Tired of Zenos (spoilers)

[Bright-Flower]

He never really went against his balance ideal though? He wasn't trying to flood the First with light or something. And while sure the WOL form was FF 1 fanservice it didn't come out of nowhere, we had two patches of him setting things in motion for it.

I'll grant that we didn't see him having memory issues before but I don't see how this is a big 180 on his character

[Lauront]

Even Lahabrea's motives make much more sense now, however more so thanks to 5.0 as a whole than anything else - I still hope they'll go back to his Praetorium speech and pick up on the various things he was touching on there, about the deterioration of laws both aetheric and physical.

[DreadCrow]

I like Zenos. He's my unwanted yandere boyfriend, obsessed with my character, even if my character couldn't care less about him. He reminds me of modern takes on the Joker... Utterly and completely obsessed with Batman.

And while he's not that interesting, right now, since his role in Stormblood was just acting as a wall we need to get past... If he takes a more active role, he might be pretty enjoyable. I mean, I don't think very many people actually expected Emit Selch to be as damn good as he was, even if you enjoyed his brief appearances at the end of Stormblood.

[Bright-Flower]

I like Zenos. He's my unwanted yandere boyfriend, obsessed with my character, even if my character couldn't care less about him. He reminds me of modern takes on the Joker... Utterly and completely obsessed with Batman.

And while he's not that interesting, right now, since his role in Stormblood was just acting as a wall we need to get past... If he takes a more active role, he might be pretty enjoyable. I mean, I don't think very many people actually expected Emit Selch to be as damn good as he was, even if you enjoyed his brief appearances at the end of Stormblood.

It's possible he'll be better now that he's persuing a goal he's interested in maybe. Part, but not all, of the issue of him in 4.0 was he didn't care about the war story really. Kind of an odd move for an expansion about fighting for liberty to have the enemy general not give a crap about the conflict and just want to fight you specifically.

We'll see if they can make something interesting of him in 6.0.

[Shougun]

I can vaguely tell the joker people are talking about, but I feel the jokers have been far more charismatic (and say for example the recent joker had a lot more elements of "emet" in them as well, and interesting levels of unreliable narrative story telling).

I need Zenos to be far more charismatic and powerful presence on screen, at least personally, to give him the 'crazy but he's still cool'. Like one might think of the better Far Cry villains. Personally Zenos just seems evil to be evil and he tries to be cool about it, but being evil to be evil just isn't cool so I tend to not care for him- if he's going to be wack-a-doodle then at least I'd hope he'd have a powerful and perhaps fun presence, like a Pagan Min or something- although one might say Emet is quite Pagan like lol).

Zenos is a solid eh.. for me, he doesn't ruin it for me but he doesn't make any scene better either. I don't find his character that interesting to listen or to 'feel' (presence) and his motives are just evil cause he is evil.

[Lauront]

At present Fandaniel has a better shot of being a Joker-type character than Zenos.

[KizuyaKatogami]

He never really went against his balance ideal though? He wasn't trying to flood the First with light or something. And while sure the WOL form was FF 1 fanservice it didn't come out of nowhere, we had two patches of him setting things in motion for it.

I'll grant that we didn't see him having memory issues before but I don't see how this is a big 180 on his character

But it’s like they completely forgot about it when it was his main theme and idealism in 2.0. And then they dropped all of it in 5.2/5.3 and had him never mention it again. The problem was it did kind of come out of nowhere, because the plot was most likely going to take a different turn considering Yoshi said they had two endings in mind, one with whats believed to be graha dying and the other without. They most likely just had him be offed instead of Graha and that’s why they didn’t care about any of his past developments.

[Rosenstrauch]

To offer my own perspective on Elidibus: 5.0-5.2 Elidibus was par for the course when it came to the development his character went through from his first appearance up to Stormblood. Even with everything having spun wildly out of his control, there was the implication that his attempts to rerail things were part of a larger plan. That he was still the mastermind he presented himself as from the beginning, even if we'd knocked him off his balance pretty badly. And 5.2 ended with two cliffhangers on this plot. The first was the revelation that Elidibus had been sacrificed long ago to become the Heart of Zodiark, making the identity of the man we'd been dealing with murky. The second is that, by taking advantage of our clearing their air in regards to Ardbert, Elidibus had successfully gotten his plan to eliminate us off to a good start.

5.3 took those cliffhangers and handled them... oddly. All the Echo bearers awoken just continued going about their lives or departed to be heroes offscreen. There was a brief moment where it was stated that Black Masks were out and about, but they were swept aside offscreen too. Elidibus absentmindedly gets called to us, with him apparently having no idea what even happened until we point it out to him. Then there's the whole solo instance with him, in which his motive is both plainly stated (he wants you to understand what you've done to him) and incomprehensible (he doesn't think you're even capable of self-reflection and really just wants to kill you, so why bother?). And then the question of "What's Elidibus's deal?" is answered

He's an amnesiac primal, rapidly losing his grip on reality, and his plans to deal with you have been throwing everything at the wall to see what'll stick.

This reveal fits pretty well with his actions in 5.3. But it really doesn't fit at all with how he behaved prior to that. And I don't just mean in A Realm Reborn or even as late as Stormblood. It doesn't fit the Elidibus we've seen at the end of 5.0, nor the Elidibus we interacted with in 5.2. To me at least, it really does feel like they were writing by the seat of their pants for 5.3, along with a mandate to "fix" the direction 5.2 had taken the story down.

... oh, and the way we dealt with him is equally bizarre. It's like they had two different scripts: One where we can't kill him, so we seal him away within the Crystal Tower, and one where he dies, and we help him remember what he'd lost so he can be at peace in his final moments. Then they decided to go with both ideas: Sealed away forever in the Crystal Tower, while also having his memory restored, so he can go through the pain of having lost everyone he cared about all over again. But this time he'll be alone for eternity, with no hope of release.

This is supposed to be a bittersweet ending, apparently. It sounds more like a nightmare to me.

[KizuyaKatogami]

To offer my own perspective on Elidibus: 5.0-5.2 Elidibus was par for the course when it came to the development his character went through from his first appearance up to Stormblood. Even with everything having spun wildly out of his control, there was the implication that his attempts to rerail things were part of a larger plan. That he was still the mastermind he presented himself as from the beginning, even if we'd knocked him off his balance pretty badly. And 5.2 ended with two cliffhangers on this plot. The first was the revelation that Elidibus had been sacrificed long ago to become the Heart of Zodiark, making the identity of the man we'd been dealing with murky. The second is that, by taking advantage of our clearing their air in regards to Ardbert, Elidibus had successfully gotten his plan to eliminate us off to a good start.

5.3 took those cliffhangers and handled them... oddly. All the Echo bearers awoken just continued going about their lives or departed to be heroes offscreen. There was a brief moment where it was stated that Black Masks were out and about, but they were swept aside offscreen too. Elidibus absentmindedly gets called to us, with him apparently having no idea what even happened until we point it out to him. Then there's the whole solo instance with him, in which his motive is both plainly stated (he wants you to understand what you've done to him) and incomprehensible (he doesn't think you're even capable of self-reflection and really just wants to kill you, so why bother?). And then the question of "What's Elidibus's deal?" is answered

This reveal fits pretty well with his actions in 5.3. But it really doesn't fit at all with how he behaved prior to that. And I don't just mean in A Realm Reborn or even as late as Stormblood. It doesn't fit the Elidibus we've seen at the end of 5.0, nor the Elidibus we interacted with in 5.2. To me at least, it really does feel like they were writing by the seat of their pants for 5.3, along with a mandate to "fix" the direction 5.2 had taken the story down.

... oh, and the way we dealt with him is equally bizarre. It's like they had two different scripts: One where we can't kill him, so we seal him away within the Crystal Tower, and one where he dies, and we help him remember what he'd lost so he can be at peace in his final moments. Then they decided to go with both ideas: Sealed away forever in the Crystal Tower, while also having his memory restored, so he can go through the pain of having lost everyone he cared about all over again. But this time he'll be alone for eternity, with no hope of release.

This is supposed to be a bittersweet ending, apparently. It sounds more like a nightmare to me.

Yep. Agreed. To make matters worse, Yshtola theorizes "maybe Emet helped us because he wanted Elidibus to be free." Yet, we imprison him in a tower for eternity with his sorrowful memories. Like wtf

[Lauront]

*snip*

Agreed, up to 5.2 I liked the general direction in spite of some bumps on the way. And all that is in addition to the reaction your character gives to the Minstrel when picking up the extreme duty, where they show sorrow for him. They did basically say during an interview that they were working on multiple possible scenarios even if the general idea of where they wanted to go is fixed in regards to 5.3. Personally I consider it to be a mixed bag, with some good and some bad. I did like the link they forged to Azem and exploring more of the Convocation's history, but that was about it.

I'm hoping they have some future plans for him since he's still... there.