Is Zenos becoming a Scion? (Spoilers)

[MoofiaBossVal]

Please explain how the actual murder hobo in this game is going to redeem himself.

*looks at Gaius, who sent Livia into the Waking Sands, massacring all of the Scions except Minfillia. Also was going to use the Ultima Weapon to nuke the cities of Eorzea into submission. He is let off scott free and is now your best bud.*
*looks at Yotsuyu, a brutal dictator who tortured and murdered her countryman out of spite. The narrative bent of backwards to go "oh, what a tragic person she was! If only she had lived!"
*looks at Fordola, who killed her countryman in service of evil*
*looks at Lolorittio, who still engages in scummy stuff like slave trading and yet we still tolerate him, in fact we even rely on him for help*

Yup. We've certainly never, ever befriend evil people before! No siree!

I, for one, think Zenos being a party member would be pretty fun.

[Vahlnir]

Gaius was a 'well intentioned extremist' who thought he was doing the right thing. Zenos doesn't care, and even considered then rejected the idea of changing his ways already. The two aren't really comparable in terms of redemption potential, and many believe Gaius got off too easy as is.

Given what Zenos helps Fandaniel do to Garlemald I really don't think it's feasible to try and redeem him. It'd be a super hard sell if they even tried.

Yeah. Personally, I think they handled Gaius' character very well. I love that he never makes excuses for himself. He just rolls with the punches. However, I don't think lightning will strike twice if they try it with Zenos. He's just...not redemption material. Temporary frenemy maybe but never a full time ally.

[BlitzAceRush]

Thing is, not everyone needs to be "redeemed" to be an ally, unless they go the mind control/altered state route I'm not expecting Zenos to stop being Zenos, but we're literally the only person who could beat him, the rest of the world really couldn't do anything about him. If he turned around and said. "Eh, sure, if I get to fight powerful stuff I'll stop with the inflicting suffering gimik and just follow you around." No one save us could really tell him no, at that point the we and the Scion's have two options, let him stay and effectively have two people of other worldly power, or have those two fight to the death, likely causing untold destruction and death in the process, it would also be a nice callback to how we were used as just a weapon early on in the story.

Of course there's likely more to Zenos than meets the eye and if he did stick around that could be explored, but he doesn't have to be good or redeemable to be useful, some people have wanted some darker story telling, the good guys having to deal with Zenons on their team without it being him being "fixed" to be good or redeemed in some way would certainly make for a different kind of problem than our Hero's are used to dealing with.

Though all of this is moot, we all know if he's joining us, they'll fix or redeem him somehow, unless everything he's done has somehow been some 9th level chess game to save the world, we are not getting a "I want to burn the world to fight the WoL" Zenos wholesale on our team.

[Bright-Flower]

I doubt that redeeming him is the plan anyway. Given his comments of wanting us to 'gorge on (hydaelyn and Zodiark's) strength to fight again. It's kind of hard to join us in fighting tough thigns when he's perfectly content being complicit in destroying nations and burning the world to get what he wants and is on track to get it. I think he wants something more grand than just sparring with us now and then.

[BlitzAceRush]

Who knows, Vegeta wanted to rule the galaxy and be immortal, and was totally fine with destroying planets and wiping out whole races of people to get it, plans and people change.

[ChazNatlo]

Tune in tomorrow for "He's really not as bad as characters like Gaius and Farolda."

I suppose this should be referred to as "Gaius and Farolda did bad things too" Since the arguments vary between them also having blood on their hands and them being worse than him because reasons. So the first thing I need to get out of the way is responsibility. Way back when in the days of ARR and Heavensward there was an argument that Gaius can't be held responsible for the violence of the attack on the waking sands. He can and he very much is. As a military commander, he is responsible for the actions undertaken on his orders, unless a soldier under his command goes rogue. (He sent Livia to the waking sands, so he is responsible for the massacre. the heavy loss of life might have been mitigated had he sent Rhitahtyn but here we are. He is not responsible for anything done by Nero after Nero goes AWOL, however.)

Now, having established that a commander is responsible for the actions of those that operate on their let us talk about how he is so much better than Farolda and Yotsuyu, shall we. Farolda's shining example of villany was firing on the towers. Shall we discuss who ordered her to do so? Yotsuyu's list of high crimes is to long to cover, but it needs to be remembered that she was in a position to commit those crimes because she was specifically selected by Zenos because he knew she would be a vile ruler who would push the people into rebelling again so he could go on the hunt. While it does not absolve her of committing those acts herself, they can all be piled on his list of "Terrible things Zenos has done".

Now we come to the person most frequently brought up that wasn't under Zenos' command that wasn't suffering from brainwashing. Or come back to, since as noted above, I'm not letting Gaius off the hook for killing our friends. Gaius was certainly a piece of work, no doubt. I haven't caught up with the plot to understand whether he has been redeemed, but his pivot makes some degree of sense. Like Ysale (whom I haven't mentioned, but also qualifies under our "redeemed villain" list) he chose his actions because he felt they were the course of action that would do the least harm in the long run. His threat of Ultima to force compliance was a nuclear deterrent. I doubt he figured he'd need to actually follow through with his threat, and if he did, he'd be doing so under the belief that his actions were necessary to deal with the larger Eikon threat. His initial turn wasn't even a redemption. He decided to fight the same enemies we are. I don't feel at the time of our siding with him that he was on our side so much as against the Ascians. If he develops into a good partner, then I'd argue he is the Vegeta (Maybe the Piccolo?)

Estinien was brainwashed and Ysale was a well meaning idiot, so I'm going to give them a pass on commentary.

Zenos is a person who sees the options laid out before him, and decides them based on what will give him the most enjoyment, morality be damned. He had a second chance, much as Gaius did. He chose to actively make things worse for his enjoyment. He's not Vegeta, he's Gilgamesh ( Fate character, not FF, also pre character shilling). If he does anything for our benefit, it will because it is the best option for him. Everyone else acknowledged the wrongness of their actions and either attempted to make amends, or died. If he can do that, I'll be perfectly willing to accept his help without reservation. But he won't because it is so wildly out of character for him.

This has been part three of my TED talk on why redeeming Zenos will be an incredibly hard pill to swallow. Thank you for reading. I'll TLDR all three parts some point later.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

All Zenos cares about is the thrill of battle, he wants a worth opponent to kill or be killed by
Zenos kills himself satisfied that he faced a worthy opponent.
He comes back so he can fight you again.

The only way to go beyond this and make him join you is to go beyond the shards and fight other dimensions and universes with enemies stronger then the WoL and Zenos himself.....
We'd have a Bills (Or Lord Beruss) and DBZ: Super storyline going on here.

[Sophie_Lo]

I think... perhaps you may be on to something here. The man *died*. Such a thing doesn't come without some sort of psychological course adjustment, surely. A prime example of this, despite Zenos being a "murder hobo", he has single handedly disrupted and shattered the Garlean Empire's stranglehold of power, starting with killing *his own father*, and starting a chain reaction of chaos from the top to the very bottom ranks, sending them into disarray.

The enemy of my enemy, indeed. If anything, I can see him becoming somewhat of Chrono Trigger Magus character, no?

[BlitzAceRush]

I mean we did just get back from the first...
In all seriousness though, like I said I think the topic is silly because if they do somehow alinge him with us, it'll end up being done in such an out of left field kind of way that he'll somehow either change or be different or be redeemed into being good, as I just don't see them letting us have a bad guy on the team, even though that's very possible, but to entertain the idea.

Going back to the Vegeta comparison, he too starts off very one dimensional and honestly, rather flat, from his first appearance all through his saga on earth it's pretty much "blah blah blah Saiyan pride!" or "blah blah I'm an Elite! how could I be tested by the likes of you?!" That's pretty much Vegeta, he does this song and dance, him and Nappa wipe the floor with the Z-fighters, kill a bunch of them, cripple Goku and leaves licking his wounds after being spared and swearing revenge. So far so Zenos, save for he survived his first outing. They both did some damage in their first outing, humbled our hero but ultimately lost to them and did little else.

Now obviously Zenos is currently about to enter his second major act, so can't really compare them, but I don't need to as just looking as Vegeta's is enough for my point. I'm not going over all of what he did in Namek, but to sum it up he shows up and pretty much gets to doing what Vegeta dose, he brutalized the people there, for Vegeta has a plan, he's decided to strike out on his own, take the galaxy for himself and immortality is on the menu for this endeavor. He murders a village of helpless people for their dragonball and would have continued on this way if Frieza hadn't arrived, he makes an uneasy alliance with Gohan and co but pretty much states to himself they die as soon as he's immortal, at no point during this ark would I really call Vegeta good, or even neutral honestly, he's exactly what he's been up until this point, self serving.

Even into Cell Vegeta hasn't really changed his wife to be isn't even really sure what he is, and into the Buu saga Vegeta is questioning what the hell happened, because really he's been the same he's always been, yet somehow he's got a wife, a kid and a home on a new planet, does he even want these things? Are these his goals? Which all colomates in his big fall back to his "true" self where he has to face the man he's always been and eventually he realizes that he has in fact changed and does in fact care about the life that he stumbled into on Earth, making the ultimate sacrifice in an effort to fully turn the page on this "new" Vegeta.

By Super he's the family man we know today, but he never really tried to redeem himself for what he did, he just, moved past it, to him, he did those things, was that man then many years later had simply, slowly become a different person, despite never going on some massive quest to be redeemed or being a "good guy" the whole show, Vegeta helped the good guys win each time, Zenos could, if they wanted do the same.
We could beat him but not kill him, either because he does end up absorbing Zodiark and we need that power to stop the true big bad or we need his help in the fight to come, now on the other side of his "transcendent moment" he's no idea what to do, however one thing he does know is if we've beating him then clearly there's greater heights he's yet to reach, so he agrees to help, for now and vows we'll do this again, from there, who knows, perhaps there's more to him, perhaps there isn't but there really wasn't much more to Vegeta early on in his ark, but he grew out pretty well given time and space.

Though again that was all for fun, given they're wrapping up so much in 6.0 I see no room for Zenos to get anywhere near the development needed for this to work, I don't see them letting us have him when he's still "evil" they'd only let us have him after, so either he'll vanish for now and be worked on more until he's "changed" or they'll pull some mind altering/he was being control! shenanigans.

[ChazNatlo]

The enemy of my enemy, indeed. If anything, I can see him becoming somewhat of Chrono Trigger Magus character, no?

From one Toriyama character to another...

I jest, of course.

Words

This I can cope with. My problem with comparing him to Vegeta was that if they had him go from where he is now to "Redeemed" in one Expansion it would be rushed (which I feel him joining the scions would at least in part require.) If he ends this on the ROAD to redemption, then it is acceptable. If he is considered one of us by the end, then I feel they're pushing things. Consider this his Namek Saga if we must, but he's no Z-fighter yet, and I can't see him becoming one by the end of Moon walker.