The Bizarre Lack of Development and Pathos Concerning Zenos [6.0 Spoilers]

[Vuro]

One of FFXIV’s most prominent themes since Heavensward has been compassion and empathy, especially when it comes to those we have considered adversaries in the past. We hold them accountable for their atrocities, but delve deep into what has driven them to such ends, so we understand their state of mind and where they’re coming from even if we don’t agree with what they’ve done. For some baffling reason, Zenos is not afforded this same courtesy, despite being one of the game’s most enduring characters. Other major villains who have wrought comparable/greater harm, namely Gaius, Nidhogg, Emet-Selch, Elidibus, and Fandaniel/Hermes, are developed with significant pathos. So…why not Zenos?

It’s not as if Zenos’ pathos didn't exist prior to 6.0. The Wandering Minstrel confirms Zenos is a “lonely, pitiable man,” and most importantly, we have this canon short story that details what sapped the joy from Zenos’ existence and the abominable treatment he suffered as a child at the hands of his father. Unfortunately, it’s only available in a book that’s out-of-print, and you wouldn’t find it online unless you were specifically digging for it. I was extremely hopeful the story would make an appearance in the game as an echo, as it not only helps explain why Stormblood-era Zenos had abilities unseen by any other Garlean, but how he came to the conclusion that finding a powerful rival to strive against is the only thing that might end the soul-crushing emptiness plaguing his existence. I’m not trying to “woobify” the man or justify his abhorrent actions, but I’m extremely bothered that at no point, do we acknowledge in MSQ that his self-centered behavior and lust for violence are the result of severe trauma and having never been loved or cared for since the day he was born. Even if the player still refuses to pay him any sympathy (which is valid), they at least have a chance to appreciate where he’s coming from. An all-too common complaint is that Zenos lacks depth, and this would have been the ideal means to give him some much-needed development.

And the opportunities to show us such an echo were numerous! We run into Zenos multiple times before the game’s finale. This is exposition we should have gotten back in Stormblood, and it’s galling to see that same mistake repeated in another expansion where he’s made out to be a major player.

His 6.0 treatment is even more vexing when you compare him to his partner in crime. Soon after the WoL’s introduction to Fandaniel, Estinien asks if we’ll try to understand him, like we did with Hades, and all of the possible responses are different shades of, “yes, I’ll try.” Despite the man giving us no indication whatsoever that he craves nothing less than our agonizing death, the game implores us to keep an open mind.

Then we meet him again as Hermes. The game pushes us to bond with him, open our hearts to his inner turmoil, and then the guy whips around and knowingly dooms all of mankind (and likely all life in the universe). He does this based on his slighted moral code as well as his personal interpretation of the data collected during his personal experiment. The act is disgustingly selfish, yet the narrative does little to condemn it. When we run into Hermes-as-Amon again, we still have the option of a compassionate, “Next time, we will find the answer together.” as our goodbye to him. Despite having wrought terror and destruction beyond measure, he’s treated with immense grace and respect as a tragic figure.

Zenos, on the other hand, is absolutely instrumental in our fight against the Endsinger, having flown across the universe to aid us. When it’s all over, we have no option to thank him, nor do we even remotely address that the WoL couldn’t have saved Etheirys without his help. Typically, after a villain assists the WoL (even begrudgingly), we acknowledge their good deed and are given the option of expressing thanks. In this instance, we seemed ready to abandon Zenos to the cold edge of creation, which is jarringly and uncharacteristically callous for FFXIV - yes, Zenos deserves to be punished and the WoL is right to have a personal vendetta against him, but this seemed...somewhat excessive. I personally found that last shot of Zenos’ body left to rot the edge of the universe unexpectedly cruel, and I had difficulty feeling positively throughout the rest of the game’s ending.

I’m also troubled that the writers gave him so many loose threads after Stormblood that ultimately lead to nothing - his dreaming of Amaurot, Elidibus calling him an invaluable test subject, and Fandaniel wondering “Could Emet-Selch have found a way…?” in regards to his dreams. There was so much compelling potential here, and we just…did nothing with any of it.

And to be clear, this is not about “Zenos got what he deserved” or “but he died getting what he wanted,” it’s strictly about the bizarre absence of the insight necessary for us to empathize with the second-most prominent villain in the expansion.

As much as I would love to see more of him (especially as a party member), I’m not sure bringing Zenos back to life a 2nd time could fix this, what with the finality of his last moments. But I do hope that going into the future, all of the above will be addressed in some capacity. For how excellent Endwalker was, it feels like something of an open wound to leave things as they are now.

EDIT: I was hoping this would be obvious without me having to say it outright, but THIS IS NOT A DEBATE CONCERNING WHETHER OR NOT ZENOS DESERVES REDEMPTION. Nowhere in the above am I asking for for the writers to redeem Zenos at all. This is about the game not offering us enough information to understand what led to Zenos becoming the person he is now.

[KageTokage]

I'm still keeping my fingers crossed that they didn't just gloss over some of the missing details and maybe we'll learn the truth about him via some records stowed away in the imperial palace or some such.

[Elysidelphi]

Vuro, what an excellent post! Thank you so much for taking the time and putting in the effort to write all of that. Thank you also for your compassion and understanding for Zenos. It's quite rare to see it, especially publicly.

I agree with everything you said. Zenos deserved so much more. Personally, I believe and hope with all my heart that he will be brought back and given a proper, well-earned, in-depth redemption or rehabilitation arc. It seems to me that the writers have left many unanswered questions about Zenos but also many clues and hints as to how he could be brought back.

Oh by the way, if you like Zenos and want to discuss more about him, I actually recently joined a Discord server that is all about Zenos, about theories and such. Let me know if you want to join!

[Crushnight]

Zenos, on the other hand, is absolutely instrumental in our fight against the Endsinger,

Fine with rest of your post but this is flat out not true.

You can easily write Zenos out of the final boss fight without a change to the story other than Zenos showing up.

We were in a place surrounded by the power of Dynamis, if Thancred can make breathable air in an entire zone, we can create a single platform and we could've done it by drawing on our entire memories from 1.0/2.0 (depending when you started) to present of our journey.

Zenos is a glorified platform that we ourselves could've made if we willed it if the writers had let us but they didn't so Zenos the platform is the result.

Zenos in 6.0 was a superfluous addition that served no narrative purpose other than to give a final fight that didn't even need to exist but did.

Everything he has done since being brought back could've been done by Fandaniel and the plot would be the same.

That has been my issue with Zenos since 4.0, he has been narratively useless and a terrible stain on the writing team for not leaving well enough alone when they should have.

[Anonymoose]

I haven't had an opportunity to put together all my thoughts yet, but I can at least try to get my Zenos-related ones into the same basket to put my own spin on this idea.

I started a thread a while back focused on getting everyone's expectations and opinions in one place because so many threads eventually devolved into bitter Zenos talk. (I think I'm ready to admit out loud more often how frustrated I am that - during Shadowbringers - suddenly 80% of Lore Forum threads would become the same few people passively-aggressively repeating the same few points at each other ad nauseam until almost all the fun-focused and good-faith debaters stopped coming here entirely, but that's a whole other can of worms, lol.)

My opinion after Endwalker? I feel like I lost a bet to Natsuko Ishikawa, fair and square, lol.

Zenos subverted most of my worries about him. He didn't take up Endwalker's oxygen. The story of the world coming together had little to do him. "One guy who wants to fight the Warrior of Light really bad" had nothing to do with people reflecting on their values. He didn't hound us or murder our friends for no reason. Rather, he spent the time between realizing that creating chaos hoping we'd fight him because "that's what a hero would do" wasn't doing eff all for his cause and the end of the story actually reflecting on who we were. He reflected on his goal and how to accomplish it in consistency with his own blend of existentialism and nihilism - life has no meaning but what you make of it, and he didn't make much out of much...except when it came to us.

In Garlemald, I joked, "Dude, if you wanna fight that bad help me kill The Sound and we'll beat each other up." not expecting that to happen.

By the end of the story we had wandered so far away from anything we were thinking about prior to Endwalker that I spent the last dungeon saying to the stream, "What is this about? Why are we here? We already know what Meteion found. The Ascians? Hydaelyn? Zodiark? SMALL POTATOES. All part of a cosmic orchestration challenge existentialism and nihilism and the sad bird girl and now we've reached 'flying space clock' Final Fantasy. I give up. Zenos, come back. Zenos, make it make sense."

And then he came back, lmao.

He reflected on who the Warrior of Light really is, he let us finish our mission entirely, and then he walked up and challenged us at the end of the universe, where no one could see us, where no one would be affected, where no one would ever know, and (A) admitted that he understands that we had no reason to want to fight him before, and (B) suggested we fight for no reason than but that he's more powerful than he's ever been and being an adventurer means taking challenges for the sake of being challenged.

He still hated the world, he still refused to believe it had any value, he was still a monster. But he took the time to understand the Warrior of Light in their proper context.

And I just sat there staring at the screen and was like...

AH, F#$K IT. <slams the first option>

I hate that I love it, if only for the jokes I made along the way coming true and what that did for my personal experience, lmao. With concerns about the appropriate emotional tone and theming of a final chapter of an epic fantasy story out of the way, my concerns with Zenos were limited to "Does his survival add more to the story than undoing his otherwise perfect death at the end of 4.0 took away? Do we get a return on that investment at all?"

Now, I realize that the scene deliberately cut away avoiding showing him dissolve into mist. The guy who came back after almost cutting off his own head. That can only mean they want plausible deniability. Ambiguity. The freedom to choose later whether to say he's dead or was just only-mostly-dead. But please leave him dead. Y'all did the impossible. Leave him be. (Tell me what Emet-Selch did, tho.)

But with regard to specifically what this thread is about, I think we can make it work in the context of what I'm saying:

Over time the player base can let what happened marinate a bit more, and respect a bit more that, sure, Zenos was a lonely, pitiable man who for the most part lived a cold empty life and did horrible things trying to achieve selfish goals ... sure, he was a product of his environment; given the circumstances of his existence and his personal experiences, who else could he have been? ... but in the end he took the time to get what he wanted in an effective way and delivered a memorable moment on his way out the door.

He thought he was our friend in a twisted way. He tried to be a good friend in kind in a twisted way. The sum of all of those parts gives rise to a whole that I think does facilitate its own kind of compassion for him...in a twisted way. One as warped as he was.

[waifugenerator]

How are we cold to Zenos at the end? The first dialogue option is literally us accepting him. He said it himself that a fight to the death is all that he can share with us, by indulging him we're basically returning the favor of helping us defeat the Endsinger. The sly little smile we gave him (if you chose the first option) was the highlight of EW btw

[Theox]

Too much thought for someone so mediocre and unimportant as Zenos. Please don't overcomplicate and don't give more meaning to something that's not complex in the first place. And no, please, for the love of God, don't bring him back. This focus on reforming someone is a bit obsessive. Sometimes people are the way they are and that's it. Why do we feel the need to force an idea of being a "good person" on everybody? If Zenos comes back and becomes another Estinien I swear I'm gonna Kate Marsh.

[Cilia]

Zenos is a simple character, not "morally grey" like so many other characters. So, some people don't like him purely because of that.

That said, I'm fine with how his story ended, but I'm not wholly sure we're done with him if for no reason other than we still don't have a Wind-up minion of Zenos, much less an updated Dress-up one

[marrrow]

But with regard to specifically what this thread is about, I think we can make it work in the context of what I'm saying:

Over time the player base can let what happened marinate a bit more, and respect a bit more that, sure, Zenos was a lonely, pitiable man who for the most part lived a cold empty life and did horrible things trying to achieve selfish goals ... sure, he was a product of his environment; given the circumstances of his existence and his personal experiences, who else could he have been? ... but in the end he took the time to get what he wanted in an effective way and delivered a memorable moment on his way out the door.

He thought he was our friend in a twisted way. He tried to be a good friend in kind in a twisted way. The sum of all of those parts gives rise to a whole that I think does facilitate its own kind of compassion for him...in a twisted way. One as warped as he was.

But that's literally what the point of this thread is: that you shouldn't have to let Zenos marinate in your brain to understand his basic motivations, because that is not how any antagonist post-HW is treated. Why is Zenos the only antagonist who the player is not explicitly asked or expected to empathize with?

[marrrow]

Too much thought for someone so mediocre and unimportant as Zenos. Please don't overcomplicate and don't give more meaning to something that's not complex in the first place. And no, please, for the love of God, don't bring him back. This focus on reforming someone is a bit obsessive. Sometimes people are the way they are and that's it. Why do we feel the need to force an idea of being a "good person" on everybody? If Zenos comes back and becomes another Estinien I swear I'm gonna Kate Marsh.

He's so unimportant that he was a major antagonist in two expansions; yeah, thinking about how & why he was written the way he was written certainly is a pointless exercise