You're never gonna catch me saying stuff like, "Zenos had to die, in the end. He'd just hurt so many people. 😢 It had to happen. 😢"
Because I am one of those people who look at the long trail of blood behind the Warrior of Light, and their characterization moments in HW, where they pursue vengeance, in SB, where they're like, "I'll kill your god even if I don't have to," in the entire Dark Knight questline, and I go, "Yeah, nah, we both should be dead, then."
The Warrior of Light forges numerous relic weapons that use the blood of people to give it strength, when you think about it, but nope. It's ZENOS who's the only monster here.
Sure, Jan.
There are so many quests in the beginning of the WoL's adventurer career where people go, "Go KILL this guy/these people/these beast men," and WoL just goes, "Okay! :)" and commences to slaughtering without prejudice.
But some people gonna try and take the moral high road.
*squint*
@steelhazes
Dark Knight was introduced with Heavensward, which starts off revealing how Well the Warrior of Light is mentally. Which is what I would say, "Holding on but Very Angry and Very Upset." Because, at this point, the WoL has come to the realization that they are extremely powerful, they have a strong desire to be of service, and those they serve are frequently USING them. They are frequently taken advantage of because of their strength and their unwillingness to tell someone, "No."
And, like. If you out this characterization alongside what's going on during the time of base HW, when Haurchefant dies, after Aymeric has been tortured by his own father and the military force meant to be protecting people, yeah. The Warrior of Light wants blood. The same way Raubahn fucking lost his shit when he thought Nanamo died.
But the slight difference between Raubahn's scene and WoL's is that Raubahn's rage is shown as, y'know, angry as a bull. You can see on his face what he's feeling before he cuts a man in half. ...The Warrior of Light's face has no change. It is neutral. They have just slain all of the Heavensward knights AND the ruling leader of Ishgard, and as Thordan dies and questions the sheer BEING that is the Warrior of Light, the Warrior of Light stares down at him with Nothing.
Which is not to say the WoL is ~evil~ or anything. We can easily justify why we killed the Heavensward and Thordan, claim it was to save the world and end a thousand year war, but we all fucking know the real reason the WoL did that was to avenge Haurchefant, because the camera makes POINT to center on his killer's fucking body afterwards.
People wanna talk about what Zenos is willing to do to get his friend's attention, up to and including killing his own father and destroying his inherited empire, but nobody really breathes about the instances the Warrior of Light has wiped people out in retribution.
Or, even worse, because the Scions told them to. Or the Grand Company leaders told them to. Y'know, like how Zenos just mowed down whoever was on the battlefield Garlemald told him to go fight on.
And. And. Funny little thing in Dawntrail. Spoiler alert:
@imperial-nuisance-rudje
When the Garlean character calls WoL a monster, that they slaughtered all their friends in Praetorium like it was nothing, the player is supposed to recognize that the WoL's actions in that moment are no different than Zenos' actions in Rhalgr's Reach.
You can reason that the WoL was just trying to stop Gaius from using Ultima weapon, and that's a virtuous deed. But that reasoning does not negate the fact that 1) Garlemald's forces are heavily supplemented with conscripts from conquered nations, 2) the Warrior of Light does not discriminate which soldiers they kill, 3) the Warrior of Light does not linger on the bloodshed they caused there.
Nor do they stay their hand when dealing with tempered "beast" tribes. Or dealing with thieves and poachers in Gridania who are trying to survive because the greater Gridanian government wants them gone and wants them to assimilate or die.
Like.
I don't CARE that someone's personal interpretation of their WoL is sunshine and rainbows. Good for you. But, as stated above, to deny the CAPABILITY for Game!WoL to destroy everyone in their path and the WILLINGNESS and DESIRE to do so undermines the character.
If not told by Erenville or Koana not to turn people into fingerpaint, there's a very real assumption that in-game WoL would of killed those people outright just because they had threatened and/or harmed people WoL knew. Which would have left them with no information. But WoL's not thinking about information. WoL Smash.
Also from a "game team changes over time" view - it's interesting how as the expacs go along, there is less and less of that "just send WoL to kill these people" to where they are trying to avoid having enemies be humans (regardless of what that looks like, given allied societies) at all, and if they are, they live most times. Bandit fates in Kozama'uka where they run away on defeat, apprehending criminals over killing them, robot/construct enemies, sin eaters in the First. You can count on one hand the number of people killed in Dawntrail by the heroic characters.
They've pulled back on the "grimdark, kill or be killed" ideas of early game and shifted to the main characters trying to be actually heroic, instead of "ostensibly the good guys." But at the same time they aren't necessarily ignoring the traumas inflicted by that earlier storytelling on side characters, the main cast, and WoL themself.
They always leave plenty of room for players whose WoLs who don't kill willy-nilly (some quests and fates all the way back to ARR where the target isn't killed), and the BLM HW quests state the WoL is good enough to not kill targets they're not supposed to when they don't want to, but even if one plays their WoL as not liking to kill and avoiding it as much as possible - it still happens a LOT even if one just acknowledges the MSQ and major side stories (raids, trials).
It's how the DRK quests can work for Assumed Default WoL and many other WoLs (even if the story isn't to one's own tastes) because that's going to weigh heavy.
Zenos is meant to be WoL's mirror for many reasons, and it is most explicit in that scene before their final battle. Zenos didn't "have to die" because his sins were unforgivable - we have plenty of other former enemies who did heinous things working through their own redemption plots - but because of the two and the reasons they fight and how they feel about their piles of bodies and rivers of blood, there is assumed by the game's writing to be a difference in their whys and how they deal (or don't) with that responsibility and their reasons. Zenos and WoL are meant to be alike, but coming from and going in different directions with those similarities.
Zenos is the nihilist who doesn't find meaning in anything and just wants to feel something. Assumed Default WoL holds onto hope with torn fingernails and broken teeth. They can put on a facade of normalcy, but after everything done and been through, both realistic and fantastical - WoL isn't normal.
