Tribute to Zenos

[TaleraRistain]

snip

Then Zenos gives that speech about agreeing with reasons to Jullus and we're just in the background like



Okay apparently I can't remember how to do pictures but that's supposed to be the side eye meme

https://imgur.com/gallery/uVJDXyM

[Faust1105]

Then Zenos gives that speech about agreeing with reasons to Jullus and we're just in the background like



Okay apparently I can't remember how to do pictures but that's supposed to be the side eye meme

https://imgur.com/gallery/uVJDXyM

lol, great meme pic for that XD

[Garet]

Yeah, it's easy to see how scary we are from the pov of those who aren't on our side ( doesn't mean they're evil either ).
I mean, there's a dungeon where we're told to go and kill a mine full of slaves early on and we kinda just go and massacre beast tribe people just because we're told to.

The WoL is good at heart but I also think that it's pretty clear that we're also very quick to do some pretty heinous stuff.
The faction leaders aren't exactly guilt-free either but we still consider them good people and do what they say without questioning it a lot of the bad stuff they've done is stuff we've been the enablers of.
Our characters are basically adrenaline junkies who over time have become more responsible due to the people around us.
Zenos was just a lot more self-aware about it and unapologetic he didn't need a reason while it could be argued that a lot of the '' adventures '' we've had have just been excuses to kill people who don't necessarily deserve it and in some cases have done no wrong.

Edit: Kinda reminds me a little of in Mass Effect how people glorified certain Renegade options like punching an annoying reporter in the face in public and generally just abusing the Spectre status.
People are totally fine with it and still consider Sheperd a good person.
Unless he's full Renegade I guess but I think most would still consider him good in the grand scheme of things.

I thought it was cool that Zenos was a lot more honest about it there were just no excuses or dumb attempts at rationalizing it which we ultimately do all the time in games and often in real life even.
A lot of people condone violence irl just out of spite for even rather minor things.

Yea I think Zenos is what a true neutral in D&D would look like. He really does not care about good or evil. Just what he wanted to do and he will do everything to get it. He even stopped the Black Rose so he can wait for us to come back and challenge him again fearing the Black Rose would kill us and any future potential challengers.

I sure hope he comes back. I think although the ending was really awesome with our duel with him, it was a bit too short. I think more could be done with his character.

[nighttimebunny]

Yea I think Zenos is what a true neutral in D&D would look like. He really does not care about good or evil. Just what he wanted to do and he will do everything to get it. He even stopped the Black Rose so he can wait for us to come back and challenge him again fearing the Black Rose would kill us and any future potential challengers.

I sure hope he comes back. I think although the ending was really awesome with our duel with him, it was a bit too short. I think more could be done with his character.

I totally agree! Perfect example of a neutral character (chaotic neutral imo) I think there are too many mysteries left about him-if there weren’t, I’d say he was done, but they’ve added mysteries such as his dreams and his voidsent that haven’t been solved yet! And cant really be solved without him in the picture

[Faust1105]

Yea I think Zenos is what a true neutral in D&D would look like. He really does not care about good or evil. Just what he wanted to do and he will do everything to get it. He even stopped the Black Rose so he can wait for us to come back and challenge him again fearing the Black Rose would kill us and any future potential challengers.

I sure hope he comes back. I think although the ending was really awesome with our duel with him, it was a bit too short. I think more could be done with his character.

I will say... at the end of our duel, we were both lying there in pretty bad shape. Yet, the WoL still lives - don't see any reason why he might not have made it out as well. Looking forward to his return, there is definitely more to be done with his story.

[Havenchild]

Imo Zenos was a direct reflection of the WoL from the Garleans side and without the surrounding relationships to mold him into what the WoL is ( a super warrior who shows up to save the day, from their pov you're a super weapon that shows up and annihilates all of them and their friends just like Zenos ).
It's pretty obvious that's what the devs were going for when you look at him from Asahi's and the other Garlean soldiers pov in Stormblood and the whole body-swap sequence, he's like a perversion of us.
If you actually paid attention in the story you'll know that the WoL isn't exactly innocent when it comes to pretty blindly slaughtering people en masse or just based on the word of someone, we're pretty blood thirsty ourselves ( especially when it comes to beast races or anything we see as '' evil '' ) .
Makes perfect sense as a nemesis but people treated him like '' the main villain '' which I think was a mistake.

I think he fit really well in this expansion especially as a nihilistic nemesis which is the same but also the direct opposite of the WoL.
As someone that enjoys challenges in games I think he was partly also meant to be a reflection of the player ( people who do Savage, Extremes and Ultimates at least ), which also plays into the WoL as a thrill seeker.
Zenos is basically us and the WoL at our core without all of the surrounding stuff like connections to others and restraint.
Don't most people basically play games to fight and to kill? There's a reason why violence is the overwhelmingly most popular gameplay style that basically everything revolves around.
He's just a more raw and honest reflection of that part of us in the setting and also us as players of games.
We pretend to be all civilized but we still indulge in violence for entertainment and have with real violence historically too and tbh probably would today if more extreme violence was legal too.

Zenos's presence and role in the story makes a whole lot of sense with his character he's basically a story skipper who gives zero shits and just wants to fight you.
The Ancients were always what the overarching story revolved around it was never about him.
And tbh Zenos still had more depth as a character than most video games villains did, just because he didn't have soap opera storyline meant to make us sadge about him doesn't mean that there was nothing to his character.
He was a very reasonable and predictable villain that couldn't be reasoned with, but he was reasonable and was fully aware of what he was doing and unapologetic about it.
In a game full of liars he was probably one of the most honest character lol.

Alot of people miss this about Zenos and call him boring when he's probably one of the better characters in game. The way they used him in the Garlemald section of Endwalker was poetry in motion and I think alot of people considerably failed themselves in missing the timing of all of it. If people revisited the Endwalker Story, I believe some interesting points could be made in favor of Zenos as a character. Post Elpis portion, we're left off with the question from Hermes / Meteion of "What does it mean to live" or "What is the meaning of life". The answer Hermes posed to the Meteia to find and ultimately their conclusion based off what they saw was just for all to wish for death or the end.

Fast forward alil, we have Zenos save a refugee (perhaps, just for sport but who knows) and approach the group. When Jullus confronts him on what the meaning of all this was and the massacre of the Garlean people that he semi-ignited, Zenos counters with quite a profound comment, unbefitting of his character till that point, that everyone must decide what they live for. Something that Meteion only truly understands AFTER your confrontation in the The Final Day.

This was a poetic use for the character considering Zenos was someone that uptil he met you and battled with you the last two times, did not HAVE a reason to his life persay and found it largely boring, in his own words. Thus the growth that has come over Zenos since your fight has somehow found him having the answer to Hermes question, despite the fact that hes murdered heavily. Hermes was hoping that by finding said answer, he would desway his people on the use and deconstruction of their creations simply because it didn't serve a purpose to humankind, but Zenos has rarely tried to do anything to serve mankind.

I found that personally incredibly well done and well timed, both as a counter reflection point and answer. I think that is why the WoL gets stunned for a second right after he says that. Cause it is definitely astounding that based off history, he came to that conclusion.

[Garet]

Alot of people miss this about Zenos and call him boring when he's probably one of the better characters in game. The way they used him in the Garlemald section of Endwalker was poetry in motion and I think alot of people considerably failed themselves in missing the timing of all of it. If people revisited the Endwalker Story, I believe some interesting points could be made in favor of Zenos as a character. Post Elpis portion, we're left off with the question from Hermes / Meteion of "What does it mean to live" or "What is the meaning of life". The answer Hermes posed to the Meteia to find and ultimately their conclusion based off what they saw was just for all to wish for death or the end.

Fast forward alil, we have Zenos save a refugee (perhaps, just for sport but who knows) and approach the group. When Jullus confronts him on what the meaning of all this was and the massacre of the Garlean people that he semi-ignited, Zenos counters with quite a profound comment, unbefitting of his character till that point, that everyone must decide what they live for. Something that Meteion only truly understands AFTER your confrontation in the The Final Day.

This was a poetic use for the character considering Zenos was someone that uptil he met you and battled with you the last two times, did not HAVE a reason to his life persay and found it largely boring, in his own words. Thus the growth that has come over Zenos since your fight has somehow found him having the answer to Hermes question, despite the fact that hes murdered heavily. Hermes was hoping that by finding said answer, he would desway his people on the use and deconstruction of their creations simply because it didn't serve a purpose to humankind, but Zenos has rarely tried to do anything to serve mankind.

I found that personally incredibly well done and well timed, both as a counter reflection point and answer. I think that is why the WoL gets stunned for a second right after he says that. Cause it is definitely astounding that based off history, he came to that conclusion.

You give a pretty insightful post. I guess in a way Meteion and Zenos can be a counterpart to each other as well. Both searching for the answer to life, but while Meteion flew straight up as a creation of an ancient, Zenos walked around to find the answer and grew up in the process while Meteion just straight up despaired.

[Divinemights]

Imo Zenos was a direct reflection of the WoL from the Garleans side and without the surrounding relationships to mold him into what the WoL is ( a super warrior who shows up to save the day, from their pov you're a super weapon that shows up and annihilates all of them and their friends just like Zenos ).
It's pretty obvious that's what the devs were going for when you look at him from Asahi's and the other Garlean soldiers pov in Stormblood and the whole body-swap sequence, he's like a perversion of us.
If you actually paid attention in the story you'll know that the WoL isn't exactly innocent when it comes to pretty blindly slaughtering people en masse or just based on the word of someone, we're pretty blood thirsty ourselves ( especially when it comes to beast races or anything we see as '' evil '' ) .
Makes perfect sense as a nemesis but people treated him like '' the main villain '' which I think was a mistake.

I think he fit really well in this expansion especially as a nihilistic nemesis which is the same but also the direct opposite of the WoL.
As someone that enjoys challenges in games I think he was partly also meant to be a reflection of the player ( people who do Savage, Extremes and Ultimates at least ), which also plays into the WoL as a thrill seeker.
Zenos is basically us and the WoL at our core without all of the surrounding stuff like connections to others and restraint.
Don't most people basically play games to fight and to kill? There's a reason why violence is the overwhelmingly most popular gameplay style that basically everything revolves around.
He's just a more raw and honest reflection of that part of us in the setting and also us as players of games.
We pretend to be all civilized but we still indulge in violence for entertainment and have with real violence historically too and tbh probably would today if more extreme violence was legal too.

Zenos's presence and role in the story makes a whole lot of sense with his character he's basically a story skipper who gives zero shits and just wants to fight you.
The Ancients were always what the overarching story revolved around it was never about him.
And tbh Zenos still had more depth as a character than most video games villains did, just because he didn't have soap opera storyline meant to make us sadge about him doesn't mean that there was nothing to his character.
He was a very reasonable and predictable villain that couldn't be reasoned with, but he was reasonable and was fully aware of what he was doing and unapologetic about it.
In a game full of liars he was probably one of the most honest character lol.

Thank you for the explanation, also it is not my attention to trash this thread. I literally was not seeing why people likes him

[Kolsykol]

Thank you for the explanation, also it is not my attention to trash this thread. I literally was not seeing why people likes him

Yeah I am sure everyone has characters like that.

I will say tho that I'd probably like him a bit less if his voice acting wasn't so great, I just really liked hearing his voice actor speak too.
His performance in Stormblood before he controls Shinryu is probably my favorite performance in the game.

I dunno if anyone else got this impression too but he reminds me a ton of Craig Parker.
He doesn't always play villains but he has one of my favorite '' villain voices '' and I was convinced for a while he was voiced by him but he's not.

[Faust1105]

It's awesome seeing the controversy of characters - friend or fiend - for each to decide. Thank you all for watching and discussing!