[SPOILERS] Heavensward vs Stormblood MSQ Story

[Theodric]

Which opens another can of worms as we need someone to represent the Scions' interests in Gridania.

I'm gonna hazard a guess and say that 4.x will bring a large shakeup to the status quo and changes who leads what and belongs to which organization. Mostly because Raubahn and Lyse are on the move.

As far as representatives are concerned, they could either introduce a new character entirely or simply promote one of the background Scions into a more prominent position like they did with Arenvald and Riol. It was a pleasant surprise to see the former show up in Gyr Abania and the latter to appear in the RDM quest chain.

As for the status quo, I do hope you have the right of it. Lolorito, Nanamo, Raubahn and Lyse all being involved in the MSQ's for 4.1 certainly leaves a lot of potential.

This isn't the first time the Scions have betrayed our trust: 3.4 showed Urianger is perfectly willing to throw us into a deathmatch without so much as a warning, because... convenience, I guess. God knows.

And there are some very vocal people insisting that the Scions see the WoL as a true friend and all that jazz, but when they pull stuff like this, I find that hard to believe.

Remember that moment in HW, when the Elezen Dream Team was discussing how to get rid of Ravana? Estinien called Alphinaud out on how casual he was in just throwing us at the problem, and Alphinaud's HW short story, as well as his subsequent characterisation, showed that he took that lesson to heart.

The rest of the Scions have yet to even be called out on this sort of behaviour, let alone try to treat us the way Alphinaud does, and coupled with the way they're handled, Minfilia's big speech about "I hope we will become family" that she spews, all the way back when we first met them all in 2.0, comes off as heavy-handed manipulation.

With all this in mind, it's small wonder that the writers seem to be looking for excuses to write them out of the story at any possible point. I honestly think that the story gets better when the Scions aren't around, though.

To be fair, the Warrior of Light willingly throws himself into such situations. Often without an objective view or knowing the fully story. This is the case with both the MSQ's and various side quests. I do agree, though, that there should be more backlash when the Scions screw up or lie to the Warrior of Light. Even if it's done for the 'greater good' it doesn't feel great to have a supposed friend betray one's trust or abuse their kind nature or power. Yuguri screwed up pretty badly by attempting to assassinate Zenos in Yanxia but received very little in the way of backlash. Things did work out pretty well but that rested on Zenos choosing not to just casually slaughter any of those present. He was certainly capable of doing so.

Which, unfortunately, ties into my main criticism of the MSQ's - everything just ends up working out perfectly one way or another for the protagonists in the vast majority of occasions and even if someone screws up there's rarely any real, lasting consequences. We don't even see much in the way of rivalry or distaste between our allies - they agree on pretty much everything. Nero and Cid are a refreshing exception to that. It's possible for characters to work together out of necessity but not actually like each other much - so seeing more of that would help shakes things up a little.