Dear SquareEnix/Natsuko Ishikawa - About Zenos in Endwalker *MAJOR MSQ SPOILERS*!

[Mezzoforte]

You can tell the kind of lives people lead that they would call Zenos 1-dimensional or cardboard.
Being raised by yourself, mother dies and father completely neglects you, while at the same time you are trained to be a tool of an imperial war machine. Every moment completely empty because you have never learned to or have understood what being happy was. Then finally finding that one single thing that makes you feel alive and human again.
Zenos is a story of someone who had a completely hollow and empty existence. Discovering meaning in life. Having to understand others eventually in their own quest to have meaning. It isnt really a story of redemption or combatsexual but a story of a hollow person trying to fill that void. He even goes so far as to come rescue you just to get you to acknowledge him. Deem him worthy of your attention. Which is all he wants. What he never had his entire life. The attention or someone equal or greater than him.
Most the people talking poorly about him and his story are likely people staring down from their ivory towers.

[StriderShinryu]

To contrast everything you said: Please leave him dead. It's time to move on from Zenos.

Not much more to say other than this ^^^

Just a bad character that completely lost any sense or purpose after he offed himself in the Garden. Sadly, I do have a feeling they will still try to bring him back somehow but I really hope they don't. Just leave him dead (again).

[Elysidelphi]

You can tell the kind of lives people lead that they would call Zenos 1-dimensional or cardboard.
Being raised by yourself, mother dies and father completely neglects you, while at the same time you are trained to be a tool of an imperial war machine. Every moment completely empty because you have never learned to or have understood what being happy was. Then finally finding that one single thing that makes you feel alive and human again.
Zenos is a story of someone who had a completely hollow and empty existence. Discovering meaning in life. Having to understand others eventually in their own quest to have meaning. It isnt really a story of redemption or combatsexual but a story of a hollow person trying to fill that void. He even goes so far as to come rescue you just to get you to acknowledge him. Deem him worthy of your attention. Which is all he wants. What he never had his entire life. The attention or someone equal or greater than him.
Most the people talking poorly about him and his story are likely people staring down from their ivory towers.

So well said! Thank you for seeing those things about Zenos. Honestly, thank you.

[HyoMinPark]

Most the people talking poorly about him and his story are likely people staring down from their ivory towers.

Holy hero worship, Batman. This entire post is the equivalent of a “no, u” argument.

[Senn]

It does matter. It's objectively bad writing to present the player with a choice they ultimately have no control over. FFXIV constantly highlights how the Warrior of Light is our character representation. They aren't in that scene as the narration refuses to acknowledge the choice given and forces us to answer the way it wants.



I'd also like to point out the irony of this meme. What essentially started this back and forth is you quoting my initial post to say, "Ackshually, Zenos has the smallest sliver of development in this one scene that the story subsequently undercuts moments later." So if we're gonna meme...

You can't account for every choice in this game. There have been many choices that go against how a player sees their WoL. That's just the nature of this game, and the devs work within that limitation. Would it be nice if dialogue choices mattered in this game? Yeah, it would be. But it's not like that. Some people are of the opinion it's bad writing because "my character wouldn't do that", and that's a completely valid opinion to have. I've even said as much. But the WoL does have a personality of their own (a lot of it is left up to every individual's interpretation), and in this story, the WoL decides to stay and fight. That's how it's written. If you don't like the WoL's decision or the writing in that scene, that's absolutely fair. But it's just an opinion.

Anyway, that's not at all the point I'm trying to make. All I'm saying is that Zenos did develop to a small degree.

[Elysidelphi]

You can tell the kind of lives people lead that they would call Zenos 1-dimensional or cardboard.
Being raised by yourself, mother dies and father completely neglects you, while at the same time you are trained to be a tool of an imperial war machine. Every moment completely empty because you have never learned to or have understood what being happy was. Then finally finding that one single thing that makes you feel alive and human again.
Zenos is a story of someone who had a completely hollow and empty existence. Discovering meaning in life. Having to understand others eventually in their own quest to have meaning. It isnt really a story of redemption or combatsexual but a story of a hollow person trying to fill that void. He even goes so far as to come rescue you just to get you to acknowledge him. Deem him worthy of your attention. Which is all he wants. What he never had his entire life. The attention or someone equal or greater than him.
Most the people talking poorly about him and his story are likely people staring down from their ivory towers.

Honestly, your reply brought tears to my eyes. Thank you sincerely for seeing those things in Zenos, for understanding those things about him, and for taking the time to post on here about him. It is so refreshing and heartening to see that there are some people who can see the tragedy of Zenos's life, people who seem to understand him, instead of outright hating on him and wishing him dead, without a single word of understanding.

Thank you.

[Nethereal]

I honestly don't even understand why some people like him so much.

Because some people myself included simply don't like the scions, and Zenos is the closest thing we have to a main cast outside the ascians, hydalen and zodiark.

I dislike each of the scions to varying degrees with the twins at the top.

None of the scions should have been able to get away so scot free the way they have over the expansions only to get away scot free AGAIN at the very end.
Zenos staying dead solidifies him as one of my favorite characters.

Someone also reminded be about how we're forced to lose to Zenos when he's introduced, I forgot about that and yes it was extremely frustrating and cheap.

[HyoMinPark]

100% this! I can relate to Zenos because my narcissistic parents neglected me, I grew up as a lonely only child with no love. I know what it's like to feel nothing. I know what it's like to be obsessed with that ONE thing that makes me happy (gaming). People don't understand why I love Zenos, it's because I see myself in him. People find Zenos boring and they find me boring too. Whenever I finally open up and mention my childhood, people don't know what to say. They find it awkward, they turn away. It's because empathy is too much effort, it's easier to hate and ignore. Understanding a damaged soul like Zenos is hard, it's easier to say he sucks.

Your circumstances and Zenos’s are vastly different if you look at the both of you as a whole. Zenos was willing to usher in mass genocide, death, and the end of our world JUST to fight us so that he could feel something and ultimately get what he wanted from us. And you think people should find that sympathetic? You would be someone I’d be far more willing to feel empathetic towards—sympathetic towards, even—but not Zenos. The circumstances of his childhood are not an excuse for the actions of his future self. This is way too apologist.

That said, I am sorry for your circumstances—but if you were to do what Zenos did, that would not excuse your actions. People may just not know what to say because the circumstances you have described are not that easy to hold conversations about. Your life story seems extremely heavy, and sometimes people can’t handle that. Or they simply don’t know how to respond to it—especially if they have no experience with it in the first place. Could be they don’t want to say “the wrong thing”, and so they simply say nothing at all. You mention how empathy is too much effort—where is the empathy on your part with regards to the people that “have turned away” from you? But this is all beside the point of the thread. Regardless, I am sorry for the pain you’ve felt. Choose to believe it or not.

[Miracle_Diva]

Your circumstances and Zenos’s are vastly different if you look at the both of you as a whole. Zenos was willing to usher in mass genocide, death, and the end of our world JUST to fight us so that he could feel something and ultimately get what he wanted from us. And you think people should find that sympathetic? You would be someone I’d be far more willing to feel empathetic towards—sympathetic towards, even—but not Zenos. The circumstances of his childhood are not an excuse for the actions of his future self. This is way too apologist.

That said, I am sorry for your circumstances—but if you were to do what Zenos did, that would not excuse your actions.

It's not an excuse, it's just the result of his life circumstances. While of course, you don't need to feel sympathetic with what he does, you at least can be understanding of what brought him to that point.

[MoofiaBossVal]

Why do you personally think that bringing Zenos back would be even worse? Do you not think that Ishikawa could do something great with him? Maybe now that she doesn't need to focus on an entire 10-year old story and addressing all the loose ends, she could focus more on characters like Zenos and give them more depth, don't you think? There are already subtle clues in Zenos's story that she could build upon. She created Emet-Selch in 2 major patches and one expansion, she could turn Zenos around as well, develop him properly and address all the unanswered questions about/related to him.

If Ishikawa was going to do something with Zenos, we would've seen it during the ShB patches and Endwalker. Apparently she didn't know what to do with him, or else he wouldn't have spent the last two years sitting around doing nothing.