Tired of Zenos (spoilers)

[Kyu-Momo]

With any luck, he'll be the stepping stone to the actual end boss/threat.

This is what I'm hoping for.

[Naoki34]

Zenos was a terrible bad guy, he was impressing by his relentless power during Stormblood's MSQ, but in the end, with his selfish aim to have fun in front of a powerful enemy, and making a complete mockery of the symbolism of the sacred katana of the samurai spirit, just by the fact that he had 3 of them. No need for 2 swords for the samurai's code. The nito style (2 swords) invented by Miyamoto Musashi was considered dishonourable before he was later taken as a national hero.

His end was +/- epic by his fighting, and he committed suicide instead of assuming. And SE thought he was too cool, as a villain let's make him come back thanks to the scenarium. He transcends death thanks to a technological copy of the power of the WoL.

And here he is as the headliner for Endwalker, it doesn't hype me at all, and even less with the other old joker type cheap joker, having as appearance and body that of Stormblood's worst second villain...

It's really not great. SE showed us that he was able to make cool baddies with great ideals for their races in Shadowbringer, but here...

No hype, although I'm curious to know what the WoL is going to do on the moon !

[Nothv13]

Zenos was a terrible bad guy, he was impressing by his relentless power during Stormblood's MSQ, but in the end, with his selfish aim to have fun in front of a powerful enemy, and making a complete mockery of the symbolism of the sacred katana of the samurai spirit, just by the fact that he had 3 of them. No need for 2 swords for the samurai's code. The nito style (2 swords) invented by Miyamoto Musashi was considered dishonourable before he was later taken as a national hero.

His end was +/- epic by his fighting, and he committed suicide instead of assuming. And SE thought he was too cool, as a villain let's make him come back thanks to the scenarium. He transcends death thanks to a technological copy of the power of the WoL.

And here he is as the headliner for Endwalker, it doesn't hype me at all, and even less with the other old joker type cheap joker, having as appearance and body that of Stormblood's worst second villain...

It's really not great. SE showed us that he was able to make cool baddies with great ideals for their races in Shadowbringer, but here...

No hype, although I'm curious to know what the WoL is going to do on the moon !

Him making a mockery of something like the Katana is fits him though. It is literally just a tool to him. It has no meaning to him beyond that. It fails him, hence he breaks it to find another better tool.

[MarsAstro]

And here he is as the headliner for Endwalker, it doesn't hype me at all, and even less with the other old joker type cheap joker, having as appearance and body that of Stormblood's worst second villain...

It's really not great. SE showed us that he was able to make cool baddies with great ideals for their races in Shadowbringer, but here...

No hype, although I'm curious to know what the WoL is going to do on the moon !

You're forgetting something.

Remember the trailer for Heavensward? Remember how much allusion there was to the Holy See and the Archbishop being the main villains and final boss? Absolutely zero.
Remember the trailer for Stormblood? Remember how much allusion there was to Zenos and Shinryu being the main villains and final boss? Absolutely zero.
Remember the trailer for Shadowbringers? Remember how much allusion there was to Emet-Selch being the main villain and final boss? Absolutely zero.

So what makes you think the teaser trailer for Endwalker gives you any information of who will be the main villains for the expansion? Do you really think that after all these years of being careful with spoilers and not giving away too much plot in advance, Square-Enix would suddenly begin a tradition of giving away the main plot and headliners in a teaser trailer for the finale of the story?

My point being, be patient. We don't know anything about where this is going yet. All of us used to think Ascians were boring and generic too, then Shadowbringers happened. Let's not be too quick to judge Endwalker when we haven't even seen its full trailer or Shadowbringers final patch yet.

[Jeeqbit]

Remember the trailer for Heavensward? Remember how much allusion there was to the Holy See and the Archbishop being the main villains and final boss? Absolutely zero.
Remember the trailer for Stormblood? Remember how much allusion there was to Zenos and Shinryu being the main villains and final boss? Absolutely zero.
Remember the trailer for Shadowbringers? Remember how much allusion there was to Emet-Selch being the main villain and final boss? Absolutely zero.

Although you are right about the cinematic trailers, the launch trailers that show game footage usually show the main villain at the end. In fact they spoil it quite a bit as you can see at these links (spoiler warning).

https://youtu.be/TGFZ6RJqTWY?t=284
https://youtu.be/qBEvWWdKOBA?t=306
https://youtu.be/CxHSSRjFH14?t=234

https://youtu.be/UmQm76wFfKk?t=319

[MarsAstro]

I do agree with that "we have to be patient" part", but to be fair since endwalker is the finale (going to wrap us the HvZ saga), we already knew the key players. The big bads are Zenos, fandaniel, and zodiark (even though he's more neutral in some sense). Unless they pull a "sike!", it's almost sure we're going to deal with them. I would be happy if I was wrong, since I don't want Zenos to be the final boss, but the way they set up things... It's very likely he's the focus of endwalker.

We know Zenos and Fandaniel will have key parts, sure, but we don't know they will be the big bads. In fact, they've already said Fandaniel is not the final boss. I also don't think they've been setting up for Zodiark being the big bad, because basically all of Shadowbringers was about adding nuance to the "light vs dark" part of the story, so I'd be surprised if they go the "Hydaelyn good, Zodiark bad" route for the ending. I think if we're getting rid of Zodiark, we're probably also getting rid of Hydaelyn. It would make more sense to go more into the whole implication that the blessing of light is basically us being tempered by Hydaelyn, and couple that with how we just discovered a cure for tempering. Maybe we'll break free of Hydaelyns "blessing" and take her down along with Zodiark. Or maybe they both stick around, or maybe they merge. Either way, after the stage Shadowbringers set it would be weird for them to go the "we gotta fight Zodiark so Hydaelyn and the light can prevail" route.

I also doubt they would make Zenos the final boss again. As I said, it just makes no sense for them to suddenly feature the final boss of the expansion in the teaser trailer when they've always avoided giving away the main conflict in the cinematics so far. Every single patch they make a big deal out of not spoiling who the big bad will be, they always specifically point out how they take care to not give away too much, because they want the players to be surprised and experience the story with no idea what's coming. Why would they suddenly break that principle right at the very end of the saga, in the preliminary teaser for the expansion? I just can't believe these devs, with their history of carefully withholding key information, would heavily feature the main figures and conflict of the end of the story more than half a year in advance. I refuse to believe it.

Although you are right about the cinematic trailers, the launch trailers that show game footage usually show the main villain at the end. In fact they spoil it quite a bit as you can see at these links (spoiler warning).

Yeah, I know, the launch trailers are usually more spoilery. That's not really relevant though, because we don't have a launch trailer for Endwalker yet, we only have a teaser for the cinematic trailer. It wouldn't make sense to compare the Endwalker cinematic teaser to previous launch trailers.

[Bright-Flower]

Zenos was a terrible bad guy, he was impressing by his relentless power during Stormblood's MSQ, but in the end, with his selfish aim to have fun in front of a powerful enemy, and making a complete mockery of the symbolism of the sacred katana of the samurai spirit, just by the fact that he had 3 of them. No need for 2 swords for the samurai's code. The nito style (2 swords) invented by Miyamoto Musashi was considered dishonourable before he was later taken as a national hero.

Back in SB I had a joke in my FC that Zenos was basically a weeaboo. Just taking up katanas because he thought they were neat and not really caring about Doman culture or anything beyond the surface level. Just 'cool sword gonna take this.'

Honestly him using katanas in the first place always felt a little forced to me. Like there wasn't much reason for him to really be drawn to that style of weapon other than 'this is the expansion we're introducing samurai let's give katanas to the bad guy' and I suspect they're going for the same angle with the new dps job and that's the type of weapon he'll replace the katanas with.

[BasicBlake]

Back in SB I had a joke in my FC that Zenos was basically a weeaboo. Just taking up katanas because he thought they were neat and not really caring about Doman culture or anything beyond the surface level. Just 'cool sword gonna take this.'

Honestly him using katanas in the first place always felt a little forced to me. Like there wasn't much reason for him to really be drawn to that style of weapon other than 'this is the expansion we're introducing samurai let's give katanas to the bad guy' and I suspect they're going for the same angle with the new dps job and that's the type of weapon he'll replace the katanas with.

Well he was trained as a Mage Knight in Corvos before he picked up his golf caddy of katana.

So he really did just pick up the weapon “just because”. So you’re not exactly wrong lol.

[Roda]

SE, I'm begging you, model swap zenos with a bear and be done with it. His character is best casted as just a really annoying grizzly bear.

[Kozh]

I do admit that I often see villains like Zenos to be uninteresting and shallow. I do recognize that this type of villain is needed and if they are well-written. However I just can't see myself liking or finding Zenos interesting/compelling, even if the writing is as good as ShB. I just feel like it's not possible to make him interesting without retconing/changing his character from his SB self.

Thw only thing related to Zenos I'm looking forward too, is only why he dreamed the final days and what has emet done to him. I don't care about Zenos himself nor his duel with us. I would be happy if turns out he's the level 83 or 89 trial and not the final boss (very unlikely though).

I'm not even sure myself why I hate him that much. Maybe because he's the combination of all those villain tropes, such as:
1. Villains who only care about battle (battle freak)
2. Emotionless
3. Being super creepy and obsessed with the MC