Zenos is... [big fat spoily]

[Haruka_R]

He is a cutie! He is so sweet and does things that may not be 'the good guy way' of doing things but hell if he isn't doing things directly from the heart. He literally sucked up Shinryu draining it's power, he stopped black rose single handedly, he had me at his last words in the royal menagerie. I picked the option to wish to just speak with him for longer even if he didn't have much time left. His last words 'you are my first most cherished friend, and my enemy' just killed me.

The guy flew across the great expanse just to be reunited with us. Zenos, even though aided a bit by the mothercrystal, made the journey in less time and ready to fight for you. When nearly all of your hope is stripped from you, and doubt starts to set in; he busts through space and time and restores your doubt by being in complete disbelief that you have not finished off your prey. This is not only poetic on a ridiculous level, it is also extremely romantic. In his own weird and twisted way.

Probably would have dropped my pants, honestly. But he wanted to fight to the death instead.

Ergo, Zenos loves me. <3

[Sarnai]

The guy flew across the great expanse just to be reunited with us. Only one other creature in the world of FFXIV has braved and accomplished such a feat: Midgarsormr. However, for the latter, it took nearly everything out of him. Zenos, even though aided a bit by the mothercrystal, made the journey in less time and ready to fight for you. When nearly all of your hope is stripped from you, and doubt starts to set in; he busts through space and time and restores your doubt by being in complete disbelief that you have not finished off your prey. This is not only poetic on a ridiculous level, it is also extremely romantic. In his own weird and twisted way.

Probably would have dropped my pants, honestly. But he wanted to fight to the death instead.

The fuy also wanted to kill all of our friends, so we wont be distracted from him by anything. That is also very romantic, love it when my man complains that I have things to do and be happy that aren't him <3

Zenos might've done good and helped us once, but things that he did bad and that led to more problems (my WoL is already traumatized by that body stealing shenanigans, and we're not even starting at stormblood) are piling up.

[eagledorf]

Please don't bring Zenos back, he was a bad character.

SE intended him to be a foil to the WoL, where WoL has experienced many things (heard, felt, and thought through), experienced loss, and found what is life-affirming in spite of it to become a true ubermensch, Zenos is a spoiled little princeling who got bored of his easy live and decided nothing other people value matters. Never having suffered he doesn't understand the value of the empire he's supposed to protect and he gives up the tremendous strength of an empire for the much smaller strength of a rogue killer. He's like an animal, driven entirely by desire, but worse because he has a human mind that he's not bothering to use.

Up to there is fine, many works of fiction like Crime and Punishment and Ropes have featured the delusional spoiled kid who thinks himself superior to others, but the difference is Zenos is fulfilled at the end of the story. He gets exactly what he wants, an epic duel with the WoL.

If Zenos and WoL both get what they want in the end equally even though the WoL has greater strength and a higher purpose it's like Meteon was right all along. It doesn't matter how you live your life, you might as well just be dead. Zenos, or at least his final cutscenes, completely ruined the philosophical thesis of the story (unless I misunderstood it and it's actually nihilist). I hope he never comes back, not even in some kind of afterlife thing.

[Raven2014]

Life is often twisted. Reading the history book it feels like when he was alive, General Patton was more appreciated by the Nazis then his own compatriots, who seemed to prefer exploit his controversial instead.

I don't really care that much about zenos, but one thing click the most for me is ironically depiste all the pretty word of having faith in the WoL, I felt no one understand and believe our ability more than him. His faith in our abilities is pretty much ironclad.

[TaleraRistain]

Please don't bring Zenos back, he was a bad character.

SE intended him to be a foil to the WoL, where WoL has experienced many things (heard, felt, and thought through), experienced loss, and found what is life-affirming in spite of it to become a true ubermensch, Zenos is a spoiled little princeling who got bored of his easy live and decided nothing other people value matters. Never having suffered he doesn't understand the value of the empire he's supposed to protect and he gives up the tremendous strength of an empire for the much smaller strength of a rogue killer. He's like an animal, driven entirely by desire, but worse because he has a human mind that he's not bothering to use.

Up to there is fine, many works of fiction like Crime and Punishment and Ropes have featured the delusional spoiled kid who thinks himself superior to others, but the difference is Zenos is fulfilled at the end of the story. He gets exactly what he wants, an epic duel with the WoL.

If Zenos and WoL both get what they want in the end equally even though the WoL has greater strength and a higher purpose it's like Meteon was right all along. It doesn't matter how you live your life, you might as well just be dead. Zenos, or at least his final cutscenes, completely ruined the philosophical thesis of the story (unless I misunderstood it and it's actually nihilist). I hope he never comes back, not even in some kind of afterlife thing.

I used to think the same thing about Zenos but then with EW I liked the character development I saw and tried to give him another chance. I heard about that The Hunt Begins story that was out there and read that and some other things. I'm not sure he was just a spoiled princeling as we thought. His father held his dog in higher regard than his own son. He knowingly had someone who he knew hated his empire teaching his son swordsmanship. He seems to have raised Zenos to just be a tool for the empire. It's no wonder the guy hates it and has no qualms about seeing it burned to the ground. SE just hasn't really shown this in game. This came up in the other thread about the EW story. They give us background and understanding so we can at least see the point of view of our villains. With Zenos, they have curiously done very little of that. You have to go seek out things like that story.

I also don't think he was fulfilled. He got his fight, but I didn't get the impression he got out of it what he thought he would. Which could be a good jumping off point for further character development.

[Adeacia]

Life is often twisted. Reading the history book it feels like when he was alive, General Patton was more appreciated by the Nazis then his own compatriots, who seemed to prefer exploit his controversial instead.

I don't really care that much about zenos, but one thing click the most for me is ironically depiste all the pretty word of having faith in the WoL, I felt no one understand and believe our ability more than him. His faith in our abilities is pretty much ironclad.

"I take it this is your prey. But why does it still live surely it is no match for you." Zenos is so confident in our power that he just casually says: "Oh that thing that's a threat to the entire universe is your target? Why isn't it dead yet? This is YOU we're talking about." He feels that we are so powerful that anyone not himself shouldn't stand a chance against us.

I thought I knew where they were going with Zenos. I was wrong. Though I recall Yoshi-P saying he wanted to subvert our expectations for the story. He certainly did that based on the comments I see all over the forums these days. I'm ok with how it ended up.

[Rokke]

His father held his dog in higher regard than his own son.

Is this in regards to Victor? The hunting mount is a show dog that Varis once judged.

[Iscah]

Though I recall Yoshi-P saying he wanted to subvert our expectations for the story.

I do remember him saying that – and I have to wonder if it might be detrimental to the plot at times. Does he look at a draft script built on fleshing out everything we were previously told and say "no, everyone expected that, so we should overturn it"? It's just speculative but it could explain a few things not lining up well with past information.

[ElysiumDragon]

During the cutscene, the camera focuses on Zenos's body, and you notice that he stops breathing. He's dead, stuck at the edge of creation with no aether, and there's a non-zero chance he won't be reborn because he isn't close enough to the Lifestream. He's either dead and being dissipated in the Lifestream, or dead and not being reborn at all. If there's unknown Reaper lore about the avatars Reapers form bonds with being able to hijack corpses, then that's fair enough (if annoying), but the explicit lack of this information suggests to me the devs have no intention of bringing him back.

[NegativeS]

I don't really care that much about zenos, but one thing click the most for me is ironically depiste all the pretty word of having faith in the WoL, I felt no one understand and believe our ability more than him. His faith in our abilities is pretty much ironclad.

In a way, that makes him the antithesis of the Scions.

Scions: "You're the only one who can do this, but please pace yourself because we don't want you to die!"
Zenos: "You're the only one who can do this... so why isn't it done yet? We got better s#!t to do."