Tribute to Zenos

[Faust1105]

Then Zenos gives that speech about agreeing with reasons to Jullus and we're just in the background like



Okay apparently I can't remember how to do pictures but that's supposed to be the side eye meme

https://imgur.com/gallery/uVJDXyM

lol, great meme pic for that XD

[Havenchild]

Imo Zenos was a direct reflection of the WoL from the Garleans side and without the surrounding relationships to mold him into what the WoL is ( a super warrior who shows up to save the day, from their pov you're a super weapon that shows up and annihilates all of them and their friends just like Zenos ).
It's pretty obvious that's what the devs were going for when you look at him from Asahi's and the other Garlean soldiers pov in Stormblood and the whole body-swap sequence, he's like a perversion of us.
If you actually paid attention in the story you'll know that the WoL isn't exactly innocent when it comes to pretty blindly slaughtering people en masse or just based on the word of someone, we're pretty blood thirsty ourselves ( especially when it comes to beast races or anything we see as '' evil '' ) .
Makes perfect sense as a nemesis but people treated him like '' the main villain '' which I think was a mistake.

I think he fit really well in this expansion especially as a nihilistic nemesis which is the same but also the direct opposite of the WoL.
As someone that enjoys challenges in games I think he was partly also meant to be a reflection of the player ( people who do Savage, Extremes and Ultimates at least ), which also plays into the WoL as a thrill seeker.
Zenos is basically us and the WoL at our core without all of the surrounding stuff like connections to others and restraint.
Don't most people basically play games to fight and to kill? There's a reason why violence is the overwhelmingly most popular gameplay style that basically everything revolves around.
He's just a more raw and honest reflection of that part of us in the setting and also us as players of games.
We pretend to be all civilized but we still indulge in violence for entertainment and have with real violence historically too and tbh probably would today if more extreme violence was legal too.

Zenos's presence and role in the story makes a whole lot of sense with his character he's basically a story skipper who gives zero shits and just wants to fight you.
The Ancients were always what the overarching story revolved around it was never about him.
And tbh Zenos still had more depth as a character than most video games villains did, just because he didn't have soap opera storyline meant to make us sadge about him doesn't mean that there was nothing to his character.
He was a very reasonable and predictable villain that couldn't be reasoned with, but he was reasonable and was fully aware of what he was doing and unapologetic about it.
In a game full of liars he was probably one of the most honest character lol.

Alot of people miss this about Zenos and call him boring when he's probably one of the better characters in game. The way they used him in the Garlemald section of Endwalker was poetry in motion and I think alot of people considerably failed themselves in missing the timing of all of it. If people revisited the Endwalker Story, I believe some interesting points could be made in favor of Zenos as a character. Post Elpis portion, we're left off with the question from Hermes / Meteion of "What does it mean to live" or "What is the meaning of life". The answer Hermes posed to the Meteia to find and ultimately their conclusion based off what they saw was just for all to wish for death or the end.

Fast forward alil, we have Zenos save a refugee (perhaps, just for sport but who knows) and approach the group. When Jullus confronts him on what the meaning of all this was and the massacre of the Garlean people that he semi-ignited, Zenos counters with quite a profound comment, unbefitting of his character till that point, that everyone must decide what they live for. Something that Meteion only truly understands AFTER your confrontation in the The Final Day.

This was a poetic use for the character considering Zenos was someone that uptil he met you and battled with you the last two times, did not HAVE a reason to his life persay and found it largely boring, in his own words. Thus the growth that has come over Zenos since your fight has somehow found him having the answer to Hermes question, despite the fact that hes murdered heavily. Hermes was hoping that by finding said answer, he would desway his people on the use and deconstruction of their creations simply because it didn't serve a purpose to humankind, but Zenos has rarely tried to do anything to serve mankind.

I found that personally incredibly well done and well timed, both as a counter reflection point and answer. I think that is why the WoL gets stunned for a second right after he says that. Cause it is definitely astounding that based off history, he came to that conclusion.

[van_arn]

Emoji kissy face I will never forget our time alone together, Zenos.

[PaulH]

+1 liked Zenos i thought he bought an interesting dynamic to the story over his arc as he was different to the usual encounters we had which was actually a refreshing change from the very typical. I hope we get some more information i feel like there are incomplete details to his character and our interaction but totally fine if there isn't more.

[Fyffer]

I hated him so much. He didn't die nearly soon enough. From the way they wasted our time with unwinnable fights with him to them giving him the artificial echo and Zenos using it far better than us with the real echo in a fraction of the time, he was awful. Doing the worst things he could just to get our attention, like some attention starved psychopath child.

Had I the option, I would have killed myself there at the end instead of giving him his pathetic fight. Just so he'd be stuck there knowing he'd never get what he wanted. Forever.

Also, "In from the Cold" was really gross.

[Shuuli]

I know this was not the point but the only Coheed and Cambria song I knew was Welcome Home, but this one is good to. I like.

[Faust1105]

I know this was not the point but the only Coheed and Cambria song I knew was Welcome Home, but this one is good to. I like.

Huge fan of Coheed myself, so glad to see! ^_^ Thanks for watching

[Garet]

Yeah, it's easy to see how scary we are from the pov of those who aren't on our side ( doesn't mean they're evil either ).
I mean, there's a dungeon where we're told to go and kill a mine full of slaves early on and we kinda just go and massacre beast tribe people just because we're told to.

The WoL is good at heart but I also think that it's pretty clear that we're also very quick to do some pretty heinous stuff.
The faction leaders aren't exactly guilt-free either but we still consider them good people and do what they say without questioning it a lot of the bad stuff they've done is stuff we've been the enablers of.
Our characters are basically adrenaline junkies who over time have become more responsible due to the people around us.
Zenos was just a lot more self-aware about it and unapologetic he didn't need a reason while it could be argued that a lot of the '' adventures '' we've had have just been excuses to kill people who don't necessarily deserve it and in some cases have done no wrong.

Edit: Kinda reminds me a little of in Mass Effect how people glorified certain Renegade options like punching an annoying reporter in the face in public and generally just abusing the Spectre status.
People are totally fine with it and still consider Sheperd a good person.
Unless he's full Renegade I guess but I think most would still consider him good in the grand scheme of things.

I thought it was cool that Zenos was a lot more honest about it there were just no excuses or dumb attempts at rationalizing it which we ultimately do all the time in games and often in real life even.
A lot of people condone violence irl just out of spite for even rather minor things.

Yea I think Zenos is what a true neutral in D&D would look like. He really does not care about good or evil. Just what he wanted to do and he will do everything to get it. He even stopped the Black Rose so he can wait for us to come back and challenge him again fearing the Black Rose would kill us and any future potential challengers.

I sure hope he comes back. I think although the ending was really awesome with our duel with him, it was a bit too short. I think more could be done with his character.

[Garet]

Alot of people miss this about Zenos and call him boring when he's probably one of the better characters in game. The way they used him in the Garlemald section of Endwalker was poetry in motion and I think alot of people considerably failed themselves in missing the timing of all of it. If people revisited the Endwalker Story, I believe some interesting points could be made in favor of Zenos as a character. Post Elpis portion, we're left off with the question from Hermes / Meteion of "What does it mean to live" or "What is the meaning of life". The answer Hermes posed to the Meteia to find and ultimately their conclusion based off what they saw was just for all to wish for death or the end.

Fast forward alil, we have Zenos save a refugee (perhaps, just for sport but who knows) and approach the group. When Jullus confronts him on what the meaning of all this was and the massacre of the Garlean people that he semi-ignited, Zenos counters with quite a profound comment, unbefitting of his character till that point, that everyone must decide what they live for. Something that Meteion only truly understands AFTER your confrontation in the The Final Day.

This was a poetic use for the character considering Zenos was someone that uptil he met you and battled with you the last two times, did not HAVE a reason to his life persay and found it largely boring, in his own words. Thus the growth that has come over Zenos since your fight has somehow found him having the answer to Hermes question, despite the fact that hes murdered heavily. Hermes was hoping that by finding said answer, he would desway his people on the use and deconstruction of their creations simply because it didn't serve a purpose to humankind, but Zenos has rarely tried to do anything to serve mankind.

I found that personally incredibly well done and well timed, both as a counter reflection point and answer. I think that is why the WoL gets stunned for a second right after he says that. Cause it is definitely astounding that based off history, he came to that conclusion.

You give a pretty insightful post. I guess in a way Meteion and Zenos can be a counterpart to each other as well. Both searching for the answer to life, but while Meteion flew straight up as a creation of an ancient, Zenos walked around to find the answer and grew up in the process while Meteion just straight up despaired.

[nighttimebunny]

So you come to a TRIBUTE thread to post your unwanted hate and you're the one who calls Zenos an "attention starved psychopath child"? That's ironic. You know what's "really gross"? You say they wasted your time with unwinnable fights, but YOU willingly waste your time on hating Zenos. He's just a fictional character but you Zenos haters are all crazier than him in real life, which is scary. If you were better than Zenos, then you would respect the fact that people like different things and let us celebrate him in peace.

I think it’s the same few people who post very long hate comments on EVERY SINGLE ZENOS POST that i’ve seen (as a fan of him, I tend to look at a lot of posts about him.) Devoting so much time, energy, and being so rude to others over a character in a game that you “hate” is a huge red flag to me. I honestly think that these people hate-obsessing over a character have some issues to work through, and should probably be ignored, lest we egg them on further and give them more reason to continue embarrassing themselves.