The Bizarre Lack of Development and Pathos Concerning Zenos [6.0 Spoilers]

[Kesey]

In my opinion, Zenos is set up to return. There are way too many hints and clues around him, and way too many unanswered questions. Yoshi-P absolutely loves Zenos, the Japanese audiences love Zenos, Yoshi-P also loves good mysteries and slowly and deliberately building up a story, a mystery. All those clues and hints about Zenos will lead somewhere, there are too many to just be ignored forever. And Zenos might finally receive proper development, in-depth, the way the Ascians did in Shadowbringers and Endwalker, after they too, felt, for many years, as very boring villains/characters.

This is a worst case scenario, in my opinion. Bringing Zenos back from another "should be dead" situation so he can fight us again only creates the mystery of how did he cheat death this time...

[Crushnight]

In my opinion, Zenos is set up to return. There are way too many hints and clues around him, and way too many unanswered questions. Yoshi-P absolutely loves Zenos, the Japanese audiences love Zenos, Yoshi-P also loves good mysteries and slowly and deliberately building up a story, a mystery. All those clues and hints about Zenos will lead somewhere, there are too many to just be ignored forever. And Zenos might finally receive proper development, in-depth, the way the Ascians did in Shadowbringers and Endwalker, after they too, felt, for many years, as very boring villains/characters.

Hate to break it to you but based on the most recent poll we have for FF popularity in Japan, Zenos barely makes the top 100 FF characters.

Yotsuyu beat him and he didn't even come close to Emet/Hauchefont/G'raha/Estinien.

Even if you take out Emet/G'raha because of how recent they were to the poll he still isn't as popular as Lunafreya or Estinien.

Here is the reddit thread with the translation of the poll

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...poll_its_cool/



If they were to do another one soon I am sure Zenos will be more popular now than before however I still doubt he would break the top 50 let alone come close to where Emet will be.

[Crushnight]

Also to add Zenos has extra exposure compared to nearly every other XIV character besides Y'shtola because of being in NT as the villain rep (NT was during Stormblood so Emet wasn't even given a chance).

[Elysidelphi]

I'm not keen on this modern idea that "villains can't be evil for the sake of being evil. They have to have REASONS and a sympathetic backstory!".

Sometimes people are simply evil, nothing more. That's why I liked Zenos. In a story oversaturated with tragic sob stories and characters mulling over their master plans, here you have a serial killer who just wants his big fight and throws a wrench into things.

Fighting along Zenos would have been cool but I wouldn't have wanted to have seen him redeemed. I also don't want him to come back from the dead. To me, one of FFXIV's big selling points over its competitors is that the villains actually die and stay dead.

My only disappointment with Zenos is that he spent an entire patch cycle and an expansion just sitting around doing nothing, rather than going out being a terrifying force.

Nope, villains don't all stay dead in FFXIV. Zenos is not the only one to not stay dead. Other examples include Gaius, Yotsuyu, The Cloud of Darkness, even Estinien and Nidhogg at some point in the past.

Y'shtola, while not a villain, has cheated death multiple times.

Even Nanamo seemed to die/be poisoned, only to be shown later on that she was fine.

So yeah, characters in FFXIV, both heroes and villains, do come back pretty often. Natsuko Ishikawa herself said that she isn't afraid to bring back characters if it would make the story better.

[Elysidelphi]

This is a worst case scenario, in my opinion. Bringing Zenos back from another "should be dead" situation so he can fight us again only creates the mystery of how did he cheat death this time...

Nope, I never said that Zenos should be brough back so he could fight us again. He should be brought back so he can be given a redemption/rehabilitation arc, with depth and meaning. He could become an anti-hero. The possibilities are endless.

As for the mystery of how he cheated death this time, there are many possibilities, left there by the writers themselves:
1. He's an Ascian in everything but name
2. He's a Reaper and his voidsent can save his life (something shown in the Reaper questline)
3. He's surrounded by Dynamis which works on emotions alone, depending on his emotions and his willpower, he could achieve the "impossible".

If the writers wanted him 100% dead and with no way of ever, ever coming back, they would have shown his body dissipating into aether or into black smoke or something that would have left no doubt whatsoever that he is dead and beyond any possibility of ever returning. That's not what happened. He has been left there with many ways to come back both to life and back to our star/planet.

Oh and the thing with "But he stopped breathing!". Yeah, he stopped breathing in Stormblood as well, when he cut his own throat and then he was buried. He wasn't breathing then for a long time, yet he came back. So him not breathing is not absolute evidence that he is for sure dead with no way whatsoever to return.

[Elysidelphi]

Hate to break it to you but based on the most recent poll we have for FF popularity in Japan, Zenos barely makes the top 100 FF characters.

Yotsuyu beat him and he didn't even come close to Emet/Hauchefont/G'raha/Estinien.

Even if you take out Emet/G'raha because of how recent they were to the poll he still isn't as popular as Lunafreya or Estinien.

Here is the reddit thread with the translation of the poll

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...poll_its_cool/



If they were to do another one soon I am sure Zenos will be more popular now than before however I still doubt he would break the top 50 let alone come close to where Emet will be.

Zenos is very popular in Japan as a FFXIV character, not necessarily as a FF character overall. And I am sure that after Endwalker, he will become even more popular. My Japanese friends have already told me that the Japanese players with whom they interact have already shown an increased appreciation/interest for Zenos. And Yoshi-P himself loves Zenos as a character. Interestingly enough, Japanese audiences seem to have a deeper understanding of Zenos than Western audiences who just seem, generally, more impatient, and more willing to gloss over or outright ignore details, clues, and hints, as well as subtlety in general.

[Veloran]

At the very least they explained Zenos' origins, even if everything just wraps back around into Hermes being the single biggest screwup in the universe.

[KageTokage]

At the very least they explained Zenos' origins, even if everything just wraps back around into Hermes being the single biggest screwup in the universe.

Except we're still missing the detail of why the heck he was having dreams about the Final Days.

[GrenDuelar]

Honestly, I don't think Zenos's story is completely done. He may be dead -- not that that stopped him before -- but there are still loose ends. Most notably being his dreams of the Final Days and the identity of his voidsent Avatar, which Yoshi-P hinted was connected to the Warrior of Light.

That's not to say he'll come back to life, but I would be surprised if we don't learn more about him and his soul before everything is said and done. The story of how he came to obtain his Avatar feels like something that could well be handled in a short story, but it's hard for me to imagine that his soul hasn't always been entwined with Azem's in a perpetual, cyclical conflict, and that feels like something we could potentially see play out in the game as we inevitably come to learn the story of Azem.

[vormela]

With Garlemald in shambles I read the Emet-Selch "don't squander my legacy" as partly involving Zenos. I forgot to mention that. It was a weird thing to hear after essentially going through hell in Garlemald and seeing so many deaths from suicide. I don't know if it would change things if he did, but it is a neat thought. He has made cryptic requests of us before at the end of his appearances!