After a brief respite in the recent beach episode with Yuzuha and Alice, it’s time to return to the gritty reality of Eridu with the new Defense Force-oriented patch. As ZZZ showed us before with Soldier 0: Anby’s and Trigger’s personal quest chains, it’s going to be dark, gloomy and depressive.
Zenless Zone Zero – Version 2.2 continues the events of the previous patches, picking up the storyline of Porcelumex and Exaltists and seasoning it with a heavy sprinkling of vengeance. In addition to the familiar faces of Yunkui Summit and previously encountered Obol Squad members, two and a half new characters join the fray: Seed and Orphie & Magus.
The overall vibe that the story gave off is very reminiscent of Version 1.4: A Storm of Falling Stars, the one that officially introduced Miyabi as a playable character. Back then, the plot pulled on all the previously revealed hints and storylines to tell a cohesive conclusion of everyone banding together to thwart Bringer’s plans among the political turmoil of elections.
In V2.2, the events of the previous two versions get an explosive finale, featuring Obol Squad, Yunkui Summit, Exaltists and Porcelumex clashing together. In fact, I’d say that the latest chapter is one of the best in Zenless Zone Zero – and for sure the strongest in Season 2 so far. The stakes, the political undercurrent, the deeply personal story when it comes to certain characters, amazing voice acting, and the improved cinematography make it an all-around pleasant experience. But it also falls back on the tropes already beaten to death by the developers instead of standing on its own.
So, let’s discuss how something can be impressively great, but also add nothing new under the sun… or inside the Hollow, as it were.
There’s one thing that Zenless Zone Zero’s proven over the last year+. The tragedy in the old capital, the Hollow Zero incident and everything that followed, split the world of the game into “before” and “after”. Sure, you could say that Genshin’s Cataclysm works the same way, a catastrophe that reshaped life forever. The difference is, however, that Cataclysm occurred roughly 500 years before the events of the game. While its geographic and socio-economic influence is still seen in various nations far and wide, such as the corruption left behind, it only personally affected long-lived supernatural creatures: Archons, Yokai, Adepti, and so on.
With Hollow Zero rapidly expanding 10 years before the events of Zenless Zone Zero began (and 11 years ago as of “now”, since it’s been a year since we’ve met the Proxies), we can see first-hand not only the political impact it had and all the shady battles for power going on in its aftermath, but also all the lives it touched and changed forever. If it isn’t the characters themselves, then it is a family member or a friend, no one escaped completely unscathed.
Even among the currently playable characters, a good third can be easily linked to Hollow Zero one way or another: Trigger (lost her squad), Astra Yao (was saved as a child), Yixuan (lost her sister), Magus (lost her squad and body), Seed (was saved as a child), Miyabi (had to kill her mother), to name a few. You could further expand the list by adding a million NPCs that Phaethon siblings have encountered on their way, such as this patch’s Isolde or Zoe aka Grim Vulture from Trigger’s personal quest.
Of course, the Phaethon siblings are not exempt from the list. The world blames their teacher, Carole Arna, for the tragedy that occurred 11 years ago. But the Proxies are set on finding what happened to her and proving her innocence in one go, which is exactly the overarching story of ZZZ so far and the very reason for the existence of Phaethon the Proxy. The story got another tiny step forward in the latest patch, with the reveal that Carole Arna worked with the Exaltists of her own free will instead of being coerced or threatened.
That gives Hollow Zero and the world of Zenless this feeling of a tragedy still unfolding. It is not an old wound, delivered a long time ago and already scarred over, it is an ongoing healing process that is far from linear. Not only that, but we also get to see how different people react to it.
Some are ready to sacrifice themselves for a chance to save others, while others yet use the tragedy for their own means and gains. And certain storylines, such as Harumasa’s and Yuzuha’s past, the stories of how Trigger’s Lyre Squad or Isolde’s Agamemnon Squad were left to die in Hollow Zero (or in Lemnian Hollow that became unstable in a chain reaction right after), or the general vibe of the TOPS Alliance prove that the real evil was never the Hollow or the Ethereals, it was always about human greed.
And this is exactly the story that had been told in the main quest of V2.2. In the previous quests, we’ve learned about the human experiments conducted by Porcelumex and the shady dealings the corporation had with the Exaltists. You can add it to the general list of atrocities alongside the experiments on Harumasa and kids with the same disease, and the organ-trading organized by TOPS’ Ravenlocks with the help from the unexpected survivor of the Silver Squad.
However, the greed was running far longer and deeper than initially seemed: Porcelumex’ second director and Major General Lorenz have also made a deal among the chaos wrought by Hollow Zero. Some soldiers’ lives thrown away in the Lemnian Hollow in exchange for the company’s assets and favor, paving the way for an ambitious commander to rise to greatness.
And, disillusioned by the lack of justice in New Eridu, a desperate, angry and lonely survivor took matters into her own hands, and in the process turned into what she’s always hated, endangering the innocents and breaking her oaths. A story as old as time, but it doesn’t make it less appealing and human. Especially when Isolde still did everything in her power to minimize the damage by evacuating Failume Heights, and the quest is further complimented by spectacular voice-acting and cutscenes, even if some dialogues verge on Naruto-like Talk-no-Jutsu. The update also takes on an overall darker presentation than before.
However, where it does fall somewhat flat is the fact that the devs took the tropes that the game is already filled with to the brim, mixed them up a bit, and threw it back into the story in a more concentrated form. In a way, despite being brand new, V2.2 feels like the story you’ve heard the developers tell before… multiple times.
The only survivor of the Hollow catastrophe, whose squad got annihilated and caused the survivor to spiral (Trigger, Grim Vulture). A character who couldn’t leave the past behind and ended up turning into what they hate (Twiggy, Grim Vulture). An interesting, unique NPC turned into an Ethereal boss and unceremoniously killed off. Daring today, aren’t we? (Pompey, Bringer, Twiggy).
It leaves the story in an interesting, if a bit uncomfortable spot. Did I enjoy it? Yes, a great deal, it had all the darker elements that I love the world of Zenless Zone Zero for and an overall deeply satisfying narrative. But it also feels like it fell back to the “maximum tear-jerker” formula already used before, without introducing anything new that would make it stand out in a long run.
Additionally, what sets the aforementioned Version 1.4 apart from the rest is that it involved a great deal of characters: the entire Section Six, Cunning Hares, Daughters Sons of Calydon, etc. While V2.2 started off strong with the presence of the entire Obol Squad, over the first half hour Soldier-11 ceased to exist almost completely (much like she did in the endgame content, gameplay-wise) and was carefully side-stepped in Seed’s TV schedule in favor of SAnby; Seed was reduced to offering creepy one-liners now and then; and Trigger only scolded Magus when the Captain started to spiral and struggle with the truth of her squad’s destruction.
In the story or in the character TV schedule afterward (which, admittedly, is still coming in the future for Orphie & Magus, so I might just eat my words then), it would have been a perfect opportunity for more Obol bonding. Orphie has her doubts as a clone of Orpheus – but Soldier-11 never brings up being an artificially engineered/enhanced soldier. Similarly, the entire storyline is about Isolde and Magus losing their squad… which is something that Trigger is intimately familiar with. Yet, not a word during the main story.
Among HoYoverse’s big three gachas, Zenless Zone Zero is the one with the weakest villains. Not the long-term story, mind you, just the antagonists themselves as characters you look forward to facing. Perhaps it coincides with the developers’ intent of showing that the true evil is human nature and having a certain focus on politics and backroom deals, but it also makes for poor storytelling in an action game when left that way for too long.
Thinking back, would you remember the names of anyone besides maybe Bringer who opposed the Proxies in the first season and actually had a certain influence on the story going forward? And even with Bringer, what even was his backstory? Intentions? The goal he was pursuing besides “Creator, refine meee!” – none of it was ever truly revealed, besides him saving Zhu Yuan from the Hollow, as none of it matters. He’s just another stepping stone, a plot device and a tool to move the story forward – just like the baddies the Proxy fights are just a faceless cult, evil for the sake of being evil over a year in.
Things could have been different with Isolde. Just over one patch, the developers have introduced a character that immediately hit it off with the community. She could have been a great long-term antagonist – perhaps playable in some distant future, perhaps killed off just like she had been during the latest storyline, works either way.
Unlike Bringer and others, she had a clearly defined backstory, character arc and development, a goal that had been met in 2.2 and left her free to pursue something else, knowledge – and connections. Both to other characters such as Orphie & Magus and to a lesser extent the rest of Obol Squad, but also the player, having made the boring villainous group seem more human for a patch.
However, what happened, happened, and we’re left with the international woman of mystery: all the screentime, endless plans, zero feats. The untapped potential, Sarah. For the first time, we’ve seen the character during Nekomata’s story, “Cat’s Lost & Found: An Uninvited Guest”, over a year ago. She played the role of Perlman’s assistant, but quietly slipped away when things went down.
After that, Perlman attempted to blackmail her and Bringer, but got outsmarted and outplayed to the surprise of absolutely no one. But that wasn’t all, since Sarah and the Exaltists were also behind the Null_Face hacker attack that locked Section Six in the combat simulation and stole Miyabi’s biometric data – aiming to distabilize Tailess, make Miyabi lose control and unleash a massacre that would discredit HAND during the elections.
However, both that plan and Bringer’s attempts to destroy the special unit and the Proxy amounted to nothing at all, which didn’t stop Sarah from dropping the age-old “all according to plan” and disappearing for another few versions.
This kind of background involvement in everything with nothing to show for it continued in Season 2, where Sarah acted as the right hand of Overseer Mevorakh – Isolde – and eventually received this power for herself when Isolde was defeated. Will we actually see character development instead of endless taunts, villainous laughter and another “all according to keikaku” going forward?
Only future versions can tell, but it’s about time Zenless Zone Zero got a proper villain that is more than a constantly reused plot device.
TLDR: Isolde deserved better.
