Zodiark's Presentation in EW

[Denishia]

I can already assume that this won't be a popular opinion, but I figured, hey, why not make my own thread in which most commenters refute the OP.

But I wanted to gush about how Zodiark was presented and handled in EW. Exceeded my expectations.
After the initial shock that his trial was the 83 instead of the 87 or 89 that I was expecting (did anyone think he'd be the final boss?), I was in giddy delight at how ...anticlimatic but in a satisfying way he was. Zodiark was nothing more than the giant well of aether and desire to stop the destruction caused by the Final Days. A glorified aetheric magnetic field protecting the planet from cosmic radiation with evil intent. And that fits with what we learned in Shadowbringers - he's only a primal, if one with a vastly larger quantity of aether than the ones we faced so far, so he's comparable to Eden (or Phoenix as we also learned in Coils) in how it is through the flooding of aether into the land leads to the rejuvenation of planetary life. But that how Zodiark operates isn't something completely different from these previous examples.
That Zodiark was never meant to address the root cause of the Final Days, but be the effective cure for the effects of the Final Days but to do so in a resource hogging way and one that kicks the can down the road by not address or offering a solution to the cause. Which feels extremely realistic to the real world, even if one discounts that his creation was a rush job under pressure.

And with the heart [Elidibus] missing, that Zodiark was mostly void of personality and direction allowing Fandaniel to mold it. I liked that! Sure, the Fandainel-Zodiark was akin to piloting a suit, perhaps - but also that we know from established primal lore that while each time a primal is summoned they share characteristics, but the will of the summoner can influence their behavior (Ga bu and Titan). With Elidibus detached from Zodiark and then killed, there was this weird Schrodinger's Cat vibe to Zodiark himself, almost this feeling of why was he still manifesting as a summoned being instead of returned to the Lifestream.

But I like even back in ARR there was this question of why did the Ascians worship Zodiark in the first place/what was the point of him, and that Shadowbringers answered that by establishing the Final Days and thus making Zodiark himself secondary to the actual enemy of the cause of the Final Days (Meteion being a more fleshed out and fully realized Necron, especially with how the Z/H and Ascian plot mirrors FF IX was another realization that made me beam with delight). Therefore I adore that Zodiark's role in Endwalker's narrative was not lingered on and addressed so quickly instead of overstaying its importance. To me, we got exactly the amount of Zodiark that we needed. But I know that feeling is subjective.

Plus, hey, the Amano artwork recreation was nice too (and Hydaelyn even better).

[Anonymoose]

I can already assume that this won't be a popular opinion

NGL, going by a lot of recent posts you're probably right... All the more reason to make the most of my post! \o/

I went into Endwalker expecting (more "hoping", really) that after all the Zenos / Fandaniel build-up they'd get swept off the table for Zodiark, in the end, but I couldn't figure out how they were going to do it. The void was useless, his heart Elidibus was dead, all the Originals were dead, Sabik was in the wind. How do even you get out of that?

It turns out you don't! HA!

I didn't expect Fandaniel to be playing his ambition straight at all, so I was surprised/amused/impressed when he declared himself Amon (another oddity we expected more from back in the day) to pre-subvert the Fandaniel identity and any possibility of lingering effects of tempering. Solid defying of expectations, imho. To a degree, so was Zodiark's re-writing of the laws being tied to his eternal existence. "No Ontological Inertia" there was an unexpected card to play, given the circumstances, but the new info made it work.

Even the 11th hour Final Fantasy swerve of declaring the Ascians small potatoes and focusing entirely on the Sound was at least quasi-rooted in things we knew we'd be addressing.

I have a few axes to grind with Endwalker as a pedantic loremonger, but it did most of what I thought it made sense to do and addressed most of what I thought it'd make sense to address while at the same time subverting my expectations by quite a wide margin. I like being wrong if the right things aren't ignored.

Sacrificing Zodiark as a major plot device seems worth the cost, especially to keep Elidibus / Emet-Selch on top of the Ascian arc climax.

[Atamis]

I certainly expected him to be a final boss, or at least later into the story. I expected to go to the moon, prevent the barrier from falling, and have a proper fight with him at a later date. I actually said out loud "Really we're doing this now!?" when the trial opened.

I have nothing really bad to say about it. It does make sense as we've effectively spend the entire time since ARR dismantling him and his supporters. I just expected more if a fight.

[RyuDragnier]

I think everybody said that Atamis. Nobody expected it. XD

[Denishia]

What they did with Zodiark surprised me in how much it actually didn't surprise me, if that makes sense? I felt in my gut that there was no way that Zodiark was 'Final Boss' material, and I guessed/hoped that if we did fight Hydaelyn in Endwalker, it was either an outright test of our strength to prove that we were strong enough to fight Zodiark and then whatever the Final Days cause was (I was mostly right about this) or a fight against Hydaelyn to change her mind that we would be strong enough to defeat them and that she needed to have faith in our abilities and give us her trust (which, turns out, she had more trust in the mental/emotional/physical strength of Sundered life and the WoL as its representative than she did in herself, nice). So I was expecting the order to be swapped. But doing more with Zodiark than they did would have felt like unnecessary padding. We were primed by Shadowbringers to be focused on the Final Days. Zodiark didn't cause the Final Days, nor was he a way to solve it, thus he couldn't take over what our focus had to be. (Does this hilariously make Zodiark even more like Zenos, a mostly flat one-dimensional antagonist that turns out to be the Team Rocket side issue?)

[Cleretic]

I wasn't surprised by fighting Zodiark so early because 'I thought he was the final boss' necessarily, but more because every predictive model anyone had expected Zodiark to be far later (I think the most common prediction put him as the second trial, as basically the equivalent of Shadowbringers' Innocence fight). Which generally led to a response of 'what the hell will the rest of this expansion look like', because... well, everyone was predicting that the 'proper' Mare Lamentorum MSQ leg and Zodiark fight was much later leading into the final act, so now nobody knows what's going on. It's one of the best parts of Endwalker's story, in large part because it completely blows apart any preconceptions that we know what we're getting into.

...but also Zodiark's actual appearance destroyed any notion that the Ascians could ever be heroes. When your god looks like that, you're due for a serious 'are we the baddies' discussion.

[KizuyaKatogami]

I wasn't surprised by fighting Zodiark so early because 'I thought he was the final boss' necessarily, but more because every predictive model anyone had expected Zodiark to be far later (I think the most common prediction put him as the second trial, as basically the equivalent of Shadowbringers' Innocence fight). Which generally led to a response of 'what the hell will the rest of this expansion look like', because... well, everyone was predicting that the 'proper' Mare Lamentorum MSQ leg and Zodiark fight was much later leading into the final act, so now nobody knows what's going on. It's one of the best parts of Endwalker's story, in large part because it completely blows apart any preconceptions that we know what we're getting into.

...but also Zodiark's actual appearance destroyed any notion that the Ascians could ever be heroes. When your god looks like that, you're due for a serious 'are we the baddies' discussion.

What does Zodiark’s appearance have to do with anything? Even the devs said themselves appearances are deceiving regarding the artwork and that there was no good or evil in the art. If anything i’d say Hydaelyn’s appearance both in the art and game are far more scary as they’re pretty stoic and neutral despite the horrific events she’s caused.

As far as his presentation goes, i figured he would be kicking the bucket in one form or another, i didnt expect it to be so soon and i think it couldve overall been better. What was built up for about 10 years ended up turning into a 10 minute ordeal which then was preceded with rabbit party dress up fiasco which....was just a bad pacing issue. I think my biggest gripe however is that both him and Elidibus didnt get any credit whatsoever for essentially saving the world. Instead all of the focus is put on Venat and Hydaelyn where both are regarded as benevolent and Zodiark/Elidibus are reduced to nothing more than an afterthought. Everyone is entitled to their opinions though and its interesting to see how others interpreted it. Im just hoping we get some form of savage fight with him to showcase his actual power.

[Denishia]

It's a visual shorthand for purple = evil in Japanese media, and at no point was I really convinced that the game would reverse Zodiark to be on our side or good - neutral at best, which is what we sort of got with the mindless shell of power, and Zodiark's visuals enforced that. If anything I was shocked at the tentacles grafted onto the Amano 'Demonic Chaos Face', but then I remember the various voidsent who are pure aetheric beings of Darkness and wonder why I was surprised at that element of Zodiark's design.
Personally I thought he was suitably ugly (the barding is cool though), but others thought he looked hot/cool, so everyone wins. The mask during phase one was an odd choice, been then I haven't liked any of the masks in XIV so maybe I'm just not a mask person.

[KizuyaKatogami]

It's a visual shorthand for purple = evil in Japanese media, and at no point was I really convinced that the game would reverse Zodiark to be on our side or good - neutral at best, which is what we sort of got with the mindless shell of power, and Zodiark's visuals enforced that. If anything I was shocked at the tentacles grafted onto the Amano 'Demonic Chaos Face', but then I remember the various voidsent who are pure aetheric beings of Darkness and wonder why I was surprised at that element of Zodiark's design.
Personally I thought he was suitably ugly (the barding is cool though), but others thought he looked hot/cool, so everyone wins. The mask during phase one was an odd choice, been then I haven't liked any of the masks in XIV so maybe I'm just not a mask person.

Right but they even said themselves appearances aren’t everything. I’d say they did a good job of painting Zodiark as pretty good. A being who kept the world safe for thousands of years and also reversed the effects of the final days thus restoring the planet to its former glory is pretty good in my book, especially when what we're shown of his will basically begs you to put an end to him before he can be abused for evil purposes.A being shattering the world and everyone on it not so much.

[Theodric]

Zodiark was never portrayed as 'evil' and is one of the reasons as to why the Sundered even exist. Both due to reversing the effects of the original Final Days and due to acting as a shield against their return even after the Sundering took place. I didn't find his appearance to be particularly sinister in nature - to me he simply looked powerful and refined and fairly close to how I'd imagine a giant Xaela with a body covered completely in scales.

Let's also not forget that the developers themselves have frequently stated that what is 'good' and 'bad' in the story is very much open to personal interpretation and a matter of perspective.

So, each to their own!