I dunno. Killing a fellow Scion just for the sake of drama and character death would be equally lame for me, but I admit that I just can't see stuff like that as positive in terms of story-telling or tension making or so anymore. It rather makes me annoyed at the writers *lol*. Though to be fair, back when FF was still fresh and all, yes, General Leo's death and other big villain-y things Kefka had had indeed the desired effect. HW-Bro's death was also quite touching, but I honestly completely forget about the culprit or their name during the course of the game

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As for the rat-brother of Tsuyu: I laughed at his terrible over the top acting skills, but yeah, the sudden creepy eyes and such were irky
As for Zenos antagonizing the WoL. No. Just no. I see where you want to go with it, but he's already turned into a metally-sick stalker with yandere tendencies and free power-up with no effort behind it just to cotinue stalking us for "BATTLE MIH!!!!!"