How to fix Zenos one dimentional character

[Lauront]

As far as "absolutely crazy and just wants a sick death" goes Danny at least comes off as far more entertaining than Zenos. Frankly his only good scenes were with WoL at the end of 4.0, and I'm not really sure what they can do with Zenos that isn't just having those exact same moments again. I want to think Ishikawa can do something interesting with him but it seems like the very core concept of his character is so fixed that even if he somehow got some really tragic backstory I don't think he would even care if it was brought up in the present day. I mean this is a guy who had a second chance at life and just decided "Yeah I'll do it all again but even bigger this time."

I really question why they even brought him back. If it was just for WoL to have a rival some new character could be invented that's a better fit, right? People say he's like the perfect foil in that he's kind of the opposite of WoL in every way, but surely an inverse-WoL would work better than an anti-WoL, right? Someone that's more like him in ways that aren't just "yeah he's super strong too". I mean given none of the remaining sundered Ascians have any established character any of them could be made to fit the bill. This is originally what Ardbert and the Warriors of Darkness were, but they were wrapped up (as antagonists anyway) fairly quickly.

I don't know. I like Zenos in some ways, but if the big resolution to the story is just WoL fighting him while he's mantling Zodiark and beating him just concludes the primary plot, that'd be pretty lame and one-dimensional. They'd need to have a frankly ludicrous execution to pull that off and justify it.

They could just kill off Zenos now and nothing of value would be lost. He's at best a lever for Fandaniel, which could be written in other, alternative ways, if they so chose. Which isn't to say I think they'll have Fandaniel outlast him, but between the two, the latter is at least engaging. Zenos both lacks any depth and any charisma and together it makes scenes with him into a slog. I agree with you about inserting a backstory. It sometimes works, for some characters where there may already have been a basis for it, but in his case it will come across as forced and inauthentic. If they were going to recycle a character as a nemesis, they could've just as easily had Lahabrea do it and use the Eyes of Nidhogg as the vehicle for how he restored his full power and goes a little bananas (as opposed to just appearing that way) - that route was always available to them, technically. As things stand, Emet-Selch made for a better "old friend" enemy, as an actual champion of darkness. I see Zenos as little more than a caricature of a certain type of gamer and even so such "meta" things don't do much to amuse me by themselves.

Restoring Zenos was a mistake, as far as I'm concerned. I'm just hoping they find it in themselves to kill him off rather than dragging him out... there's multiple ways they can level up someone like Fandaniel to become a great threat in power terms, especially when we're supposed to believe Ran'jit was one. Maybe find his remaining shards, become unsundered and steal Zodiark's power for himself, or something.