[ENDWALKER SPOILER!] On Zenos

[Lelila38]

The whole Zenos ending feels forced and imho ruins the climactic feeling after the Endsinger battle.
I get the impression that they resurrected him and had plans for him, which ultimately didn't make the cut. I remember Yoshi saying somewhere it wasn't originally intended to end until 7.0 or 8.0, so my take is, whatever they wanted to do with him didn't make it into the game. Yet they needed an ending for him, so this is what we got.

[KageTokage]

Like OP the part that bothers me is that you are given no choice but to agree with Zenos' assessment of you, that you are like him and fight for pleasure. In fact he even outright says that if you want to walk away he won't stop you, implicitly making our battle the WoL's true personal desire no matter what dialogue option you pick. I'd have been totally satisfied if we actually did have the option to walk away and just leave him there unfulfilled forever, but it would have meant having a completely different second ending, which maybe was impossible depending on their story plans. Would have been worth it imo. Zenos lovers get their final showdown, Zenos haters get to deny him.

You're only agreeing with his assessment of you if you picked the first option.

Being roped into fighting him stems simply from the fact that the bigger problem has been dealt with now and he remains the next largest threat to the world's safety. We only chose not to fight him sooner because he was actively disinterested in it and we had more important things to worry about at the time.

[Skylarka]

he remains the next largest threat to the world's safety

Does he though? Because all of his antics from ShB through Endwalker does not make him feel that way. I am on team "I just wanted to walk away." Zenos has not felt threatening since we defeated him at the end of Stormblood. Even when he takes over the WoL's body, well, that was all facilitated by Fandaniel. Zenos just went along for the ride. He did not feel like a threat to me. I didn't hate him. I didn't want to fight him for any reason, not for revenge, not because he was dangerous... he just didn't inspire any of that in me. I wanted to go back to my friends, and honestly refusing to fight Zenos feels like a better way to defeat him and all of his weird stalker-ness than actually defeating him in combat. Mostly, he felt so pathetic and whiny to my WoL that I didn't have strong feelings about him at all, except wanting to ignore him. I certainly didn't want to give him what he wanted and I certainly didn't see him as the next biggest threat to the world. He was just a sad defeated man trying to re-live his glory days.

TLDR if this is the reason why there is no option to just walk away from him, the story utterly failed to make him feel threatening whatsoever.

[KageTokage]

The implication was he was actively manipulating Anima behind the scenes to help set Fandaniel's plan in motion.

The man doesn't know how to get our attention discreetly so I'd half-expect him to make himself known once he's sufficiently bored by setting one of the city states ablaze or some such.

[StriderShinryu]

The implication was he was actively manipulating Anima behind the scenes to help set Fandaniel's plan in motion.

Eh, I didn't really get that same impression. We know that Fandaniel was manipulating both of the major sides in the Garlean civil conflict so it really feels to me like Zenos really didn't have much to do with any of that outside of possibly being a figurehead... but even in that regard everyone in Garlemald was tempered to supreme leader Varis and not Zenos. Maybe Zenos was able to somehow pull the strings on Varis as a puppet in some odd way just due to familial relation but, even if he was doing it, it never felt like he was doing it of his own accord and more like everything he did except for lusting after the WoL was at Fandaniel's direction/manipulation.

[Teno]

The whole Zenos ending feels forced and imho ruins the climactic feeling after the Endsinger battle.
I get the impression that they resurrected him and had plans for him, which ultimately didn't make the cut. I remember Yoshi saying somewhere it wasn't originally intended to end until 7.0 or 8.0, so my take is, whatever they wanted to do with him didn't make it into the game. Yet they needed an ending for him, so this is what we got.

On the contrary I felt it was very welcome and served to show that the endsinger is not the end, contrary to what we are led to see with all the supposedly superior and advanced races that fell.

I really liked how Zenos pedantly swipes all of that, hinting that there can definitely be more to come, in a deus ex machina way, similar to the way Emet-Selch talks to the player before with all the possible regions.

[Meerkats]

I just want to chime in on this thread to offer my feedback in case its read on this forum. I don't particularly like Zenos and he ended up being kind of a ridiculous joke between me and my bf (we were playing together and have read the entire game aloud in our playthrough and discussed everything all the time). BUT, I could have been fine with whatever happened with him if he hadn't been dropped like a bucket of cold water on the amazing emotional ending I'd just experienced. He didn't deserve to be there and it was the opposite of emotionally fulfilling to have his character dumped on me. I'm sure we could have had a nice fight somewhere in one of the patches where he actually wasn't going to ruin my vibe.

edit: I guess I kind of necroed this thread. It was the first one I came across when I was googling if other people felt like I did.

[Iscah]

I could have been fine with whatever happened with him if he hadn't been dropped like a bucket of cold water on the amazing emotional ending I'd just experienced. He didn't deserve to be there and it was the opposite of emotionally fulfilling to have his character dumped on me.

Prettymuch this. I was so set to have an emotional ending of fighting the Endsinger alongside my regained allies and friends, and suddenly they were all swept away and Zenos was there instead for that final battle, and it just felt so wrong. He did not narratively deserve to be there. He had not earned it.

It ruined our quiet emotional moment with Meteion afterwards as well, knowing he was standing there just out of frame, probably bored and waiting for us to be done with it.

[Lyth]

If you're looking at Zenos through the lens of the Stormblood MSQ, then I see where you're coming from. He's lowkey been on our side since then, though. In particular, Shadowbringers had Zenos putting an end to Elidibus' plot to kill the clashing armies with the Black Rose poison. Zenos also had the opportunity to kill off both Gaius and Estinien in the follow-up fight, which is certainly something that he would have done in the Stormblood MSQ, but he offers them an out to escape. Likewise, the showdown with Jullus in Garlemald is another place where he would have ordinarily killed someone off for the enjoyment of it, but he seems to have somehow had a change of heart and perspective. I felt like they've teased his redemption arc for a while now.

He reminds me of Seifer in a lot of ways. Irritating and obnoxious at times, but you also get a sense that he's isolated himself as a function of his experiences, and had things been different you could have been friends working towards a common goal. Although with Seifer you're left with the sense that he at least has Fujin and Raijin to help him move on. I feel like Zenos is our responsibility in some ways.

[Cleretic]

I'm actually completely fine with Zenos turning up for the Endwalker finale. Partly because it was just a hilariously over-the-top answer to 'what else could they possibly pull out for this', partly because it brings previous villains to the table for the callback-heavy finale that aren't Emet-Selch (consider that Shinryu is just as much the result of Thordan, Ilberd and Nidhogg than Zenos), and partly because, honestly, it is a great resolution for Zenos' arc. He shows that he can do good and be a hero, that he actually did reflect on what Alisaie said and tried to helped people...

And most crucially, that he doesn't really want to. It's not in him to go be a big damn hero, he knows what he wants from life and it's not that. A redemption arc implies that the person doing so is better and more fulfilled for turning to what we see as 'good', and for Zenos, that's absolutely untrue.

My main problem wasn't with all that so much as with the fact that we can't turn him down for the fight and leave. Partly because I don't agree at all with how he defines the WoL, partly because it'd actually put his character growth to the test, and partly because I don't think I'm the only person who finished the Endsinger at like 3am because they assumed that was the end and then had to make that annoying choice of 'do I do the Zenos fight now when it feels right but I'm tired, or do I leave it until tomorrow and have a weirdly-timed ending'.

I'm not really a big fan of Zenos, but Endwalker was hardly the problem part of it. I've got a friend who once pointed out to me that Zenos almost feels like two, maybe two-and-a-half different characters that all happen to look and sound the same; Stormblood Zenos and Endwalker Zenos don't really flow into or complement each other, and while Shadowbringers Zenos does connect more cleanly to Endwalker Zenos they still don't really feel like the same character on the same journey. None of those journeys are necessarily bad, even if they are flawed (personally I feel like Zenos could've used some more EW scenes to show his growth rather than just turning up having already grown), but they just don't necessarily feel like one contiguous person's journey and development.