Did Zenos ruin Endwalker

[Iyrnthota]

I kinda liked Zenos as a part of the story tbh. Like a kind of sociopathic version of you.

I get why other might not have liked it, but personally I thought him quite fun.

[IkaraGreydancer]

Better idea....Zodiark was the Final Boss and at Full power in Vanilla Endwalker in the 1st arc. With Fandaniels big Super secret cool plan being the plot and being further explored in the 2nd arc
Us Killing Zodiark so early and not even at full power after being all hyped up for several years actually hurt the game abit....even if Fandaniels big twist was kind of cool and fun....we were still robed of several years of buildup....Zenos still existing has no effect on that.



Honestly it could have happened....but only if Endwalker was pushed back 10 years, and if the Ascians succeeded in Joining the other worlds.
Man imagine the story if we constantly failed.

Don't think I'm trying to play 5 expansions that end with us failing. So I'd still just say a full Power Zodi ain't possible lol.
I'd also say a Zodi final boss was/is was to predictable. I much prefer how they subverted expectations with him

[Jamini]

Literally what is the point of him existing

Yep.

/thread

[Aelin_Ashryver]

I liked zenos

I like that his motivation was just simple and he didn't care about the morality of it. He wanted the thrill of a good fight and damn everything else. I liked it

[Akibaws]

It's like Majima in Yakuza.

[GaiusDrakon]

I'm pretty sure most view FFXIV as a Final Fantasy game first, and an MMO second. Just about everything is gated behind MSQ progression. I'm not sure why anyone would consider this out of the norm. Perhaps for an MMORPG, but definitely not for a Final Fantasy game.

This is not what anyone thought back during Heavensward and Stormblood. Yoshi P himself has also only ever stated that they had to put in effort to emphasize FF14's identity as a FF on top of the MMO element.

It's only when the soy neckbeard WoW streamers with triple chins started to soy over FF14 when this mentality became normalized.

[Fourbestintoner]

Zenos was the only good thing about this ancients jack off expansion.

[EgilTheStressedMage]

Kefka Palazzo, one of the franchise's best villains from one of the franchise's best told stories, never actually kills any of the main cast. I suppose you could say Shadow dies, but this is up to the player if he does and if so, this death isn't intentional but happenstance due to Kefka destroying the world as it was. Shadow also does not become part of the main cast permanently until you locate him in the World of Ruin. You can't kill a character just for the sake of killing off a character. I get the feeling that this comment is targeted more at the Scions than Zenos.

I don't care who it would be, I wanted something beyond a weather change and forgotten npcs starring and dying in the same expansion becoming worthless gil. I wanted to believe the world was actually ending. I wanted there to be a level of bleak like World of Ruin. I wanted quests to become inaccessible later on if they had no worthwhile rewards (minions, mounts, etc) attached to them, which would be deposited into the Calamity Salvager so you can still get them once you complete a certain quest. I wanted the villain to do villain things and not basically yeet himself out of the story until the final boss, that's terrible writing that only works in E10 rated games or maybe Yoko Taro games. I wanted to feel like trash was going down and would continue to go down. Endwalker failed on all of this.

I am not familiar with this. The only Black Cat I know of is Felicia Hardy from the Marvel Comics. You'll have to use a villain I am more familiar with so I understand better where you are coming from.

Creed Diskenth is Zenos and Train Heartnet is the WoL. It's an anime.

This is fair. It's your view and take on how things played out, and it wasn't to your approval. Nothing wrong with that at all. For me, Zenos coming to the Dead Sun was immensely poetic, and because my WoL is female, I also romanticized it. This is the only way Zenos could ever be romantic due to way his character is. And while I never considered Zenos and my WoL to be lovers in the traditional sense, a love they shared was the thrill of battle, and the two clashing amidst the stars in an illuminated section of outer space at the edge of existence was absolutely epic! My heart melted.

Zenos did nothing to earn that. He vanished from the story after we kill Fandark, gets emasculated by girl Alphinaud, smells the roses, then out of nowhere comes and saves us. Which by the way would require flying all the way to the edge of existence without the Ragnarok. It's literally "I hid myself while I repaired myself.", everything is told but nothing is shown, and when it is shown it's so miniscule that it genuinely does not matter.

I don't think that's trash, but I also know there was no way Zenos would have met your approval with such expectations. I am sorry he fell short of those.

Those expectations are why I enjoy Xenoblade Chronicles, Radiant Historia, Kingdom Hearts II, Dust: An Elysian Tail, both Freedom Planets, both Baten Kaitos, many Final Fantasys, few of the Mana games, few of the Tales games, Devil Survivor 2 Record Breaker, SMTIV and A even though I think A was mid, Soul Hackers, Chaos Rings III, Shadow Man Remastered (The Horror blows), too many Mario games, too many Sonic games, the list goes on. Zenos would have lived up to my standards if they took any inspiration from any other RPGs, hell Live-A-Live without spoiling it would have been good for him. Same with Octopath Traveller 2. Chained Echoes, there's another.

[IkaraGreydancer]

Zenos was the only good thing about this ancients jack off expansion.

Ancients jack off expansion? Huh?
How exactly does this expac "jack them off"? What, by expanding on them as they were?

[Renathras]

Zenos did nothing to earn that. He vanished from the story after we kill Fandark, gets emasculated by girl Alphinaud, smells the roses, then out of nowhere comes and saves us. Which by the way would require flying all the way to the edge of existence without the Ragnarok. It's literally "I hid myself while I repaired myself.", everything is told but nothing is shown, and when it is shown it's so miniscule that it genuinely does not matter.

To be fair, there's a lore point of order here:

When we flew the Ragnarok to Ultima Thul, it...did something. It made some kind of Aether trail there. This is the reason that the Ragnarok now has a superposition of being in both Ultima Thul AND Labyrinthos simultaneously like a Shrodinger's spaceship. But it's also why we can teleport to the Aetherites in Ultima Thul (a similar explanation was given in ShB as to how we could teleport between the Source and the First's Aetherites, so this isn't a "out of butt" pull just for EW). There are some NPCs you can talk to about this in, I believe it's Sharlyan (the little Aetherite research facility one of the NPCs will ask you if there were Aetherites in Ultima Thul and state their conclusion on the matter), and I think one of the Dragons in the Dragonstar quests there mentions something about a possibility our traveling has linked our Aethereal Sea to them so that if they pass on there, they might be rejoined to Midgarsormyr's brood someday in rebirth. Or...something that sounded vaguely akin to that to me, anyway.

[ EDIT: Another note on this - it would also be the reason Emet and Hyth were able to make an appearance, something they wouldn't have been able to do if there wasn't at least a tenuous link to our Aethereal Sea. ]

Point is, when we flew to the edge of reality, we made a trail or wake of lesser resistance and connection that someone could follow with a far lesser energy requirement needed, and one that our soul can use to travel back and forth (hence the Aetherites) easily.

...the only lingering question is who charges us Gil when we arrive there. Unlike the Source's Aetherite reconstruction after the Calamity being expensive and loans from extremely wealthy individuals and corporations that have to be paid back (the lore reason for the Gil charges), which was already a bit stretched but VAGUELY still understandable for the First, there's no one in Ultima that runs the things to pay and collect the money. Maybe the WoL is just so used to doing it, they toss out the Gil there just in case, kinda like the Chocobo statue things for Chocoporting.