[ENDWALKER SPOILER!] On Zenos

[Aneshda]

Ultimately, I think the mirror comparison falls flat.

He and the WOL share one thing in common, at most, with the love of pushing ones self and seeking out danger/thrills.

For Zenos that's all he is, the only thing that defines him as a person.

For the WOL, it's just one trait among many. My personal interpretation at the ending is that it's the WOL's desire to see their friends again and go back that calls the remote back to them via dynamus, where as Zenos is left alone with nothing else to live for. The just share that one thing in common but because that one thing is all Zenos is he overestimates their actual bond.

It was Zenos who called the remote for the WoL. Go to N-7000 in Ultima Thule and he will tell you that he recieved a Message after an erruption (guess it was after our Fight), which contained only 1 Word, it was an Order "Live".

[SpiritualPotato]

Everything about the Garlean Empire feels underwhelming comparing to other story arcs we have in FF14. Emet-Selch being a interesting character because of being "Emet-Selch" but not being Solus zos Galvus. I have heard that FF14 was decided to end the Hydaelyn and Zodiac arc in 7.0 but because of how well-received ShadowBringer was Yoshi P decided to end the Hydaelyn and Zodiac arc in 6.0. My personal guess is the original 6.0 was going to be a Garlean Empire related arc.

[StealthPaladin]

...Overall, his role in Endwalker played out almost exactly how I was expecting it to; with the only thing that really shook me up being the lengths he went to try to tick us off by attempting to harm our friends using our own body.

The bit where he possessed us WAS a mad twist I did not see coming. That brutal walk as a dying nobody soldier to follow, knowing he could be doing who knows what. That was a cool effect.

[Kordarion]

Everything about the Garlean Empire feels underwhelming comparing to other story arcs we have in FF14. Emet-Selch being a interesting character because of being "Emet-Selch" but not being Solus zos Galvus. I have heard that FF14 was decided to end the Hydaelyn and Zodiac arc in 7.0 but because of how well-received ShadowBringer was Yoshi P decided to end the Hydaelyn and Zodiac arc in 6.0. My personal guess is the original 6.0 was going to be a Garlean Empire related arc.

Can you provide some evidence for this? I keep seeing the 7.0 ending for Hydealyn/Zodiak (also the 6.0 and 7.0 being merged comment) mentioned but never with any link to where this may have originated.

Edit: I'm not trying to be rude or anything, I just keep hearing this with no evidence and am not sure its the case and want to see if there is any proof it is.

[Elysidelphi]

The bit where he possessed us WAS a mad twist I did not see coming. That brutal walk as a dying nobody soldier to follow, knowing he could be doing who knows what. That was a cool effect.

Yeah, that was a really cool twist in the story, followed by a great duty that made me genuinely nervous/afraid for what was going to happen next. Most other duties before that didn't feel so nerve-wracking. I loved the whole experience around this.

[Steelpapercranes]

I fully agree. Having Zenos, well....WIN, get exactly what he wanted, made the entire expansion's plot seem pointless.

If we were going to stop resisting his demands for a "just because" battle and give it to him......why did we resist all this time at all????? Why did we wait to give it to him until AFTER the final days had killed thousands or millions of people and caused their very souls to be destroyed?? It is literally a circumstance in which you have a battle w/ Zenos happening at the worst conceivable time to have it.
I went immediately from crying about my friends and the memories they'd brought back for the lovely ending to going "Huh? What!?! I can't say no?????? I have to give him his stupid rematch after ALL THAT??????" in an instant. We did almost everything we did to avoid the senseless nihilism in this expansion. Isn't making it so that the villain's plan worked kind of undoing...our win? And the whole point of the game?

It wasn't even like a "dark" ending where you were tricked into giving the baddie what he wanted all along. They say "you don't have to do this if you don't want to" and then give you no choice except to say you want to. And I mean sure, fine, roleplay an evil or zenos-like apathetic WoL if you want, but in terms of the story it makes no sense. If WoL agreed with Zenos, everything they've done before this point makes no sense. Comforting scared children and sacrificing yourself nobly to see them and others of the world safe is not how someone who "just lives to kill" acts lmao
To be clear: I like(d) Zenos! I thought he was refreshing. But there's really no way to look at this situation they wrote for him except "Man causes the final days to get a spar, gets his spar. Says he's glad this behavior was rewarded and he got no development in the ENTIRE EXPANSION somehow. More at 8"

[KageTokage]

Zenos explicitly refuted his initial claim back in Stormblood that we in truth exist just to seek out greater foes, instead acknowledging that such thrillseeking is merely a part of who we are as an adventurer...which was basically the extent of his character development, but I wasn't really expecting much in that regard anyways.

We're roped into fighting him because he's more then established what kind of trouble he can cause if he's left to his own devices and with the bigger problem of the Endsinger out of the way, it honestly would've been more out of character to just let him go free.

You could also consider it our moral victory in the end if you choose to believe he was ultimately unsatisfied and simply left with a realization of how empty his existence was.

[CKNovel]

Everything about the Garlean Empire feels underwhelming comparing to other story arcs we have in FF14. Emet-Selch being a interesting character because of being "Emet-Selch" but not being Solus zos Galvus. I have heard that FF14 was decided to end the Hydaelyn and Zodiac arc in 7.0 but because of how well-received ShadowBringer was Yoshi P decided to end the Hydaelyn and Zodiac arc in 6.0. My personal guess is the original 6.0 was going to be a Garlean Empire related arc.

I remember in an interview that we were supposed to finish with Garlemald in a later expansion and that ultimately, 8.0 was supposed to be the end of Zodiark and Hydaelynn.
But I don't have the sources for that... Therefore it remains a "just trust my memory".

But it's easy to see that the end went way too fast.
HW? All areas are tied to Ishgard and its skyes.
SB? All areas tied to Ala Mhigo or the East.
ShB? All Norvrandt.
EW? You're sent everywhere from the extreme west to Thavnair, go to Garlemald in a finger snap, oh boy here comes the moon.

Endwalker is all over the place, Garlemald conquered territory between Eorzea and the capital? No idea what they look like.

[Gemina]

It was Zenos who called the remote for the WoL. Go to N-7000 in Ultima Thule and he will tell you that he recieved a Message after an erruption (guess it was after our Fight), which contained only 1 Word, it was an Order "Live".

He doesn't know about the remote though. I suppose there is a slim chance he was informed by Krile prior to his departure, but we're talking paper-thin there. I think there's all kinds of 'cause and effect' at play. The WoL simply did not deserve to die out at the edge of the universe completely away from everyone and everything she/he loves, and whatever intangible forces are out there made sure that didn't happen.

[Iscah]

It was Zenos who called the remote for the WoL. Go to N-7000 in Ultima Thule and he will tell you that he recieved a Message after an erruption (guess it was after our Fight), which contained only 1 Word, it was an Order "Live".

I don't see that as proof the message came from Zenos. He's stranded on the end of the universe and probably didn't think to bring a radio tuned to alien frequencies.

In fact, the quest where that message is described to us indicates that it is Stigma-1's command to all of the Omicrons

I take it that the "powerful burst of energy" triggering the message was in fact Emet and Hyth flooding the zone with aether and allowing us to reclaim the Scions, which also seems to have affected other beings in the vicinity.

And Stigma-1 of course is the "leader" intelligence at least partly housed in M-017, who was spontaneously caring for the living tree and with whom G'raha had to reason to find our path forward.

It makes far more sense to me that the sending of the message was linked with unentangling the Scions – and perhaps the other beings – from the aether of the world once they were no longer required to hold it together. And certainly fitting with the earlier plot for M-017 to be sending that message.

But it's easy to see that the end went way too fast.
HW? All areas are tied to Ishgard and its skyes.
SB? All areas tied to Ala Mhigo or the East.
ShB? All Norvrandt.
EW? You're sent everywhere from the extreme west to Thavnair, go to Garlemald in a finger snap, oh boy here comes the moon.

Endwalker is all over the place, Garlemald conquered territory between Eorzea and the capital? No idea what they look like.

Stormblood itself has always been complained about for being "all over the place", and now it's an example of being stable...?

That irony aside, I think the further we get into the plot, unless we have the time to devote a whole expansion to a single location (say, if we'd done Ilsabard instead of the First) then I think the grand finale was always going to have to cover a multitude of locations. Otherwise either this hypothetical 6.0 prior to finishing with "7.0: Endwalker" is going to have to go to more obscure places while they still save the big event locations for 7.0 (and people ask "why have we still not seen Thavnair yet?"), or they use those locations in 6.0 and then have to find somewhere else to be the target of the Final Days in 7.0, because apparently it's a rule that the big story events have to happen in new zones.