[All The Spoilers] Can we talk about Zodiark?

[Jandor]

They developed him through the Ascians. The more we learned of the Ascians and their purpose, the more we learned of Zodiark and his purpose.

We didn't really learn all that much about the Ascians or their purpose before Shadowbringers either.

They wanted to restore Zodiark & they planned to do this by spreading chaos, that's about the gist of what we got through ARR, HW and StB. They were long considered the weakest part of the story for pretty good reason IMHO, Shadowbringers really turned things around for the Ascians.

[Snorky]

Don't forget the Acians didn't want to save all life on a select few they deemed worthy. They didn't care about the lives on the other shards. Zodiark was flawed because his heart was flawed. I was content with the ending and how Zodiark was treated. What bothers me more than anything is not knowing who I was before waking up in a carriage with the twins. I know lots of people want that open to interpretation but I am not one of them. I would like a bit more background on myself. Was I born? Conjured? Created? How did I get on that carriage? Then I will be ready to move on.

[Seraphor]

It would have been far more disappointing if the obvious choice Zodiark was the big bad.
The story isn't engaging when you can predict where it's going years in advance.

[Krotoan]

I was actually surprised when I got to the moon and bam.. Zodiark fight. I had that "wait what?" moment and tried really hard to reconcile how they were going to Deus Ex Machina him back to be in the final act in my head. There was no way we could destroy him, he was REALLY important to the balance of our world as had been explained not so long ago. We then beat him and the keeper/watcher was all "OK now we reseal him" and I thought "oh.. yeah.. OK. I get it, we didn't kill him. This is how he stays till later". Then Fandaniel pulls a "this was my plan all along" and jabs himself in the "heart".

Not gonna pretend like I saw that coming either. Holy heck.. he got us. We weakened Zodiark for him and he took him out. We've now pulled our own plug and we are ALL gonna die.


.. so no. I was not disappointed. I like that I couldn't have guessed any of what happened past the 2nd Tower. I also remember we have likely another YEAR of resolution for this story, so I cannot wait to see how this all winds down.

[Juun]

You say it like 3 levels is nothing. It still took me like 8hours to get through all that 3 levels worth of content. Still longer then many games tell stories in nowadays.

[Ririta]

I'm fine with Fandaniel taking over Zodiark. Fandaniel's shtick was that he didn't want the rejoining, he wanted to kill. Fitting for the final villain, all that was left was explore "why". Honestly I kinda of expected him to take over Zodiark since we've been dealing with ascian body-robbing a lot again in SHB, I imagine they were doing that so Zodiark being taken by Fandaniel didn't feel like jumping the shark. Sadly the expansion went and jumped the shark anyway.

Theory: maybe executive meddling, or something else, changed the plot mid development. Their original idea was to kill Zodiark on the moon as the big climax.

Zodiark's trial is so much more dense compared to the other ones. Hydaelyn is just a copy of Shiva and the Endsinger has like, one mechanic. Zodiark however is very dense both mechanically and thematically. Also, he doesn't have an ultimate move. I imagine that what they had wasn't usable for a trial that early so they just cut it out.

The terrible pacing is a classic example of a plot that's been chopped and rearranged. We're here, then we're there, we do this and then that, all without feeling a natural progression. The whole moon thing; we got there via a random teleporter... remember how much the moon was hyped up in Shadowbringers and before? Or hell, the logo of Endwalker itself. Perfect for a FFIV style ending where the big ship makes its way to the moon to kill the threat there. However, instead there's the whole exodus plot that doesn't concludes into anything, feels empty and pointless and raises more questions than it answers (for example, certainly Meteion's dynamis gun would be able to aim for whatever planet we fled to, right?).

I've made multiple posts criticizing Meteion, I wouldn't be surprised if it was Meteion's inclusion that made the story feel like a lego build of plot devices. After all we can't have two ultimate bosses. Zodiark shouldn't be able to defeat this ultimate villain if we are to fight her, so we introduce a new metaphysical mechanic (dynamis) and reduce the previous ultimate evil into a macguffin.

I don't know. The whole thing rubbed me off the wrong way since two days after the expansion launch, when I was clearing the later half, in particular the whole Zodiark thing. Either this is the most elaborate bait and switch in gaming history, or it really was just executive meddling.

[Krokov]

I see this more as a thing of the 1st part of the story we are trying to go and prevent the return of Zodiark/Final Days. After we take care of him the 2nd part is getting to the source of the darkness that has been around that led to the sacrifice and summoning of Zodiark/Final Days and so forth.

[Kansene]

I agree with OP on most points. Neat story, neat twist villain, but it did feel disjointed and Zodiark was done dirty imo.

I also feel that despite many people I know claiming that the expansion wrecked them emotionally, there wasn't a lot of emotion in it for me.
We got away pretty scot-free considering doomsday was at hand.
I immediately knew that our companions dying was a fakeout because they're too marketable to kill off. Only Hydaelyn (possibly Zenos?) were lost, other than that they stuck to the "only kill newly introduced characters from the current xpack" formula that's been a thing since Papalymo afaik.

At the end I sat there like... well that was a great adventure, but to Zenos' question, my response is: naw, didn't really find fulfillment.

[Jennah]

So, uh - shouldn't there still be 5 more Zodiarks out there, on the moons of the 5 remaining sundered shards?

If not, why not?

[Krotoan]

So, uh - shouldn't there still be 5 more Zodiarks out there, on the moons of the 5 remaining sundered shards?

If not, why not?

Because we live in the "source". Think of it like the heart of all the shards. When a cataclysm happens it returns to the source (our world). When sundered shards are collapsed the pieces of those world come to our world and merge with the "source" shards of the ancients that were part of Zodiark making him more complete. Hence he is being shown as incomplete: missing arms, torso parts. There are not Zodiarks in every shard, only the source. Technically there are bits of his essence in every shard, but they are not him.