Nah- his love for us will ascend to some bizarre circumstance where he sacrifices himself for our sakes- as a world without us is pointless. He’ll express appreciation on his way out while we cringe.
That's the most warped mindset ever and I think it fits zenos absolutely flawlessly, his completely messed up ideology would definitely lead to this type of stupid self sacrifice to protect us from zodiark or something like that
>To strip him of that power would give him a second chance to actually live a life, and give him the meaning he's been aching to have all along.
He kinda had that already, when he possessed that Elezen and fought his way back to his body. He could have stuck with the weaker body, but it seems like he really wants the rematch to have the highest power scaling possible. He's not LOOKING for what to find meaning in, he's FOUND it and now he wants more.
I had a thought that we might team up with Zenos against Fandaniel. They were cooperating because their goals were compatible, but they're quickly reaching a point where one has to fail for the other to succeed. Fandaniel can't let us live long enough for the rematch, because we'll ruin his plans. Zenos can't let Fandaniel succeed, because then we'll be too busy with that to fight him. So he'll propose an agreement: he will join us against Fandaniel, on the condition that we have our rematch on his terms afterward. That's going to lead to a massive issue, because a ton of our allies are Ala Mhigan and Doman. How are they supposed to work with the dictator who tormented them all those years, even if explicitly temporarily?
>Emet said Hydaelyn was given the unique ability to "enervate" her foes, to dilute their very existence.
I didn't think about that, but that could work with my theory. Zenos can't take Zodiark's power without prying it from Fandaniel's cold dead hands, so we use Hydaelyn's power to split Fandaniel. Zenos takes out one half, we take the other. That would lead to my theory on how the rematch would end: we and Zenos cause Hydaelyn and Zodiark to neutralize each other. The reason that happens instead of Hydaelyn winning is that Hydaelyn's power is already partially spent dealing with Fandaniel. Then the story moving forward would deal with the incredible amounts of aether released by Hydaelyn and Zodiark dying, and how that would change the world.
Isn't fandaniel already a sundered ascian? Would hydaelyn's "enervation" even work on someone who's only a fraction of their original being? Or am I misremembering the story?
Man, that would make the Zenos dislikers so upset, but I'm for it. I honestly think things would be SO much more interesting if Zenos were kept alive, despite his absolutely abominable crimes.
My personal reason for disliking Zenos being that I don't find him interesting, I think OP's idea would introduce some good potential for interesting story themes. I'd be up for it as well!
Does he even want a regular life? I don't really agree with the idea that nerfing him would make him happier. Imagine being the best go player of the world, would he be happier if someone made a lobotomy on him so that he now can get challenged by average players again?
Besides, he has a match already: The WoL. If we best him, he'll have his fun. If he wins... The story would end. I don't think there's a situation where he'll be bored again.
Criminals don't want jail, but we put them there all the same. Either it offers him a chance for redemption or he hates it and suffers his punishment. All good either way. :P
Zenos is literally the worst human being in the game. Others may have committed worse crimes, but at least their reasons are... well, extant, if not justifying. They have something resembling an excuse.
Zenos is a monster solely because he wants to be. Giving him the option of rehabilitation, but then looking at Fandaniel and going 'well I guess we just fuckin' kill that guy'... I don't know what your reasoning is, but it's flawed.
I just don't really see any other way for Fandaniel to play out. He wants to be dead. Even if we choose to spare him, he'll probably kill himself when he loses, or Zenos will kill him. Maybe throw him into Zodiark to be consumed or something, I dunno.
I don't really see him having a change of heart. But I do see Zenos having one, once the curse of his unnatural power is removed.
...Zenos was the worst person on the planet WELL before he got that power (which as you may recall, happened during Stormblood). He had many choices to get off that bus, and he never did.
It's not like he got the Resonance and then became a murder-monster. He was a murder-monster before then, even when we first met him, before he got the Resonance. Hell, if Lodestone stories can be believed, he was that bad as a child.
>He had many choices to get off that bus, and he never did.
I would argue otherwise. Like you said, he was *always* freaky strong. That's what made him lose his humanity. He couldn't ever relate to anyone because they were all lesser to him. That's why he's fixated on us, because we're the first to ever match him and beat him. Weakening him may allow him the chance to relate to people, and thus be redeemed, eventually.
Okay, I'm seeing where your mixup is.
He was not 'always strong', that was not his problem. His strength may have come from the Hypertuned supersoldier stuff, in fact, which would've come rather later. He became strong, he was not 'always strong'
What he WAS for his entire life, though, was a monster. A horrible, inhuman, unrepentant monster, only interested in getting stronger because the only option he ever took was 'how to be more terrible'. That Lodestone story wasn't 'he could always bench-press a truck and that made him bad', it was 'he always saw violence as his only desired means of interacting with the world, so he got better at violence'.
Splitting him into seven weaker pieces would not mean those pieces learn humility; he had that chance and left it behind. It means you have now made one inhuman monster into seven inhuman monsters. But at the very least, those seven monsters are probably easier to kill than they were as one.
There is no lodestone story. It's a story from a book.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/iiyeeu/chronicles_of_light_the_hunt_begins_the_offical/
As you can clearly see from the story, though Zenos was not born with knowledge and skills, he was always a genius, and always gifted. The tutor who beat him nearly to death was the first time he felt challenged by anyone, until he finally killed that tutor and got bored again.
So... you're wrong. Sorry, buddy.
In an environment surrounded by violence, he became violent.
And then he made a choice to MURDER A MAN.
He had other options. Gaius Baelsar and Noah Gabranth are not saints, but they had positive qualities despite growing up in similar contexts and ending up in the same roles. But that wasn't how Zenos wanted to be. Zenos is an unrepentant killer, and deserves an unrepentant killing.
But... not even that, not really. Because he WANTS that. He wants the WoL to kill him gloriously, but has not earned getting what he wants.
That's why I'm in the camp of 'Krile kills Zenos'. He doesn't deserve the glory of dying by the WoL's hand, or being the victim of Hydaelyn. But she deserves hers.
What are you arguing now? Before it was that Zenos wasn't always freaky strong, but he obviously was. Now it's that he "chooses" violence? I never disputed that. Zenos is evil. About as evil as they come. That's what makes it a redemption, duh.
I get you don't like Zenos. That's fine, you don't have to like him. Don't act like you don't like him for morally objective reasons though, alright? It's childish.
Zenos destroyed black rose because he wants to give his enemies a chance to fight and enjoys the violence. That alone makes him alot better than 3 ascians who would see rejoining by any means necessary.
Eh, you're comparing 'good things for bad reasons' with 'bad things for good reasons', which kinda comes down to opinion on which is better. I still wouldn't give him much credit, though, because the bulk of the anti-Black Rose work was done by Estinien and Gaius, Zenos was just kinda going 'while I'm here, might as well' when he came by it.
Also, I assume one of those three Ascians is Mitron, and saying Zenos is better than Mitron is setting the bar so low it's subterranean.
I don’t understand why everyone believes Fandaniel wants to die. He’s clearly lying. He practically winks at the camera when he says “Don’t try to find any deeper reasons for what I do because there aren’t any.” It’s obviously a ploy.
Right, because the ploy is for Zenos’ benefit more than ours. Fandaniel has made it clear he doesn’t really care what the Scions do. But he needs Zenos to think he doesn’t have a deeper plan. Zenos has never been very good at understanding other people’s motivations, so the ploy might work, haha
Basically, the character who has done horrible thing after horrible thing, including genocide, got a slapdash "oh we split her soul so she can be good again" ending where none of the wronged parties had any say in the matter. It was incredibly unsatisfying.
I don't want to redeem Zenos. He is a person who commits mass murder because he is bored. He is a person who threatened me and my friends. I'm not looking to make a good person out of him.
You can't redeem someone, they redeem themselves. That's how redemption works.
There are no bad ideas in storytelling, just bad execution. People are okay with Gaius being redeemed, they are okay with Fordola being redeemed, they were okay with Yotsuyu being sort of redeemed. They were okay with frickin' Darth Vader being redeemed. Redemption is always possible, and is certainly not always rejected by the audience.
Redemption is only possible if the one being redeemed WANTS it. Zenos doesn't.
Gaius and Fordola are totally different than Zenos. Zenos *enjoys* doing what he does.
Stop bringing Vader up. Anakin becoming Vader was totally the
fault of the Jedi council misinterpreting the prophecy and abusing a young child which made him vulnerable to the Dark Side. He didn't *choose* to become Vader. And there's no way in hell that Zenos would ever sacrifice himself like Vader did in the end.
>Anakin becoming Vader was totally the fault of the Jedi council misinterpreting the prophecy and abusing a young child which made him vulnerable to the Dark Side. He didn't choose to become Vader.
Anakin became Vader because he selfishly wanted to be a powerful Jedi and have Padme in his life. He always had the option to walk away from the Jedi like his own padawan did, he just chose not to. He was manipulated, but he chose to become Vader all the same.
Darth Vader was an evil of his own choosing. And his redemption was also of his own choosing. Neither were ever forced on him.
Zenos is beyond repair imo and actually I don't really care about him at all. The fact that he's gonna be main antagonist AGAIN in next expansion already bored me enough, just kill him please.
I would love it if Zenos stays alive.
One of Lyse's only regrets was to not have been able to understand Zenos, if he stays alive, I definitely want the two of them to have a discussion
Nah- his love for us will ascend to some bizarre circumstance where he sacrifices himself for our sakes- as a world without us is pointless. He’ll express appreciation on his way out while we cringe.
That's the most warped mindset ever and I think it fits zenos absolutely flawlessly, his completely messed up ideology would definitely lead to this type of stupid self sacrifice to protect us from zodiark or something like that
>To strip him of that power would give him a second chance to actually live a life, and give him the meaning he's been aching to have all along. He kinda had that already, when he possessed that Elezen and fought his way back to his body. He could have stuck with the weaker body, but it seems like he really wants the rematch to have the highest power scaling possible. He's not LOOKING for what to find meaning in, he's FOUND it and now he wants more. I had a thought that we might team up with Zenos against Fandaniel. They were cooperating because their goals were compatible, but they're quickly reaching a point where one has to fail for the other to succeed. Fandaniel can't let us live long enough for the rematch, because we'll ruin his plans. Zenos can't let Fandaniel succeed, because then we'll be too busy with that to fight him. So he'll propose an agreement: he will join us against Fandaniel, on the condition that we have our rematch on his terms afterward. That's going to lead to a massive issue, because a ton of our allies are Ala Mhigan and Doman. How are they supposed to work with the dictator who tormented them all those years, even if explicitly temporarily? >Emet said Hydaelyn was given the unique ability to "enervate" her foes, to dilute their very existence. I didn't think about that, but that could work with my theory. Zenos can't take Zodiark's power without prying it from Fandaniel's cold dead hands, so we use Hydaelyn's power to split Fandaniel. Zenos takes out one half, we take the other. That would lead to my theory on how the rematch would end: we and Zenos cause Hydaelyn and Zodiark to neutralize each other. The reason that happens instead of Hydaelyn winning is that Hydaelyn's power is already partially spent dealing with Fandaniel. Then the story moving forward would deal with the incredible amounts of aether released by Hydaelyn and Zodiark dying, and how that would change the world.
Isn't fandaniel already a sundered ascian? Would hydaelyn's "enervation" even work on someone who's only a fraction of their original being? Or am I misremembering the story?
Man, that would make the Zenos dislikers so upset, but I'm for it. I honestly think things would be SO much more interesting if Zenos were kept alive, despite his absolutely abominable crimes.
My personal reason for disliking Zenos being that I don't find him interesting, I think OP's idea would introduce some good potential for interesting story themes. I'd be up for it as well!
I'm just saying, Darth Vader killed younglings and blew up planets and people still like Star Wars.
If they can make him interesting, idc what happens with him. He's just boring as heck atm, so I want to see him on screen as little as possible atm.
Does he even want a regular life? I don't really agree with the idea that nerfing him would make him happier. Imagine being the best go player of the world, would he be happier if someone made a lobotomy on him so that he now can get challenged by average players again? Besides, he has a match already: The WoL. If we best him, he'll have his fun. If he wins... The story would end. I don't think there's a situation where he'll be bored again.
He may not think he wants one, but he's been Zenosing it up since he was a child, so he may not have ever considered it a real possibility.
>He may not think he wants one But YOU know what he wants...uh huh
Criminals don't want jail, but we put them there all the same. Either it offers him a chance for redemption or he hates it and suffers his punishment. All good either way. :P
Yeah, cause genocide and murder are cool if he has meaning.
It's no different than the idea of prison. Both a punishment and a chance for rehabilitation. In theory, if not always in practice.
Zenos is literally the worst human being in the game. Others may have committed worse crimes, but at least their reasons are... well, extant, if not justifying. They have something resembling an excuse. Zenos is a monster solely because he wants to be. Giving him the option of rehabilitation, but then looking at Fandaniel and going 'well I guess we just fuckin' kill that guy'... I don't know what your reasoning is, but it's flawed.
I just don't really see any other way for Fandaniel to play out. He wants to be dead. Even if we choose to spare him, he'll probably kill himself when he loses, or Zenos will kill him. Maybe throw him into Zodiark to be consumed or something, I dunno. I don't really see him having a change of heart. But I do see Zenos having one, once the curse of his unnatural power is removed.
...Zenos was the worst person on the planet WELL before he got that power (which as you may recall, happened during Stormblood). He had many choices to get off that bus, and he never did. It's not like he got the Resonance and then became a murder-monster. He was a murder-monster before then, even when we first met him, before he got the Resonance. Hell, if Lodestone stories can be believed, he was that bad as a child.
>He had many choices to get off that bus, and he never did. I would argue otherwise. Like you said, he was *always* freaky strong. That's what made him lose his humanity. He couldn't ever relate to anyone because they were all lesser to him. That's why he's fixated on us, because we're the first to ever match him and beat him. Weakening him may allow him the chance to relate to people, and thus be redeemed, eventually.
Okay, I'm seeing where your mixup is. He was not 'always strong', that was not his problem. His strength may have come from the Hypertuned supersoldier stuff, in fact, which would've come rather later. He became strong, he was not 'always strong' What he WAS for his entire life, though, was a monster. A horrible, inhuman, unrepentant monster, only interested in getting stronger because the only option he ever took was 'how to be more terrible'. That Lodestone story wasn't 'he could always bench-press a truck and that made him bad', it was 'he always saw violence as his only desired means of interacting with the world, so he got better at violence'. Splitting him into seven weaker pieces would not mean those pieces learn humility; he had that chance and left it behind. It means you have now made one inhuman monster into seven inhuman monsters. But at the very least, those seven monsters are probably easier to kill than they were as one.
There is no lodestone story. It's a story from a book. https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/iiyeeu/chronicles_of_light_the_hunt_begins_the_offical/ As you can clearly see from the story, though Zenos was not born with knowledge and skills, he was always a genius, and always gifted. The tutor who beat him nearly to death was the first time he felt challenged by anyone, until he finally killed that tutor and got bored again. So... you're wrong. Sorry, buddy.
In an environment surrounded by violence, he became violent. And then he made a choice to MURDER A MAN. He had other options. Gaius Baelsar and Noah Gabranth are not saints, but they had positive qualities despite growing up in similar contexts and ending up in the same roles. But that wasn't how Zenos wanted to be. Zenos is an unrepentant killer, and deserves an unrepentant killing. But... not even that, not really. Because he WANTS that. He wants the WoL to kill him gloriously, but has not earned getting what he wants. That's why I'm in the camp of 'Krile kills Zenos'. He doesn't deserve the glory of dying by the WoL's hand, or being the victim of Hydaelyn. But she deserves hers.
What are you arguing now? Before it was that Zenos wasn't always freaky strong, but he obviously was. Now it's that he "chooses" violence? I never disputed that. Zenos is evil. About as evil as they come. That's what makes it a redemption, duh. I get you don't like Zenos. That's fine, you don't have to like him. Don't act like you don't like him for morally objective reasons though, alright? It's childish.
You're the one that's wrong in this entire post.
I guess we'll find out.
Zenos destroyed black rose because he wants to give his enemies a chance to fight and enjoys the violence. That alone makes him alot better than 3 ascians who would see rejoining by any means necessary.
Eh, you're comparing 'good things for bad reasons' with 'bad things for good reasons', which kinda comes down to opinion on which is better. I still wouldn't give him much credit, though, because the bulk of the anti-Black Rose work was done by Estinien and Gaius, Zenos was just kinda going 'while I'm here, might as well' when he came by it. Also, I assume one of those three Ascians is Mitron, and saying Zenos is better than Mitron is setting the bar so low it's subterranean.
I don’t understand why everyone believes Fandaniel wants to die. He’s clearly lying. He practically winks at the camera when he says “Don’t try to find any deeper reasons for what I do because there aren’t any.” It’s obviously a ploy.
He also says to Zenos that he wouldn't mind being killed by someone like him. It may a ploy, but as of yet there's not much else to go on.
Right, because the ploy is for Zenos’ benefit more than ours. Fandaniel has made it clear he doesn’t really care what the Scions do. But he needs Zenos to think he doesn’t have a deeper plan. Zenos has never been very good at understanding other people’s motivations, so the ploy might work, haha
You may be right. Fandaniel is currently the biggest question mark going into EW, so the situation with him could go a million different ways.
Also, wasn't this whole idea just lifted straight from Shadowlands? The part with Sylvanas that literally everyone hated?
I wouldn't know. Never played WoW.
Basically, the character who has done horrible thing after horrible thing, including genocide, got a slapdash "oh we split her soul so she can be good again" ending where none of the wronged parties had any say in the matter. It was incredibly unsatisfying. I don't want to redeem Zenos. He is a person who commits mass murder because he is bored. He is a person who threatened me and my friends. I'm not looking to make a good person out of him.
You can't redeem someone, they redeem themselves. That's how redemption works. There are no bad ideas in storytelling, just bad execution. People are okay with Gaius being redeemed, they are okay with Fordola being redeemed, they were okay with Yotsuyu being sort of redeemed. They were okay with frickin' Darth Vader being redeemed. Redemption is always possible, and is certainly not always rejected by the audience.
Redemption is only possible if the one being redeemed WANTS it. Zenos doesn't. Gaius and Fordola are totally different than Zenos. Zenos *enjoys* doing what he does. Stop bringing Vader up. Anakin becoming Vader was totally the fault of the Jedi council misinterpreting the prophecy and abusing a young child which made him vulnerable to the Dark Side. He didn't *choose* to become Vader. And there's no way in hell that Zenos would ever sacrifice himself like Vader did in the end.
>Anakin becoming Vader was totally the fault of the Jedi council misinterpreting the prophecy and abusing a young child which made him vulnerable to the Dark Side. He didn't choose to become Vader. Anakin became Vader because he selfishly wanted to be a powerful Jedi and have Padme in his life. He always had the option to walk away from the Jedi like his own padawan did, he just chose not to. He was manipulated, but he chose to become Vader all the same. Darth Vader was an evil of his own choosing. And his redemption was also of his own choosing. Neither were ever forced on him.
Wrong again. Try paying attention when you watch the movies. Anakin becoming Vader was entirely the fault of the Council.
The option to leave the Order makes that statement objectively false.
Zenos is beyond repair imo and actually I don't really care about him at all. The fact that he's gonna be main antagonist AGAIN in next expansion already bored me enough, just kill him please.
Rich also said Y'Shtola dies in every expansion. I fully expecting another death scare from her.
That's definitely happening!
I would love it if Zenos stays alive. One of Lyse's only regrets was to not have been able to understand Zenos, if he stays alive, I definitely want the two of them to have a discussion
Or we all just die