Zenos: The Big Bad (The Feedback Thread, Part 1)

[Cilia]

I think Zenos can be very interesting, if you actually try to understand him.

He's not entertaining, sympathetic, tragic, redeemable, or particularly complex, but if you actually try and get into his headspace, try to understand why he says and does the things he does, there's more to him than a psycho killer.

tl;dr: For all his physical power Zenos is a poster boy for mental illness.

[Lauront]

I think Zenos can be very interesting, if you actually try to understand him.

He's not entertaining, sympathetic, tragic, redeemable, or particularly complex, but if you actually try and get into his headspace, try to understand why he says and does the things he does, there's more to him than a psycho killer.

tl;dr: For all his physical power Zenos is a poster boy for mental illness.

He still isn't interesting to me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ There's plenty of characters you can reduce to poster boys for mental illness. Doesn't add much for me. Could just be that it doesn't translate well to this medium as someone else mentioned.

Let's talk about the air of mystery, because that's one thing people seem to be taking for granted. We all assume that we have Zenos pegged, down, and ready to be butchered. I don't think so. When he lost to us while he was controlling Shinryu, controlling a god, he smiled. Then he killed himself. He wanted to leave the stage. He even has lines about, "There upon the stage I stood, prepared to take my final bow, only to find out the finale was but an intermission..."

He's got the air of mystery. Why was someone who was satisfied so completely, willing to come back to life in another body, and then seek out their old body? Why not drift off to oblivion? In this cavalcade of science experiments and body augmentations, what did Emet-selch do, that makes Zenos see the Final Days of Amaurot? Why does love and the other pleasures of the flesh seem lowly and hold no interest for him? When did he transcend man and become inhuman?

And it's not that people aren't allowed to dislike people, but it's the commonly held opinion, view, and feeling. People willingly post their dislike of Zenos all of the time, mostly to accolades, as if people need to justify disliking him. It becomes a little Zenos hate party, and that's fine. I just think it's shortsighted.

Also, I'd hate to have had a whole expansion of Elidibus. He was literally a plot device, the way people describe Zenos, but without anything beyond just being a white robed Ascian for a long time. I actually didn't really care for 5.3. To me, that was a patch that was more about giving Catboi Sage Deluxe a means to show off and play center stage. As he ever was, Elidibus's role could have been filled by any Ascian, and it would have been just as compelling.

Compared to a character whose sole purpose is to take on Zodiark's power as a justification to fight him (one of the two at any rate), I'd say they're not really the same. Elidibus was always different to the other Ascians for the fact that he was preoccupied with the balance between light and dark (itself peculiar given that they represent darkness), and claimed closer proximity to Zodiark's will than the rest, which made it even stranger. The entire plot of the story revolves around the war of the supposed gods of light and dark. That puts him at a very central position in it and potentially privy to knowledge the other Ascians were not. He also took a contrary stance to the other Ascians in his interest in the "gifted", was implied to have objections to harm coming to Minfilia via Nabriales, was the only one who initially approached the MC in a non-confrontational manner, had implied if the truth of the world were known the conflicts would cease and as things progressed, there were hints that he had insight into what Hydaelyn's summoners had intended, by the end of 5.0. If anything, what rendered him harder to write was Emet's introduction. But there were plenty of deeper mysteries there to build upon should they have wished to, ones feeding off the game's central conflict and could get to the bottom of the Ascians' core motivations as well as their god's. We can say with the benefit of hindsight that his plotline could be fitted to any other (unsundered) Ascian, but really, that's besides the point that it was in him that those plot points existed until they made the decision to use Emet for a chunk of them, presumably because of the way they had written Elidibus's role in 4.1 onwards. I've mixed feelings on 5.3 (and yes, I'm no catboi sage fan), although there's aspects of it in how they built Elidibus's background that I liked.

With Zenos, they all mostly resolve to the Resonance. There's some minor questions around how that functions, but even the vision of the Final Days is potentially tied to his Ascian lineage. And yet, everyone has such visions seared into their soul provided the right impetus to unlock them. All the same, we'd likely require some other party to explain all that (like Fandaniel.) They could build a deeper background for Zenos, but why do so if they've got Fandaniel for that and when they said they've no intention to? The way things are going, it is Fandaniel on whom the mystery is focused.

[Vyrerus]

He also took a contrary stance to the other Ascians in his interest in the "gifted", was implied to have objections to harm coming to Minfilia via Nabriales, was the only one who initially approached the MC in a non-confrontational manner

He blasted Minfilia with a ray of darkness, and then lead us on a wild goose chase into the desert, where he threw demons and lesser Ascians at us in droves. Not exactly, "non-confrontational."

I'm sure Fandaniel will have his own mysteries, and he may even get center stage, but they have to give Zenos some more dialogue if he's going to be around, and this will have them expound on him in some form. And I wonder how they will choose to expound on him.

[Alleo]

I think Zenos can be very interesting, if you actually try to understand him.

He's not entertaining, sympathetic, tragic, redeemable, or particularly complex, but if you actually try and get into his headspace, try to understand why he says and does the things he does, there's more to him than a psycho killer.

tl;dr: For all his physical power Zenos is a poster boy for mental illness.

Seeing how the devs stated that he was created to be pure evil and not sympathetic at all, a character for people to hate, I kinda wonder if they ever intended for him to be seen through the lenses of mental illness. I mean you can I guess but as someone that is more towards "no matter the past that does not take away from your actions" I honestly dont really care if he migth have some mental illness he is still a horrible person that slays his own underlings for petty reasons. That kills his own father and that just destroyed a whole huge city because he does not care.

Also I am not sure that if I had a similiar illness (is it depression?) I would like to have someone like him as a poster boy for that and be one of the possible only "interesting" character traits for him. I mean we had someone like Emet that seemingly suffered from some cases of depression but he was more than that. And he was sympathetic in some way.