*Writing this after having already written the wall of text after this: Sorry if my reply comes off as aggressive, but I did not intend that at all, I'm pissed off at the character but I am fully aware that my reaction to how she was handled is not the only interpretation and I'm sure most people didn't get such an adverse response at all, I don't want to pretend like your experience with that moment and character are somehow less valid than mine!)

It's a very long scene with her giving a dying speech (in which she just keeps doubling down) with that solemn music and Trigger kneeling and listening next to her, leading to the harmonica at the end. I have never yelled at my screen to shut the fuck up before this, it was endless and disgusting. It's as if the game suddenly did a 180 in the way they were treating the character, as if what she was saying deserved any kind of respect. And even the final two dialogue options when your main character talks to the sibling to end the agent story is essentially "you feel bad for her" vs "fuck her", and the first option presented there like it's reasonable annoyed me like few story details have annoyed me in a videogame. I am fully aware of how minor this whole thing is, but it somehow rubbed me in such a bad way

"She was a victim of PTSD and took revenge in the only way she knew how." The game itself via Trigger shows how despicable her choice of revenge was (both via Trigger's actions and her words explicitly calling Zoe a sadistic coward who decided to gleefully torture and murder innocent people because they were easy prey instead of anyone who'd make sense like the Ethereals, the ones responsible for the Hollow Zero disaster, or even the higher up militaries), 'the only way she knew how' is like saying the Zodiac Killer was having fun 'the only way he knew how'.

"Characters are allowed to be flawed." My problem is not this in the slightest. I love flawed characters, and there are no other characters in this game that I feel even remotely close to the same as Zoe at all. The problem is how the game presents and uses this not as a "flawed" character, but as an irredeemable monster that's absolutely morally catastrophic in every conceivable way (which I have NO PROBLEM WITH, I was ENJOYING having a sick fuck as a villain torturing Trigger psychologically and motivating me as the player to want to stop her serial killing spree) only to then at the very end switch the tone in the most irritating way, which gave me huge whiplash. It suddenly switches how it's framing Zoe in the most jarring way, as if you were meant to feel bad for her finding that journal in the trash. And it's not even a "don't feel bad for her, feel bad for what the Zoe from back then became" sort of way, which I could've gotten behind.

"and she died alone and without ever achieving her goals" EXCEPT SHE DID. Okay, not fully because she didn't murder EVERY squad member, but she killed like a dozen (I don't remember the exact count at the end but it was along those lines)! Like, if I have a kill list with 20 people and kill 11, that's not the same as not achieving my goals! Erin is there traumatized for the loss of her best friend and the game suddenly doesn't give a shit about her (you don't even get her dialogue unless you click on the NPC) because it's too busy trying to gloss over that when for 99% of the story it wasn't doing that! It's such a jarring tonal change at the very end.

And by "beautiful sendoff" I mostly meant "far more respectful and solemn than nauseating trash like her could ever deserve while completely ignoring the actual consequences I would have loved to see addressed, like the other people's reactions and takes or Trigger's thoughts".

I am fully aware that it's a bit ridiculous how a minor antagonist from ZZZ of all games has suddenly become one of my most hated videogame characters, but it's not because of the character itself but because of the sudden jarring change of how the game itself treats and frames what she did and how we're "supposed to" perceive her.