So I finished most of Stormblood and I came to the conclusion that I dislike Zenos. A lot. But for a long while I wondered why exactly I disliked him as much as I did. Perhaps it's because he kicked my once-unbeatable WoL's ass twice? Maybe on a primal (pun semi-intended) level that's my gut reaction, but even I knew that the WoL is way too strong for the narrative and needed to be taken down a peg.
So why did I dislike it when Zenos did what needed to be done and kicked my ass? Why did I hate that I had to fight him 3 times before I could kick his ass, and not in the "I hate him and want to get stronger to beat him" sense, but "why are the writers making me lose to this random blond-haired pretty boy several times" sense?
Then he went on the spiel at the end about how "we're not so different" and how we all have the same base urges to fight and my only reaction was "oh god it's this dumb villain speech I've seen in so many media that's instantly disproven by the fact that my character has friends and cares for them". Later on the whole speech got me thinking, "were we supposed to at some point come to the conclusion that we were similar at any time before this other than seeing him collect katanas for his glam collection?"
He was supposed to be a rival character. The weird blonde pretty prince with the big powerlevel was supposed to have been a foil to our WoL, our Vergil/Jeanne/Sam but he never felt like it.
And it's because until that point he's never presented as a rival character, but a giant, evil final boss character that's unrelatable to the protagonist. We're an asset the alliance sends to kill big monsters that threaten people, whereas Zenos runs two entire provinces out of nepotism and spends his time terrorizing the populace to get his kicks. Every time we see the dude, he's either inefficiently running the government or threatening to eat a kitten or something. In other words, what we are presented of his day-to-day affairs only manages to 1) make the Garlean Empire seem more cartoonishly evil and terribly run than it already is and 2) distance him as a proper counterpart to us, since as Crown Prince and Viceroy he's in a completely different sphere from us, Eorzea's eikon-slayers and resident fetch-questers.
In theory he could be our foil, like us if we listened to Fray and decided that "yeah, maybe that's what would happen if I decided to just leave my responsibilities behind and chased after the rush of fighting things," but his character is at odds with his place in the story, a blood-knight who loves to fight stuck as an obstscle, an evil oppressive ruler we have to overthrow. And that feels like a waste.
I admit it's probably a bit too on-the-nose, but I feel like his role in Stormblood would feel a lot smoother if instead of being the viceroy, he would just be the Garlean Empire's secret weapon, their version of the Eikon-slayer. It would be far more in line with his fight-loving character to just have him be the guy who the Garlean Empire sends to fight things their mechs can't kill alone, and it would make him far more outwardly relatable to our character. We can't really relate to a crazy war general/provincial ruler, but we can relate to the average murder hobo.
Remember how in DMC3 we are introduced to Vergil by him killing in one blow what for us was a difficult boss? Show him doing exactly that in his intro, murdering a Primal we had difficulty with. Because then that tickles that same itch that Vergil did, the idea that he's us but cooler, and then him beating us becomes a much easier thing to swallow. It doesn't really feel believable for the WoL who has defeated ancient Allagan superweapons, Primals, and the Evil God Pope to lose to some random Garlean general who hadn't been built up at all to be a threat before Stormblood, but I can believe that I got my ass kicked by someone who is just like me but cooler.
Tl:dr Presentation matters and while Zenos is in theory an interesting rival and foil to the WoL, his place in the narrative as the designated final boss who sits in his chair for most of the expansion turns what should be an interesting dark reflection of us into someone we can't relate to.
submitted by /u/Deadeye117
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So why did I dislike it when Zenos did what needed to be done and kicked my ass? Why did I hate that I had to fight him 3 times before I could kick his ass, and not in the "I hate him and want to get stronger to beat him" sense, but "why are the writers making me lose to this random blond-haired pretty boy several times" sense?
Then he went on the spiel at the end about how "we're not so different" and how we all have the same base urges to fight and my only reaction was "oh god it's this dumb villain speech I've seen in so many media that's instantly disproven by the fact that my character has friends and cares for them". Later on the whole speech got me thinking, "were we supposed to at some point come to the conclusion that we were similar at any time before this other than seeing him collect katanas for his glam collection?"
He was supposed to be a rival character. The weird blonde pretty prince with the big powerlevel was supposed to have been a foil to our WoL, our Vergil/Jeanne/Sam but he never felt like it.
And it's because until that point he's never presented as a rival character, but a giant, evil final boss character that's unrelatable to the protagonist. We're an asset the alliance sends to kill big monsters that threaten people, whereas Zenos runs two entire provinces out of nepotism and spends his time terrorizing the populace to get his kicks. Every time we see the dude, he's either inefficiently running the government or threatening to eat a kitten or something. In other words, what we are presented of his day-to-day affairs only manages to 1) make the Garlean Empire seem more cartoonishly evil and terribly run than it already is and 2) distance him as a proper counterpart to us, since as Crown Prince and Viceroy he's in a completely different sphere from us, Eorzea's eikon-slayers and resident fetch-questers.
In theory he could be our foil, like us if we listened to Fray and decided that "yeah, maybe that's what would happen if I decided to just leave my responsibilities behind and chased after the rush of fighting things," but his character is at odds with his place in the story, a blood-knight who loves to fight stuck as an obstscle, an evil oppressive ruler we have to overthrow. And that feels like a waste.
I admit it's probably a bit too on-the-nose, but I feel like his role in Stormblood would feel a lot smoother if instead of being the viceroy, he would just be the Garlean Empire's secret weapon, their version of the Eikon-slayer. It would be far more in line with his fight-loving character to just have him be the guy who the Garlean Empire sends to fight things their mechs can't kill alone, and it would make him far more outwardly relatable to our character. We can't really relate to a crazy war general/provincial ruler, but we can relate to the average murder hobo.
Remember how in DMC3 we are introduced to Vergil by him killing in one blow what for us was a difficult boss? Show him doing exactly that in his intro, murdering a Primal we had difficulty with. Because then that tickles that same itch that Vergil did, the idea that he's us but cooler, and then him beating us becomes a much easier thing to swallow. It doesn't really feel believable for the WoL who has defeated ancient Allagan superweapons, Primals, and the Evil God Pope to lose to some random Garlean general who hadn't been built up at all to be a threat before Stormblood, but I can believe that I got my ass kicked by someone who is just like me but cooler.
Tl:dr Presentation matters and while Zenos is in theory an interesting rival and foil to the WoL, his place in the narrative as the designated final boss who sits in his chair for most of the expansion turns what should be an interesting dark reflection of us into someone we can't relate to.
submitted by /u/Deadeye117
[link] [comments]
Continue reading...