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

[Kolsykol]

This. Emet-Selch was a wonderful villain and our adventures on Elpis really put a lot into perspective. He had redeeming qualities.

Zenos has none - which is FINE. What he said to Jullus is essentially how I feel about him - why would him being "redeemable" make any difference? He's laid to ruin entire civilizations, he's committed mass genocide, he's personally killed possibly dozens of people. He wanted to fight, he wanted to die fighting. He got what he wanted. Let the man rest in peace, and if you personally want a redemption arc for him then view his bargain as that redemption: He was willing to save a universe to get a chance to die at the WoL's hand. There.

In fairness Emet was essentially a genocidal maniac too.

In the end of the day I think that wanting some deep reason behind it is mostly a selfish thing because people want to feel better about it knowing that it '' wasn't for no reason ''.
Most violence in video games is really for no reason, when you really think about it like 90+% of all violence in games is totally unjustified and just the player wanting a thrill.
People do enjoy it and in the past we've enjoyed it in real life too for entertainment.

I kinda liked how honest of a villain he was, it would've been worse if there were no villains like Emet around with more complex reasons.
And people enjoy villains like that all the time, not every villain in FFXIV needs to have a soap opera reasoning behind what they're doing.

Edit: Not to mention how wanting to die fighting and just being good at it is glorified a lot in other media too and has been historically.
We glorify needless violence constantly and always have.

[LalafellDown]

The ending with Zenos made no sense, all this build up with him only to be pushed aside by a emo girl. I knew he was going to help us somehow and it was disappointing.

[Jojoya]

Zenos is someone with a tragic childhood, who was used by his own father, who ended up becoming a monster, someone who seems to have all the signs of classic depression (plus maybe other disorders), someone who didn't even have a single friend in his whole life. He never knew happiness, love, friendship, warmth.

Where is this information coming from? I can't recall anything in game indicating he had some sort of tragic childhood. Everything seemed to indicate exactly what his father said - he was a spoiled princeling who took advantage of his status to please himself.

Whether or not he was supposed to have depression or other disorders, it doesn't excuse the things he did. If he didn't have a friend, it's because he chose not to have them. He is the one who denied himself happiness, love, friendship, warmth.

Sounds like you went a bit overboard with some personal fanfic to give you an excuse to turn him into your fantasy love husbando.

No, let's not bring Zenos back. He isn't deserving of anything other than what he got in the end -

an anticlimactic battle leaving him abandoned and dying in the Rift. As bland as it was compared to what we had experienced just prior to it, it was a fitting end to the character.

[ForteNightshade]

Where is this information coming from? I can't recall anything in game indicating he had some sort of tragic childhood. Everything seemed to indicate exactly what his father said - he was a spoiled princeling who took advantage of his status to please himself.

Whether or not he was supposed to have depression or other disorders, it doesn't excuse the things he did. If he didn't have a friend, it's because he chose not to have them. He is the one who denied himself happiness, love, friendship, warmth.

Sounds like you went a bit overboard with some personal fanfic to give you an excuse to turn him into your fantasy love husbando.

No, let's not bring Zenos back. He isn't deserving of anything other than what he got in the end -

an anticlimactic battle leaving him abandoned and dying in the Rift. As bland as it was compared to what we had experienced just prior to it, it was a fitting end to the character.

A good chunk of this thread can be summed up with: Draco in Leather Pants.

[Sylve]

Leave it to someone who likes a piece of cardboard like Zenos to have trouble with making paragraphs.

I liked him too tbh. I understood why he was the way that he was.
My read on him was that he is a sort of mirror to us as the WOL.
We are ecceptionally powerful and skilled in all things.
Zenos was the same minus him being Garlean preventing his use of magic, which finds a workaround to.

Now, where we as the WOL are an adventurer travelling places and generally being a helpful sort. We are quite happy to put our power to use in service of others.

Zenos on the other hand, was raised on the opposite belief that everyone else existed to serve his power.
His apathy towards life in general stemmed from being overwhelmingly good at whatever he chose to do.
When there is nothing and no one left to challenge you, it's easy to fall back on apathy.

Fast forward to Stormblood. Yes he beats us on the first fight, but we pushed him harder than anyone else ever did, thus sparking an interest that maybe.. just maybe we could bring a spark of joy to an otherwise boring existence.
And we rise to that challenge. Not because we wanted more power but because we were determined to free the region from his grip.

The way it's all written with him always going on about the hunt after he came back to life seemed like he was wanting to hunt us.
But it's actually the opposite. We defeated him already, we CANT be his prey.
Which leads to all his efforts to make us hate him enough to hunt him down and give him the fight he so desperately craved.
His "Hunt" was to be the hunted, not the hunter. We know he knew exactly where we were at any given moment. He could have challenged us whenever he wanted to by attacking the Scion etc.
But it wasn't a simple exchange of blows he was after.
Basically, he wanted to feel like the hunted, to feel that there was a wall before him that he had to put his all into overcoming.

This is what led to that final encounter and the lines he gives during it.
That he's dead and gone now, after finally getting the fight of his life is a fitting end to what is essentially a character with a twisted personality born of his upbringing.
It was a good way to end his legacy. And I enjoyed the fight and cutscene immensely.

[Juun]

The only thing that bothers me is that Zenos got destroyed by an Astrologist.

Imagine wanting to have the battle of your life and all I did was DoT him and then spamming Malefic over and over while running away from him and spam healing myself.

[Elysidelphi]

Where is this information coming from? I can't recall anything in game indicating he had some sort of tragic childhood. Everything seemed to indicate exactly what his father said - he was a spoiled princeling who took advantage of his status to please himself.

Whether or not he was supposed to have depression or other disorders, it doesn't excuse the things he did. If he didn't have a friend, it's because he chose not to have them. He is the one who denied himself happiness, love, friendship, warmth.

Sounds like you went a bit overboard with some personal fanfic to give you an excuse to turn him into your fantasy love husbando.

No, let's not bring Zenos back. He isn't deserving of anything other than what he got in the end -

an anticlimactic battle leaving him abandoned and dying in the Rift. As bland as it was compared to what we had experienced just prior to it, it was a fitting end to the character.

The information is coming from the short stories on Lodestone and the different FFXIV books. Plus all the subtle and not so subtle clues given in the game about Zenos. Those indicate that he had a tragic childhood. And as a psychologist in training myself, I know that the first 5 years of a child's life will determine their personality as an adult, either in great ways or in terrible ways; and if that person wants to change, it always takes a great deal of hard work and effort and time, it can never be done overnight.

As for what his father said, that he was a spoiled princeling:
1. His father was a terrible parent, neglecting him as a child
2. His father continued being a terrible parent using Zenos as a weapon to further the agenda of the empire, to conquer territories, strike fear and submission in the hearts of people, etc.
So I wouldn't take anything Varis says about Zenos as truth/fact. If Zenos became a monster, his father had a huge part to play in that transformation, he contributed to that a great deal, and he even enjoyed and encouraged it as it helped with his plans for his empire.

Furthermore, being a prince, or a rich person, does not automatically mean that you are spoiled and happy and have everything you could ever want. Often it is the case that rich people do not have strong, real emotional bonds, or even friends. A good real example of this is Price Harry of the British Royal Family. Anyone could say he was a spoiled princeling, but if you actually listen to his interviews about his childhood, the way he was raised, his life in the Royal Family, then you will see that he lacked attention, love, warmth, human connection. He was neglected by most, excepting his mother, even though even she neglected him at times. His father, Prince Charles, had a similar upbringing, being raised by nannies, barely seeing his parents and whenever he saw his parents he would interact with them formally, coldly, there would be no warmth, no hugs, nothing of the sort. And the way they were raised impacted them for the rest of their lives. Prince Harry now struggles with depression and anxiety, Prince Charles doesn't have a good relationship with his own son Prince Harry and he himself is a cold, reserved man. Sure, they were raised in the lap of luxury, having money and power and influence, but that did nothing for their emotional health, they weren't happy and fulfilled. In fact, Prince Harry ended up feeling so overwhelmed by the life in the Royal Family that he chose to move to America to distance himself from them, even at the risk of losing relationships with his family. There are a number of interviews (plus books) about these events that clearly show that being rich/royal doesn't equate with happiness and fulfillment and healthy relationships and a healthy mind.

No amount of money, luxury, castles and palaces, fame, power, and influence can ever replace genuine human connection, especially the connection between parents and children. Humans are social animals, who need strong social bonds in order to develop in a healthy way, both physically and mentally. Young children can be destroyed by emotional neglect from their parents; even if they have nannies and private tutors, none of those people can ever replace the warmth, love and attention a father and mother would give their child.

In the case of Zenos, he lost his mother shortly after he was born, and his father neglected him and encouraged his cruelty once it was born instead of helping him overcome it. So yeah, Zenos is the result of his father's failures as a parent.

And yeah, Zenos did have depression, plus very likely other things as well. Childhood neglect and emotional childhood truama always leave deep scars that manifest themselves in a multitude of ways. The fact that he was always so bored and apathetic, the way he talks about other people, the choices of his words, all of these are subtle clues that indicate a much larger problem within him.
No, having mental issues doesn't excuse what he did, but neither can he take all of the blame for it, while his father and society at large get away with no blame whatsoever. Many mentally-ill people, especially those with problems stemming from their childhoods (as is Zenos's case) do not even genuinely realise that they have a problem. They genuinely think they should be/feel/think/act the way they do. They do not know, or even imagine that there might be other ways. There was a famous case in real life of a little girl (I think) raised by wild animals, maybe by wolves? Something like that. She spent the first years of her life with animals, no humans. Once she was found and taken by humans, it took many years to undo everything she learnt to do in her early childhood and even now she's not functioning like most of us. My point is that those early years of a child's life are more essential to their development than most people realise and if those years are crappy, it takes forever to improve and change that, and even then the change might not be complete. There are entire books and research about this that explains it much better than I am right now.

And maybe Zenos didn't even know he was supposed to have friends. Or maybe, being a prince, he realised that people around him would be friendly either because they were paid to work for him or because they were hoping to get rewards in exchange for being close with the heir and price. Zenos is shown as being intelligent, enjoying to read books and preferring to read books alone than being in the company of others. So he probably realised that people around him would only want to be his friends due to his status as a prince, and rather than have that, he chose loneliness, can you blame him for this? I certainly can't. I'd rather be alone than have fake friends.

No, he didn't deny himself happiness, friendship, warmth and love. It's entirely possible he believed they didn't even exist in the first place.
Just like that little girl being raised by animals, she didn't know or even imagine that human society existed, that cities and towns existed, that electricity, the Internet, books, education existed, she couldn't even speak in a human language, she only made animalic sounds. When you are raised in a certain environment, it's extremely hard to imagine or even think about the possibility that something else different exists. It doesn't even cross your mind.

I don't think I went overboard with anything in regards to Zenos. I simply analysed his character and put the pieces together. I do this with many characters. As someone specialising in forensic psychology, I choose to believe that everybody can be redeemed. Everybody. How you do it is an entirely different story. And obviously in fictional stories, it's not always good story-telling to redeem every single villain, nor am I asking or wanting that. But I am asking for the redemption of certain villains, yes, and I will die on that hill. The reason I am now focusing on Zenos, apart from everything else I've explained when I opened this thread, is because of his childhood. That was what started it all. Now, if he had a perfectly happy childhood, with a good and close relationship with both his parents, if he felt loved and wanted and given warmth and attention and companionship from both his parents, if he had never been used as a weapon to further the empire's agenda, if he had that kind of happy, safe and healthy childhood, if he was taught kindness and compassion, and then he went on and in his 20s he chose to ignore all of that and become a monster, for no good reason other than power and fun, if that was Zenos's actual story, then yes, I would have little to no sympathy and empathy for him; because he was given the chance to know and enjoy another lifestyle, a good, healthy lifestyle, where he had no trauma, no emotional neglect, where he had it all, and he still chose violence and cruelty simply because he could, then yes, zero sympathy from me. But that is NOT his story. That is not what happened. And I will not ignore the parts about his childhood and early adult life and focus exclusively on how he is right now. I will not do that because that is not how this works. Everything is connected and I will not ignore that just to jump on the hate/kill him/let him stay dead bandwagon.

[Elladie]

That part was never made clear, no. If the writers simply say "He cannot feel empathy or affection" that isn't a proper explanation, that is just a statement. The explanation would be why he can't feel that, backstory, details, reasons, etc. We are told/shown some things about Zenos, that he is this or that, or can do this or that, but we aren't given the reasons as to why. Some people are more than fine with just this much, they don't care to know more. Other people, like me, would like proper explanations and details.

But you have a proper explanation and details. They are short and to the point, but they explain perfectly why Zenos is the way he is. He doesn't need yet another resurrection to flesh out any of that. And he delivered his message of 'counterpoint to the WoL' perfectly in this expansion

EDIT: to clarify
Zenos is a sociopath without empathy or understanding of other people because his mother died when he was a baby, he was raised by servants in the loveless desert of the Imperial Palace, and not valued for his intelligence or his prowess by anyone he might have expected to do so.

[Elladie]

What's the actual problem with others wanting Zenos back? People want more of him, a lot of answers left unanswered.
Some are fine with Scions STILL being alive after everything. They just get get-out-of-jail-free card every single time there's danger to their lives. Isn't this bad writing too + simple fanservice? Zenos has his own fans too.
The difference is that They are the bad guys and did bad things so they don't deserve anything, but it's fine when it's WoL and Scions.

As long as death would mean something in this game, I would probably look at this differently. But it means nothing, people come from the dead all the time. Yet only one character gets all the hate.
We are not the ones deciding who lives and who goes in this game of course, so I wonder what lies ahead.

A large number of players are unhappy about anyone - particularly the Scions - having plot armour. Hyomin talked about the fake deaths in the final zone of EW in this very thread; there are number of other threads on the subject of 'who needs to die' elsewhere. I disagree that it's only the bad guys that players don't want back. You only need to read threads about Elpis to know how pleased most were to get to spend more time with Emet-Selch.

Personally I very much hope the latter shows up again - he is just such an entertaining character even when he's being a sarcastic dick - but I can't think of anything useful or interesting to be derived from another Zenos resurrection. He's served his purpose thematically, we've moved on now, let him rest

[Equitable_Remedy]

I didn't read OP or 90% of this thread, but here's the bottom line: Zenos needs to just be done as he hasn't been relevant since Stormblood. The final fight with him was pretty good, though.

Zenos was the weakest part of this expansion by far; even his tenuous relevance wasn't utilized much at all. That being said, it's over now, and we can move on.

Forge ahead!