What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[CrownySuccubus]

I'm not convinced that it was 'always' this way. In ARR most characters were too distracted by the various dangers that existed to worry about fawning over the player character. I quite liked the infamous 'prove yourself' quest chain in Costa del Sol, not because it wasn't tedious but because it was thrilling to me to see the player character's ego knocked down a few pegs. The game was a lot grittier and mature in general and if we'd had the likes of G'raha batting his eyelashes and jumping up on down in excitement because he wanted to go on an adventure, I can honestly say that I never would have bothered investing beyond that point. I just hope that the guy responsible for ARR and HW makes a return once FFXVI is released because his style of storytelling is much more to my liking.

Yeah, but who was the person who typically saved them FROM those "various dangers"? The entirety of ARR was basically, "Thank you gallant hero, for saving us from [insert hostile thing here]. We will deal with the fallout for now, but we know that we can depend on thee to defend us when the time comes, oh brave hero."

ARR was pure fluff set-up without resolution. Throwing out as many concepts as possible and seeing which ones land for future quests/stories. But 90% of all of them go through the same "Zero to Hero" routine.

And yes, again, I get it: you don't like G'raha. He's the symbol of everything wrong with the game, apparently. But, for better or worse, you are in a substantial minority.

[Theodric]

It's hard to say who is the actual minority when it comes to the likes of G'raha. Plenty of people disliked Mikasa in Attack on Titan but had death threats sent their way if they spoke up within the fandom. Characters such as G'raha, which exist solely to fawn over the player character, are generally very polarising. There's a reason most RPG's have the dignity to allow the player character to consent to crushes and outright relationships. Especially in games where the player character isn't a pre-created one but one with significant room to tweak them to one's liking.

Consent in general is the issue with this game's story. The Ancients didn't consent to genocide. There's no ability to consent to having weird one sided crushes forced onto the player character by various NPC's that we may or may not even like or be interested in.

Of course, anyone who points out such issues on either front usually gets subjected to gaslighting in response...