Ardbert's Party vs the Scions Analysis

[Avidria]

Ngl, kinda wish the Scions were all killed off at the end of EW so we could spend post-EW recovering and moving forward with the not-so main characters still around.

Imo, if were getting a brand new story and stuff in 7.0, should be a fresh slate with new companions.

I mean, I'm gonna be real here and say I don't think I'd trust that just killing them off and starting over would actually be well handled and compelling enough for me to be on board with it, and that's not just because I actually like most of the Scions. I've dropped shows and books for doing such a major cast change because at that point it's almost like picking up an entirely new show or book. And in my experience the handling of that transition makes or breaks the rest of the story.

Frankly I think SE has kind of shot themselves in the foot in a few days, mostly by just... Not developing many of the side characters we do have. Like, there are a bunch of Scions that kind of just vibe around the Waking Sands that imo are fun characters in their own right, but a huge chunk of their personality and presence only exists if you go out of your way to talk to them in between every MSQ quest. Like, the cast of characters we've interacted with is massive, and imo you kind of see the pros and cons of that in that big "everyone gather resources" cutscene in Endwalker. It was cool to see all the friends/allies/assorted acquaintances working together like that, and callback to past quests, but there were so many people that none of them got all that much time to do much of anything or stand out at all.