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

[Vyrerus]

At the time

I like this answer, because it's sort of a complete answer and a non-answer simultaneously.

With hindsight in tow, it is pretty hard to flesh it out from a, "while it was current perspective." I'm of the mind that the point of Stormblood was to do a lot of worldbuilding in a very short amount of time, with the war with Garlemald basically being the excuse for why we go globe trotting. First time leaving Eorzea and what not.

I also think that what they were striving to do with Zenos was to show us a sort of, "Luke in Palpatine's Throne Room scene" only it'd just be a Darth Vader and Luke, no Palpatine. I guess? The analogue I'm trying to describe is that in Return of the Jedi, the war with the Empire and the Second Death Star is a very pivotal thing for the galaxy, but it's juxtaposed against the personal conflict for Luke. The way the battle goes for the rebels fluctuates along similar lines to Luke's confrontation with the Emperor. I.E. The real battle is good vs. evil, and the personal battle is what's directing the battle outside. Of course, that's not what's actually happening in universe, but it's what's happening with the script.

How I relate this to Stormblood is in the fact that when we do face down Zenos, he now knows more about our own gift and how to use it than we do. Since they can't have quite the same personal dynamic, nor the real isolation of the Emperor's Throne room scene, they resorted to a very direct showing that our real enemy is our old enemy, primals. Primals brought about by the Ascians. It's also because there's been no real overarching explanation on the Echo as with The Force, and we've had no mentor or master with directive for it. I'm just saying it's treading somewhat similar grounds to the RoJ thing mentioned before.

Bear with me. Every patch during Stormblood ends with tying Ascians and Primals and the special world back into FFXIV. Simply casting down an Empire is a fairly tired trope, so they want to keep us in feeling special while also delivering an original. The ultimate point of Stormblood is that we take war to the Garleans, but we find out they were puppets to the Ascians all along.

A major theme of Stormblood was liberation, and the way I see it, they wrote Zenos into the story as a way to liberate themselves as writers and destroy the empire so that they wouldn't have to stick with that trope.

Heh, I sound like I'm reaching to myself.

Anyway, as an aside, it's actually sort of a trope in itself, because it's usually what happens to empires in Final Fantasies. The Empire is destroyed or beaten somehow at a middle/late point in the story, and then the real threat rears its ugly head. We could scrap what I just spent 45 minutes pulling out of my dumper, and say that this was the point of Stormblood. To show the Empire is beatable, and then have them casted aside by a greater force.

This happens in FFII, FFVI, FFVII(hey Shinra maybe an Electric Company... but... Business Empire), and now in FFXIV. Maybe I missed one? Anyway, in FFII, the Emperor is killed, and the Empire is pronounced defeated, but then the Dark Knight takes over and resumes the war only for SURPRISE HELL EMPEROR!

In FFVI you engage the Gestahlian Empire across many different skirmishes, from Doma to Narshe to Vector itself. You turn to the Espers in desperation, and they ransack the imperial capital. The Empire sues for peace, but then shows their true colors and raise the floating continent, and you engage with their air force. Once you're there, it seems like it's the end of the game, and you're going to have to stop the Emperor and Kefka somehow... Only for Kefka to betray the Emperor, cast down the Empire entirely, and destroy it, and the world, leading into the World of Ruin arc. You never actually get to engage the Emperor himself in combat in FFVI.

FFVII has it happen pretty early. You invade the Shinra HQ, and you likely know the details of it better than I do, but your attempts at stopping Shinra are foiled, but while you're in prison the real bad guy swoops in and kills Shinra himself along with most all of the building personnel. After that, Shinra's still around, but you know they aren't the biggest threat, even though they're 100% responsible for Sephiroth being who he is.

[KizuyaKatogami]

I really hope zenos dies in the middle of 6.0 or something. Having him as the final boss of not 1 but 2 expansions is ridiculous and terrible writing. I’d rather instead of him being on screen they take that time to address a lot of the mysteries surrounding Hydaelyn and Zodiark/the ancients over some terrible
character who gets off by fighting. It’s already bad enough they decided to just off Garlemald without us seeing the actual city in full, but what can you do.

[Lauront]

At the time, anyone would have said advancing the "war with the empire" plotline, which was mostly on the backburner since the climax of 2.0. Since then we'd met the new emperor in Heavensward, so 4.0 was about dealing with the mad prince who embodied the absolute worst aspects of Garlean rule, setting up a direct confrontation down the line. Basically, moving from being on the defensive back in Eorzea to on the offensive taking down imperial provinces. But then Zenos lived, killed his dad, and completely wrecked Garlemald, so now it appears the imperial war plot is just straight up done for. Which is why when you ask what the point of Stormblood currently was, there's really not a good answer. Right now I can only guess "to introduce Zenos to the plot", but of course you really don't need a full expansion to do that.

He's certainly adept at hogging the spotlight form more interesting plot points!

I mean, the very quotes you quoted shows that Aulus did NOT know all there was to know about souls, since we pretty much took him by surprise throughout the battle. Even if Aulus knows more about souls than anyone else on the planet, there are clearly gaps in his knowledge. So, assuming that just because Zenos knows Aulus, he should know how to use his soul to transform a host body is a logical leap - particularly when you consider that Aulus is the expert, not Zenos. Just because Aulus tells Zenos something, does not mean he'll understand it fully.

Even if we assume that Zenos SHOULD have known how to transform, there are advantages to being disguised as an Alliance Elezen. He gets to move freely throughout Alliance territory, for one, and when he DOES encounter opposition, they don't react with, "Oh, crap, it's Zenos - deploy EVERYONE!!!"

It doesn't help that it also took Zenos by surprise. He didn't know he could do it. You can pass off some of the powers he later uses to having shared his body with Elidibus (since Ascians can pick up knowledge this way), but that particular 'trick' wasn't one in his repertoire.

Well, I probably remember Zenos's monologue before the Shinryu fight better than most. He claims then that it is his research into the Resonant and the Echo. It's not slated in stone, but it implies that he delved into the research alongside Aulus.

I mean, I concede it depends on how you interpret the vague lines that basically amount to, "Ah, look at the WoL's big numbers." I think Moose or someone also pointed out a while back that someone asked about those battle mechanics and the devs replied that they weren't actually about the soul or something.

I just it find it interesting that, hey, this Garlean and the expansion end boss were researching the soul.

His in the sense that he had commissioned it, perhaps. After all Varis had expelled Aulus from the imperial court. With that said, I think Varis didn't want this potential nutjob causing problems in Garlemald but was willing to observe the results his rather insane son was able to get out of it. I am sure Zenos knows a bit about the whole topic, but the specific knowledge you'd need to hop bodies isn't something he claimed to ever have and it does take him by surprise too.

Katana-wielding Soldier: There upon the stage I stood, prepared to take my final bow, only to find that the finale was but an intermission...

So he does not appear to have expected it and indeed, it's not something mere knowledge of souls will grant you. The Ascians have mastered this knowledge because they do understand the full spectrum of powers the Echo can grant. Zenos at most has a second-hand account from Aulus and the dialogue above does little to suggest he planned it.

Personally I am inclined to agree with Crushnight that he's terribly written, as well as on his other points. They've done little to bring out how things are happening. I can see elements in the existing lore that could support it - for example, his sword serving as a vessel for his soul (albeit even this requires a stretch), or picking up soul scrying knowledge from Elidibus, but they do precious little to explain this, so it really does come off as magic mcguffins. I am not convinced they intended to keep him around until they saw his popularity, which even by mid SHB had waned quite a lot, according to a poll they did in Japan on FF character popularity.



Anyway, much as I now find the character rather insipid, I do wonder if they'll tie Zenos to Azem's soul. There’s some issues with the idea, like the fact that all of Azem’s surplus shards would be Reflection ones, but keeping in mind who his great-grandfather is, and what he could do, maybe there’s some merit in the idea.

A lot of the time I see Hythlodaeus posited as his soul shard, mainly because of the “my friend, my enemy” thing, however I don’t really see any strong resemblances beyond his references to the MC as a friend - Hythlodaeus, along with Emet-Selch and Elidibus actually had a friendship with Azem, unlike Zenos's one-sided friendship with the MC. This post makes an excellent point in reminding us that Zenos’s Resonance is based off the template of Krile’s echo, so if anything, it’s likelier that she links to Hythlodaeus than he does – assuming either of them do. Granted the post has some inaccuracies but I think the point about the Resonance is decisive.

With that out the way, Ardbert makes some interesting comments about the loneliness he felt when he was a soul drifting about and how it makes the Ascian grief more understandable to him, even if he thinks it’s a bad mental place to be. A difference with the unsundered Ascians (and even the sundered ones whose memories are restored) is that they at least could connect to their own people, even if they can’t relate to the sundered life forms due to the gulf between what they knew as their people and what they see as pale reflections usurping them. So their aspirations are directed at restoring the world to what it once was in its complete form.

In Zenos, he seems to also share this inability to relate to others around him, but without the context that the Ascians have of their ancient lives to form a goal. He has no notion of this. With Ardbert’s (a shard of the MC) comments in mind, it does seem like a rather similar sense of angst/ennui, which in Zenos’s case can only be remedied through sating his bloodlust. Relevant parts quoted from here and searching for 'Ardbert' in case anyone wants to read the rest:

Ardbert : J'ai beaucoup souffert, que ce soit du déluge de Lumière ou de voir la réputation de mes camarades salie. Mais en vérité, je portais en moi une douleur bien plus
grande encore. Et cette douleur avait un nom : la solitude.
= “I suffered a lot, whether it was the Flood of Light or seeing the reputation of my comrades soiled. But in truth, I was carrying an even greater pain in myself. And this pain had a name: loneliness.”

Ardbert : Plus encore que le temps, la solitude est assassine. Il se peut qu'Emet-Selch et les autres Asciens soient rongés par cette même sensation de vide…
= “Even more than time, loneliness is murderous. Emet-Selch and the other Ascians may be consumed by the same feelings of emptiness…”

As to why Emet may have put the soul shards in him, perhaps it was his last ditch attempt to see if he could yield something he’d recognise as worthwhile out of the sundered life forms. Having witnessed his “son” die in spite of the high hopes he had, perhaps he thought “if I can supply a strong enough soul to the body, perhaps that will do the trick”. All the same, Emet does not once remark upon him, and Elidibus says nothing of any resemblance between the souls of the WoL and Zenos, other than to call them both “beasts” – he may have forgotten who Azem is but it’s not required to recognise a similarity in hues. Zenos witnesses visions of the Final Days but in a clearer way than the MC or anyone else we’re aware of does, and there’s also no indication he even hears Hydaelyn’s call – or if he does, has any inclination to act upon it.

That’s one thing I am wondering if we’ll see change, since there are still so many mysteries surrounding Hydaelyn. Especially with the possibility that Fandaniel may well not be the original seat-holder – given what we know of Elidibus departing Zodiark, it is entirely possible Venat (whose name means "to hunt") did the same at some point and if so, he could be a resulting sundered shard of hers, again completing the reference to Venat guiding Vayne in XII. Sort of. Then you could get Anima out of all that, as some twisted representation of Zenos’s “mother” (although I still think there’s a strong chance it could just be Zodiark’s residual consciousness following his sundering.) Maybe they'll even have her shard be who Zenos is, because there is a point in her story that Azem ignored their overtures, but you could also have that with a Zenos-Azem and Fandaniel-Venat storyline. She finally got her man, so to speak. Assuming either/both of the duo are ancient souls at all, and not something else.

It’s not really definitive, but with all the talk of Zenos being a “mirror” to some players and a foil to the MC, it’s one way they could write something of a sob story for him without him necessarily being sympathetic – more so a tragic tale of how the shards of Azem could wind up. He may be some other soul or something other than an ancient, but the foregoing is at least plausible to me.
Of course with Yoshi pointing out that Zenos thinks of you as his “friend”, I suspect they’re going in the Golbez direction with him. I just hope by the end of 6.0, he’s gone. IMO we’ll probably see a fusion of IV and IX primarily, so I expect we’ll see a fusion of some Necron and Zeromus themes in Fandaniel in some respect. The way Zodiark is guarding the “moon” in the Amano art makes me wonder if it’s 1) perhaps actually the Source or 2) some manner of ark. I’m very keen to see how they proceed with things, Zenos aside.

[Cilia]

---

Nobody can really say what the narrative purpose of Stormblood in the bigger picture was; while the writers are often ahead of what's released (they were working on Endwalker while Shadowbringers was current, f'ex) the story still follows a linear path and has to build on what came before. (Unless you use clunky retcons, like "Yda is really her kid sister Lyse impersonating her.")

The "point(s)" of Stormblood, as I see them, are twofold:

1. Show why the Garlean Empire needs to be opposed, even if it's not wholly evil. The fact so many suffer so greatly under Imperial rule is something that should not be tolerated, no matter how "good" it is to some provinces.
2. Get Lyse to leave the Scions. As I see it they simply didn't know what to do with Yda and Papalymo, so they were both (effectively) killed off in Stormblood's prologue to give Lyse the motivation to be 4.0's (intended) main protagonist, who filled her role and then left the party (so to speak).

As an addendum, Yotsuyu's character arc existed to give a scathing criticism of certain Japanese cultural norms past and present. Zenos' role in Stormblood was to force the player character (and likely the player themselves) to question why they fight.

The point of Stormblood was not just to "kill Zenos," and the only way his survival would invalidate the purpose of the expansion is if that were the case.

[Kesey]

I really hope zenos dies in the middle of 6.0 or something. Having him as the final boss of not 1 but 2 expansions is ridiculous and terrible writing. I’d rather instead of him being on screen they take that time to address a lot of the mysteries surrounding Hydaelyn and Zodiark/the ancients over some terrible
character who gets off by fighting. It’s already bad enough they decided to just off Garlemald without us seeing the actual city in full, but what can you do.

But honestly, at this juncture in the story what more could you learn about Garlemald? They've been major players in the story since the very beginning. Heck they were still major players when we went to an alternative world. I promise you that you know more about the lore of Garlemald then about Ala Mhigo, or the First, or the origins of the Dragonsong war.

And although I agree Zenos is weak character, he literally is the center of the few mysteries that Garlemald does not have a stake in. Specifically why did he come back to life? What is the significance of his dreams of Amaurot? And, as a follow up, who was he in Amaurot? Can't we just except that the Empire is just a means, a tool, to have an army manipulated by the Ascians and move on to saving the world? Zenos is just an extension of this: the Empire's greatest weapon in the hands of an Ascian.

And I can not stress this enough: Zenos is not the main villain; Fandaniel is the main villain.

[Veloran]

I like this answer, because it's sort of a complete answer and a non-answer simultaneously.

With hindsight in tow, it is pretty hard to flesh it out from a, "while it was current perspective." I'm of the mind that the point of Stormblood was to do a lot of worldbuilding in a very short amount of time, with the war with Garlemald basically being the excuse for why we go globe trotting. First time leaving Eorzea and what not.

I would have liked to have given that answer, except Stormblood's worldbuilding was very lackluster. Neither Ala Mhigo nor even Doma had the level of exploration that Ishgard got. Doma generally had more lore, better characters and better self-contained plotlines, but it also felt quite tacked on to the main plot of the expansion. Ala Mhigo was more involved, but it lacked in every other area. Both of them got like half the focus they deserved, and even now I maintain that Doma should have been reserved for a full Othard expansion down the line.

The real battle is good vs. evil, and the personal battle is what's directing the battle outside. Of course, that's not what's actually happening in universe, but it's what's happening with the script.

I considered this, but it comes with two issues. First, that kind of personal connection between Zenos and WoL is, I think, really lacking. Yes you fight multiple times, and I did feel as though the scenes and journal painted WoL as having a strong desire to beat him, but in the end Zenos doesn't actually do anything personally to WoL other than rough them up a bit. As I noted in another thread this section of the story was where the issue of characters surviving everything became very prevalent, and even though Zenos badly injures Y'shtola he fails to actually kill anyone close to WoL. If anything Fordola ended up with a higher headcount in that regard and WoL doesn't seem to have too much of an issue with her.

Secondly, if Stormblood was the big Zenos personal battle expansion... Zenos lived and persisted beyond it. Meaning the expansion was robbed of it's climax. You noted the imperial throne room scene, well people similarly felt the emperor's retroactive survival seriously diminished the impact those scenes had.

The ultimate point of Stormblood is that we take war to the Garleans, but we find out they were puppets to the Ascians all along.

We find that out in like 4.4. There was an entire base expansion plus three patches before that happens. By all rights 4.4 and 4.5 are more a prelude to Shadowbringers than an end to Stormblood, the same way Shadowbringers effectively concluded in 5.3, and 5.4 and 5.5 are a setup for Endwalker.

Anyway, as an aside, it's actually sort of a trope in itself, because it's usually what happens to empires in Final Fantasies. The Empire is destroyed or beaten somehow at a middle/late point in the story, and then the real threat rears its ugly head.

Yes, except XIV is a persistent game. Meaning the story will persist beyond the current Hydaelyn/Zodiark arc. Assuming we will have even one more arc, that would mean the empire was removed from the narrative in just the first quarter of the total plot. Considering the empire's lack of primary involvement in the crystal saga, the fact that Zenos continued beyond SB's climax, and how half of Shadowbringer's content lines are still dealing with the empire, it really seems as though "ending the empire" couldn't have possibly been the point of Stormblood.

[Rosenstrauch]

Y'know, I can't help but wonder if they could've killed three birds with one stone by having Yda still be alive right up until the assault on Rhalgr's Reach.

Picture it like this: We reunite with Yda at the end of 3.4, but there's something off about her. Whereas Yda was generally well-mannered and her apparent cluelessness was just part of her eccentric sense of humor, this Yda is rude and genuinely clueless about things she really ought to know. She chafes the Scions' goodwill, especially in light of the events of 3.4. She's also very, very gung-ho about getting back to Ala Mhigo. 3.5 rolls around, Papalymo does his thing, and we get the "Yda is Lyse" reveal. Except Lyse wasn't pretending to be Yda for the past six years. It's been barely a few weeks at most. The real Yda has taken over Conrad Kemps' duties as the leader of the Ala Mhigan resistance, and sent Lyse back with Papalymo in the hopes that he and the Scions would keep her out of harm's way.

Naturally, that's gone all to hell. Lyse is apologetic about the deception, we get our "we knew all along" stuff because it's actually obvious now, but the player isn't made to be out of the loop by virtue of having never met the real Yda.

Anyways, with the story rolling over into Stormblood, we reunite with Yda. There's tension between her and her sister over their last moment together. We do our stuff in there. Rhalgr's Reach is attacked. Zenos has his effortless squash match against us. When we break one of his katanas, he's naturally interested. But he sees we're completely spent by that point and goes in for the kill regardless. Yda is the one to save us from him—and she's killed in the process. Lyse has to deal with her sister having just died in front of her, and naturally gravitates towards the Scions in an attempt to put distance between her and that.

And there you go. Zenos has killed a main character, so we the players have a reason to hold a grudge against him—important side characters like Meffrid and Conrad Kemps just don't have the same impact, y'know? Yda is given a proper sendoff onscreen with a heroic sacrifice, instead of having been dead all along in an unnamed and unseen moment six years ago. Lyse has a starting point for her character to grow from other than "Yda, but without Papalymo to play off of", and her eventual destination of "Yda, but mostly serious" won't feel like the character just sort of shuffling her feet for six zones and calling it a character arc.

[Bright-Flower]

I feel like that would just make the Yda deception even weirder honestly.

I don't think Zenos necessarily needed to kill a main character. But the way the attack on the Reach was handled could have been done different to have a bigger impact.

For one, even the minor character that died there was killed not by Zenos but by Fordola. If I'm not misremembering the attack on the Reach was even implied to be Fordola's idea in the imperial side cutscene before it. Honestsly I kind of wish Fordola had been in charge and not Zenos, she had an actual stake in the outcome of the war story where Zenos was bored by it. Having the enemy been an ala mhigan who sides with the empire and a side antagonist who is obsessed with the WOL as a personal rival IMO works better than having the side antagonist be the one actually invested in the greater story and the enemy commander not caring about the war but only us.

One thing they could have done is had us forced to abandon the Reach. Then have us fight to reclaim it when we return to Doma. If we'd had to fall back to Castrum oriens or w/e it would have helped sell it as a devastating blow. But it felt really jarring to me that their SECRET GLAMOUR HIDDEN BASE was attacked but they didn't feel the need to fall back or relocate.

Zenos' fight itself should have been handled differently. If they MUST put in an 'unwinnable boss fight' they should have done it differently. One example I like to point to is the fight against the tiger crystal L'cie at the end of chapter 3 of Final Fantasy Type 0. You're desperately dodging and voiding his attacks, that will quickly destroy you, frantically trying to just not die.

In Zenos' first fight, it's not a difficult or frantic struggle to survive against a superior foe. It's a fairly standard instanced fight but with his health pool inflated. Which makes the fight feel like a slow tedious encounter even though it isn't really all THAT long. It doesn't feel like you're against a foe you can't help to contend with, it feels like something you could chip away at if the game actually let you and then suddenly the 'you lose here' trigger occurs and you lose in a cutscene.

Instead, I think they should have had Zenos going all out, with his damage ramping up and up, and having it end when you die instead of 'you got the boss to X% you lose now.'

[Bright-Flower]

I would have liked to have given that answer, except Stormblood's worldbuilding was very lackluster. Neither Ala Mhigo nor even Doma had the level of exploration that Ishgard got. Doma generally had more lore, better characters and better self-contained plotlines, but it also felt quite tacked on to the main plot of the expansion. Ala Mhigo was more involved, but it lacked in every other area. Both of them got like half the focus they deserved, and even now I maintain that Doma should have been reserved for a full Othard expansion down the line.

I agree with this. On the one hand I can see why they would want to put both 'free province from the empire' stories in one expansion but the region split ultimately diluted and hurt BOTH halves IMO.

If it had just been Gyr Abania, we could have explored different factions of the resistance, with different goals and methods, and finding ways to unite them to work together. We could have had Lyse actually taking on more responsibility over time and having a better character arc instead of her becoming leader feeling unearned. We could have explored concepts like the Skulls in much greater depth. Gotten Ala Mhigo as an actual city maybe.

Hell they even made the main city of the expansion Kugane HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH EITHER. They haven't even really made use of Kugane as a neutral place yet, it could have made a good place for say the negotiations between Doma and the Empire in 4.2. But nope. It's basically just remained a pit stop on our way to Othard as far as the MSQ was concerned, which is disappointing because the city itself is pretty cool.

[Lauront]

Instead, I think they should have had Zenos going all out, with his damage ramping up and up, and having it end when you die instead of 'you got the boss to X% you lose now.'

They really don't seem to make much use of such an approach, even though they should, IMO. I was disappointed they didn't use this kind of approach with Hades phase 1, and it certainly would've helped make Zenos's fights a touch less dull.