Quote Originally Posted by NyannCat View Post
I'm sorry I took that out of context, but I've seen this argument quite enough: "Oh you can't redeem him because he wanted to destroy the world and kill people, and he's evil and bad".

He does not have qualities that could redeem him and make him into a Scion, for example, for that I agree, but as I have said before: he has all the personality and background to be an anti-hero. All of it.
I am not painting him as a victim, I am saying he was once a villain and he can become an anti-hero. I'm saying he has all the potential to be a great character, not a good guy, but still a great character.

If people are blindly defensive, you're being blindly dismissive of all that the character can still bring to the table. You're saying that the character should be trashed just because he didn't do anything big and meaninful in two expansions, while Ascians were the absolute same for ARR, HW and SB. Ascians were plain boring, just going "oh lord zodiark hohoho please come back lord zodiark, yes, let's summon primals to bring back lord zodiark". And then came shadowbringers and we were struck by "oh... maybe there's more to ascians than just making beast tribes summon primals".

You're saying that they have "qualities that zenos does not", but you're saying it NOW, after they had their redemption arcs, lol. I don't think you'd say Ascians had development and depth back in stormblood or even half of shadowbringers. We didn't know Emet-Selch had solid, loving reasons until we reached Amaurot, the last zone of shadowbringers.
I don't think you're being fair at your judgement when you say one character is more valid than the other just because they already had their development arcs. He's still in the middle, if not the start of his. Again, he will never be seen as an actual good guy like Ancients were, but that's not his role either.

I'm not being defensive, I just think you have the wrong perspective on the thing.
Yeah, well put.

I remember back in ARR, HW and SB whenever I was coming across Ascians, I never once imagined that they would have the depth given to them in Shadowbringers. I was thinking that there must be more to them, but I never expected all the revelations from Shadowbringers, which is why I adored that expansion and what it did with the Ascian arc.

And you make an excellent point: the Ascians were built up in ARR, HW and SB, just to be explained and given depth in Shadowbringers. It took them years to give the Ascians the depth they have now. So I hope to god they do something similar with Zenos as well.

FFXIV is a huge game with a complex story and with many characters, so I hope that Ishikawa just had to focus on wrapping up the Hydaelyn and Zodiark arc which is why she couldn't touch the other characters and focus properly on them. And maybe the reason Zenos wasn't given a proper development back in Stormblood is because he was always meant to be a long-term character and appear in several expansions, slowly building up his story, with clues and hints along the way just like Yoshi-P likes it.