark of course, that doesn't neccesarily mean she's not 'good' either. Alexander for example realized that for the greater good he had to go, it's entirely possible that Hydaelyn would see that without Zodiark around, she no longer serves a purpose and needs to go with him. So I couldn't rule that out either.

But we'll see what happens.