As someone who's been keeping up with Hildibrand and enjoy his misadventures, I'm not personally bothered by this, but I can understand why gating content can feel bad for people. For a game that has a lot of freedom of choice on how to spend your time, forcing players to tackle a form of side content they don't enjoy (even if it's just 2 hours spent skipping through cutscenes) to get to the part they do want isn't the best game design considering that only 1/4 relic questlines up to this point had any requirements besides MSQ (though you could also say similar things about the secret role quests in ShB and EW).

I also agree with the sentiment that this pushes Hildibrand adventures into semi-mandatory territory for people who want the weapons (however they look like, I'm not convinced that they're all going to be joke-y looking. Even then, Eureka and Blade weapons were very hit-or-miss with their aesthetics), which may be unpleasant. It's not like you can't engage with Godbert outside of Hildibrand's adventures anyways, but I'd be interested in seeing why Hildibrand was made mandatory to access this questline.