Making everyone edgy and morally grey just means that I have to slightly dislike everyone, which sours my enjoyment of the entire story.

Fortunately that doesn't seem to be an issue in his past plots. There seems to be a good pattern of enjoyable groups of characters there – the Bard quests in particular have always stood out well.

From the MSQ chapters he has written, at a quick skim of the quest titles, 4.2 was the return of Gosetsu and "Tsuyu" and the introduction of Asahi; 4.4 was travelling to the Burn and the Allagan ruin on the Steppe that is still a bit of a mystery, and the beginning of people being summoned to the First. (Also, Y'shtola met Magnai.)