Did Zenos ruin Endwalker

[GTK0HLK]

As some have said..,
which I felt needed more highlighting.

If we had been given "Stormblood II: advance on garlemald", which tbh, the trailer was kinda a bait on switch/nod to their original plans(whilst hiding the true intent in sight. with the Eitherys nations finally being able to act out in their expected capabilities)

They also felt like avoiding a reception to a Sb-II.
Which like Jojoya said, it all just amplified the need to tie up the (Hydaelyn/Zodiark) Arc.
[It's like how some people compared JW, with KB. One had two more films, but needed to be Shortened due to unknowing if the material was enough. Whilst the other was extended into two films due to the screen time growing excessive of one film.]

[Hope whatever Worldline/Alt Universe, where we are setting up for Meteion after advancing into Garlemald had a good run of it, and a generally positive view. If they even had Ishikawa spawn meteion in her mind that is. Let alone the Void Chapters with the 13th, or all that we may have enjoyed in our world. But couldn't tell atm. ]

[I'll just turn my post back towards Zenos and reiterate my view on his role.

His memories and Bodies as a prince are long gone. Unfortunately left behind for those who wanted to drag the body back to the ship. But who knows what the remaining Fragments in the other shards are like. Since Zenos of the source is Half-ancient Half-Fragmented Source Dweller.

(edit:100% Resonant Viator)

Unless Hades pulled a Zeus in the other shards.
We'll see, but definitely will never rise again as the prince we used to know. Even if their Odd Aether Signature does show up reborn.]

[Carin-Eri]

No. And I, in fact, agree with this post from Reddit:

[EgilTheStressedMage]

He was on his way to do that in Garlemald. The WoL stopped him despite occupying another body and having the odds heavily turned against them.

Cop out, nothing more. Any other RPG would have had someone die.

He planned on doing this as well prior to Fandaniel taking Zodiark for himself. Zenos planned on taking everything away from the WoL because he wanted their unbridled rage turned on him as they fought on a pile of ashes. Remember? If this actually came to fruition, there wouldn't much of a game left to play.

Black Cat has a villain that is essentially Zenos in all regards. I wanted something like that for him, going on about how they waste their strength and it actually pisses him off that anyone would choose that. The fight would end not in his death but to be depowered to being a simple man unable to fight ever again, being cared for those he thinks of as lesser. Or he could have gone the way of Octopath Traveller II's final boss which I wish I could talk about without having a bunch of hidden boxes.

This fight was always going to end in a solo instance, and because it is MSQ the difficulty wasn't going to be road blocker. You don't have to like it, but Zenos being an 8-man encounter doesn't fit the narrative that was set for his character. That was the Shinryu encounter back in SB.

The narrative was mid at best. I wanted this character to make me care that he's still here instead of going "oh, you're here at the literal last possible second, okay then". Like come on.

Again. Like what? It is perfectly fine that how well Zenos was done as a character is subjective. No one is going to get anywhere trying to convince those who hate him to like him, and those who like him to hate him. And they actually did do something, now that I think about it. His grandfather built Garlemald and the imperial army. The grandson reduced it to ash. Both happen off screen.

That should not be all he did though. I wanted him to do more. I wanted him to earn the prestige of surviving his expansion. Instead I got 4Kids writing style and unearned savagery. I wanted him to appear in Elpis and manipulate everything to get what he wanted but events would twist it to have a secondary objective. Or like how Zodiark would be created so it would keep him from destroying the world after he'd already done it in Elpis. And because he was an ascian in all but name, would require a massive amount of light to be destroyed for good, which we would get out of the fight with Hydaelyn who would not be Venat but instead be the Meteion who was not absorbed into the hive mind. I would have Zenos absorb the hatred and despair of all the Meteia and add that power to his own, and would absolutely have Venat mention this to all the people of Etherys and would do everything they could only to hold him back while the world unraveled. Zenos would not be destroying the world because life bad, but people bad. He would point out most if not all of those worlds perished because of the actions of the greedy. They would only be able to separate soul from body and not be able to destroy either, so they would have Zodiark guard the soul and Hydaelyn guard the body, which right after her death he would claim while already having Zodiark's darkness while the WoL would have the light. And they would not go to space, Zenos would be in the core and it basically becomes the finale of a certain other game at that point.

I'm more than aware how trash all that sounds, but I personally think with the time and effort they could make it work. It would unfortunately require massive if not total rewrites. He wouldn't even have to be a hatesink, just make me care about this character beyond being an annoying pain in the ass. Make me hate him or make me empathize with him, don't just do what EW did and try to have a middle ground.

[Gemina]

Cop out, nothing more. Any other RPG would have had someone die.

Kefka Palazzo, one of the franchise's best villains from one of the franchise's best told stories, never actually kills any of the main cast. I suppose you could say Shadow dies, but this is up to the player if he does and if so, this death isn't intentional but happenstance due to Kefka destroying the world as it was. Shadow also does not become part of the main cast permanently until you locate him in the World of Ruin. You can't kill a character just for the sake of killing off a character. I get the feeling that this comment is targeted more at the Scions than Zenos.

Black Cat has a villain that is essentially Zenos in all regards. I wanted something like that for him, going on about how they waste their strength and it actually pisses him off that anyone would choose that. The fight would end not in his death but to be depowered to being a simple man unable to fight ever again, being cared for those he thinks of as lesser. Or he could have gone the way of Octopath Traveller II's final boss which I wish I could talk about without having a bunch of hidden boxes.

I am not familiar with this. The only Black Cat I know of is Felicia Hardy from the Marvel Comics. You'll have to use a villain I am more familiar with so I understand better where you are coming from.

The narrative was mid at best. I wanted this character to make me care that he's still here instead of going "oh, you're here at the literal last possible second, okay then". Like come on.

This is fair. It's your view and take on how things played out, and it wasn't to your approval. Nothing wrong with that at all. For me, Zenos coming to the Dead Sun was immensely poetic, and because my WoL is female, I also romanticized it. This is the only way Zenos could ever be romantic due to way his character is. And while I never considered Zenos and my WoL to be lovers in the traditional sense, a love they shared was the thrill of battle, and the two clashing amidst the stars in an illuminated section of outer space at the edge of existence was absolutely epic! My heart melted.

....

...I'm more than aware how trash all that sounds, but I personally think with the time and effort they could make it work. It would unfortunately require massive if not total rewrites. He wouldn't even have to be a hatesink, just make me care about this character beyond being an annoying pain in the ass. Make me hate him or make me empathize with him, don't just do what EW did and try to have a middle ground.

I don't think that's trash, but I also know there was no way Zenos would have met your approval with such expectations. I am sorry he fell short of those.

[EgilTheStressedMage]

Kefka Palazzo, one of the franchise's best villains from one of the franchise's best told stories, never actually kills any of the main cast. I suppose you could say Shadow dies, but this is up to the player if he does and if so, this death isn't intentional but happenstance due to Kefka destroying the world as it was. Shadow also does not become part of the main cast permanently until you locate him in the World of Ruin. You can't kill a character just for the sake of killing off a character. I get the feeling that this comment is targeted more at the Scions than Zenos.

I don't care who it would be, I wanted something beyond a weather change and forgotten npcs starring and dying in the same expansion becoming worthless gil. I wanted to believe the world was actually ending. I wanted there to be a level of bleak like World of Ruin. I wanted quests to become inaccessible later on if they had no worthwhile rewards (minions, mounts, etc) attached to them, which would be deposited into the Calamity Salvager so you can still get them once you complete a certain quest. I wanted the villain to do villain things and not basically yeet himself out of the story until the final boss, that's terrible writing that only works in E10 rated games or maybe Yoko Taro games. I wanted to feel like trash was going down and would continue to go down. Endwalker failed on all of this.

I am not familiar with this. The only Black Cat I know of is Felicia Hardy from the Marvel Comics. You'll have to use a villain I am more familiar with so I understand better where you are coming from.

Creed Diskenth is Zenos and Train Heartnet is the WoL. It's an anime.

This is fair. It's your view and take on how things played out, and it wasn't to your approval. Nothing wrong with that at all. For me, Zenos coming to the Dead Sun was immensely poetic, and because my WoL is female, I also romanticized it. This is the only way Zenos could ever be romantic due to way his character is. And while I never considered Zenos and my WoL to be lovers in the traditional sense, a love they shared was the thrill of battle, and the two clashing amidst the stars in an illuminated section of outer space at the edge of existence was absolutely epic! My heart melted.

Zenos did nothing to earn that. He vanished from the story after we kill Fandark, gets emasculated by girl Alphinaud, smells the roses, then out of nowhere comes and saves us. Which by the way would require flying all the way to the edge of existence without the Ragnarok. It's literally "I hid myself while I repaired myself.", everything is told but nothing is shown, and when it is shown it's so miniscule that it genuinely does not matter.

I don't think that's trash, but I also know there was no way Zenos would have met your approval with such expectations. I am sorry he fell short of those.

Those expectations are why I enjoy Xenoblade Chronicles, Radiant Historia, Kingdom Hearts II, Dust: An Elysian Tail, both Freedom Planets, both Baten Kaitos, many Final Fantasys, few of the Mana games, few of the Tales games, Devil Survivor 2 Record Breaker, SMTIV and A even though I think A was mid, Soul Hackers, Chaos Rings III, Shadow Man Remastered (The Horror blows), too many Mario games, too many Sonic games, the list goes on. Zenos would have lived up to my standards if they took any inspiration from any other RPGs, hell Live-A-Live without spoiling it would have been good for him. Same with Octopath Traveller 2. Chained Echoes, there's another.

[Renathras]

Zenos did nothing to earn that. He vanished from the story after we kill Fandark, gets emasculated by girl Alphinaud, smells the roses, then out of nowhere comes and saves us. Which by the way would require flying all the way to the edge of existence without the Ragnarok. It's literally "I hid myself while I repaired myself.", everything is told but nothing is shown, and when it is shown it's so miniscule that it genuinely does not matter.

To be fair, there's a lore point of order here:

When we flew the Ragnarok to Ultima Thul, it...did something. It made some kind of Aether trail there. This is the reason that the Ragnarok now has a superposition of being in both Ultima Thul AND Labyrinthos simultaneously like a Shrodinger's spaceship. But it's also why we can teleport to the Aetherites in Ultima Thul (a similar explanation was given in ShB as to how we could teleport between the Source and the First's Aetherites, so this isn't a "out of butt" pull just for EW). There are some NPCs you can talk to about this in, I believe it's Sharlyan (the little Aetherite research facility one of the NPCs will ask you if there were Aetherites in Ultima Thul and state their conclusion on the matter), and I think one of the Dragons in the Dragonstar quests there mentions something about a possibility our traveling has linked our Aethereal Sea to them so that if they pass on there, they might be rejoined to Midgarsormyr's brood someday in rebirth. Or...something that sounded vaguely akin to that to me, anyway.

[ EDIT: Another note on this - it would also be the reason Emet and Hyth were able to make an appearance, something they wouldn't have been able to do if there wasn't at least a tenuous link to our Aethereal Sea. ]

Point is, when we flew to the edge of reality, we made a trail or wake of lesser resistance and connection that someone could follow with a far lesser energy requirement needed, and one that our soul can use to travel back and forth (hence the Aetherites) easily.

...the only lingering question is who charges us Gil when we arrive there. Unlike the Source's Aetherite reconstruction after the Calamity being expensive and loans from extremely wealthy individuals and corporations that have to be paid back (the lore reason for the Gil charges), which was already a bit stretched but VAGUELY still understandable for the First, there's no one in Ultima that runs the things to pay and collect the money. Maybe the WoL is just so used to doing it, they toss out the Gil there just in case, kinda like the Chocobo statue things for Chocoporting.

[Archeron]

Don't worry Zenos is coming back for a redemption ark. Any animosity in FFXIV is resolved by just being "nice" to people, and having burger cutscenes.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Don't worry Zenos is coming back for a redemption ark. Any animosity in FFXIV is resolved by just being "nice" to people, and having burger cutscenes.

[drtasteyummy]

Zenos is like a shitty version of Frieza that nobody asked for. You neither really like or hate him, he's just there while you mildly acknowledge his forced presence into the story.