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

[KizuyaKatogami]

It really is pretty hefty copium to pretend that G'raha isn't the most well-liked Scion by a pretty decent margin. How could he not be? He had one of the strongest character arcs in one of the most consistently well-written parts of the story. It's the same reasons Emet-Selch was so loved. An expansion of lukewarm characterization doesn't erase anything that came prior. He wasn't at all made meaningfully worse by EW, especially if you actually paid attention to his character in ShB. He just wasn't made better like, say, Estinien and Alisae were.

He had a strong arc sure, but a lot of people were turned off from him after 5.3 once he was demoted to nothing more than a character worshipper and slice of life character. It’s subjective in the end i suppose, i certainly thought EW just focused on his worst parts and tried to pander to the twitter crowd by giving him countless adorable moments like “haha catboy eats borger drooollll.”

[AziraSyuren]

He had a strong arc sure, but a lot of people were turned off from him after 5.3 once he was demoted to nothing more than a character worshipper and slice of life character. It’s subjective in the end i suppose, i certainly thought EW just focused on his worst parts and tried to pander to the twitter crowd by giving him countless adorable moments like “haha catboy eats borger drooollll.”

I think that, despite the fawning, he retained most of his competency and agency in EW, so it's not as egregious as it could be. His post 5.3 characterization wasn't that bad either because it was pretty clear that he was just getting used to finally being able to be who he was all along.

However, as I said, several of the Scions were actually benefitted by EW in some pretty significant ways, so it's definitely unfortunate that the new guy didn't get as much focus. They could've easily done a lot more for him, but they didn't.

I agree with this. I have a strong bias for solid world-building over character-centric stories, if I am honest, and I think Oda does the former better. I am not sure to what degree EW is really reflective of Ishikawa's work, as there seems to be a myriad of factors which compromised the quality, but I'll say I preferred the sort of tension-laden writing that Maehiro brought to life in HW.

I think it is pretty reflective of Ishikawa's work, and not necessarily in a bad way. She's extremely good at making characters likable and emphasizing their humanity and a lot of EW's problems were born from the fact that she seemed to try too hard to make too many characters likable. She just bit off more than she could chew. Imagine how much easier the Sundering would've been to swallow if Ancient society was, at its core, nearly as unpleasant as the Garlean society was. It wouldn't have been morally justified but it wouldn't have been as bad as the whole "throwing away a perfect society for bad reasons" thing.

All I see is people saying they don't like the character for their own reasons. And there's existing fans of his here also who are claiming they dislike the trajectory he took as of 5.4.

So do explain whose "copium" this is?

It's copium from the people who pretend he's not as popular as he is.

Sadly people highlight the bad more than the good with characters, while I didn't like his 5.4 or 5.5 versions, his 6.0 character, for me, was phenomenal, he and only HE (honorable mention: estinien) was the most reliant and competent out of ALL the scions saving dozens of people repeatedly, he had many badass moments in EW, moments that was highlighted in the whole expansion, during ultima thule, while that zone is a subject of controversy, his speech where he project the thought experiment of the "ship of theseus" unto himself was also phenomenal, the only civilization among all we dealt with that looked convinced by what is being offered were the omicron.

But oh nyo he ate a boorger and had sparkly eyes for 30 seconds, bad character > : (

Absolutely. That one scene in Thavnair was enough to show that he wasn't really that much different from how he used to be, he just didn't get enough focus outside of that and Ultima Thule.

[Lauront]

I think it is pretty reflective of Ishikawa's work, and not necessarily in a bad way. She's extremely good at making characters likable and emphasizing their humanity and a lot of EW's problems were born from the fact that she seemed to try too hard to make too many characters likable. She just bit off more than she could chew. Imagine how much easier the Sundering would've been to swallow if Ancient society was, at its core, nearly as unpleasant as the Garlean society was. It wouldn't have been morally justified but it wouldn't have been as bad as the whole "throwing away a perfect society for bad reasons" thing.

I'm not sure that's the sole problem. She was nervous about concluding the story within 6.0, and had thought it may go on to 7.0 and beyond; Yoshi ultimately made the decision to conclude it in 6.0. I'd like to think given more expansions to work through, without so many threads to conclude at once, she'd do a better job. As for the ancients, with how the story went to great lengths to portray their society as idyllic in many ways, I am glad they did not try backtrack on that by canonising the crypto-dystopia some were wishing for ever since SHB. You'd think they were the Allagans with how some people received them... or the Steppes or Ul'dah or Mhach, for that matter.

It's copium from the people who pretend he's not as popular as he is.

I think it's more a case of some people growing tired of said popularity being used as a reason to dismiss their own dissatisfaction with the character but also questioning some of the stronger claims being made about the extent of it - I'll take it as uncontroversial that he's the most popular of the Scions. I have to admit, I don't care for him one way or another. If the story gave me the option to bench him and take someone else, I would - maybe even Zenos. His popularity, one way or another, makes no difference to me in that sense.

[Theodric]

Imagine how much easier the Sundering would've been to swallow if Ancient society was, at its core, nearly as unpleasant as the Garlean society was. It wouldn't have been morally justified but it wouldn't have been as bad as the whole "throwing away a perfect society for bad reasons" thing.

That'd just be strange to me, since the Garleans were only in the position they were in out of necessity as a consequence of being targeted for genocide throughout much of their own history. Furthermore, they didn't have the plot convenience of a Warrior of Light to wander their lands and conveniently solve every issue before it festered into something that required getting one's hands very dirty in order to deal with.

The Sundering was a stupid move in general and I don't think any society 'deserved' to be wiped out. Even the Allagan Empire had good people living within it during the height of its decadence.

Endwalker in general has a pretty weird take on the concept of 'suffering' and 'moving on', though.

More than anything, rather than hide away the nuance established for Garlemald in optional side quests they could have simply pushed more of it front and centre. Though then the writers would need to admit that the 'gOoD gUyS' aren't so perfect and are selfish when it comes to forcing their ideals onto everybody else...which is why we ended up getting the likes of that idiotic strawman scene at the end of Elpis that reduced complexities to 'I can't accept it! I won't accept it!'.

[CrownySuccubus]

That'd just be strange to me, since the Garleans were only in the position they were in out of necessity as a consequence of being targeted for genocide throughout much of their own history. Furthermore, they didn't have the plot convenience of a Warrior of Light to wander their lands and conveniently solve every issue before it festered into something that required getting one's hands very dirty in order to deal with.

The Sundering was a stupid move in general and I don't think any society 'deserved' to be wiped out. Even the Allagan Empire had good people living within it during the height of its decadence.

Endwalker in general has a pretty weird take on the concept of 'suffering' and 'moving on', though.

That's why they said "it wouldn't be morally justified". Doing bad things to stop people from doing arguably worse things create a much more decent gray area. It's still morally ambiguous, but at least it would be better than what we got. (I personally would have hated it due to personal tastes, but it would at least have been tonally consistent.)

Or, they could have just left the Ancients as "utopic" and kept the Sundering as a tragedy and not some moral statement.

[Theodric]

That's why they said "it wouldn't be morally justified". Doing bad things to stop people from doing arguably worse things create a much more decent gray area. It's still morally ambiguous, but at least it would be better than what we got.

Right. Though they're specifically the way that they are because they're the ones who lost out the most as a consequence of the Sundering, thus the example doesn't really work for me. Especially the implication that it'd be 'less morally grey' to genocide a bunch of Garleans over the Ancients as if one group is more worthy than the other of existence.

Which in turn is why my stance has consistently been that it makes sense for the Sundered to do everything possible to avert their destruction, whereas the Unsundered have the right to do the same thing.

At the end of the day, the story was perfectly willing to rewrite large swathes of the story's existing rules in order to justify keeping certain characters around. If they really wanted to go for an 'uplifting' ending for the story then they could have found some way to carve a third path forward where both sides benefitted from the resolution instead of one losing everything.

[CrownySuccubus]

Right. Though they're specifically the way that they are because they're the ones who lost out the most as a consequence of the Sundering, thus the example doesn't really work for me. Especially the implication that it'd be 'less morally grey' to genocide a bunch of Garleans over the Ancients as if one group is more worthy than the other of existence.

To put it bluntly, killing the Garlean civilians would never be acceptable. As for the military, it depends on whether they stopped trying to genocide first and/or surrendered. Otherwise, if they keep trying right to the very end, it's self-defense.

Which in turn is why my stance has consistently been that it makes sense for the Sundered to do everything possible to avert their destruction, whereas the Unsundered have the right to do the same thing.

Yes. That was specifically what made the moral conflict in Shadowbringers work. And why Endwalker ruined it.

[Cach]

He had a strong arc sure, but a lot of people were turned off from him after 5.3 once he was demoted to nothing more than a character worshipper and slice of life character. It’s subjective in the end i suppose,

Unpopular (eh...) maybe, but "subjective" enters the equation when you say whether you enjoyed it or not. The rest of your description is pretty accurate from what we can directly observe from the text, same with the Venat or a few of subjects we usually talk about.

Every once in a while someone crashes through a window and goes "Well, that's like... your opinion, man". What are we even supposed to do with that?
People dragging every discussion down into a mudfight of "my opinion vs. your opinion" is pretty common whenever media is discussed and it's quite tiresome. I would prefer people to engage honestly rather than pull a driveby "it's popular so f you".