On Themis [6.4 SPOILER]

[Cleretic]

I bet the venn diagram between 'people who didn't like Emet' and 'people who didn't like Elpis' has a LOT of overlap. And I'm not terribly surprised by it; even if there's a lot more going on, it still opens and structures itself around the base fanservice concept of 'hang out with this character we're pretty sure you like, in the place he waxed poetic about'; there's just very little appeal to Elpis that doesn't link very directly to that one character.

Pandaemonium I think stood a better chance because it was, literally and figuratively, 'the Ancient world Emet didn't tell us about'. It can tell its story on its own--and sure enough, the story it chose to tell serves to undermine the perfection we were first shown.

Isn't the crux of the issue here that G'raha not being there is part of a plan where they were willing to wipe out a timeline for the sake of saving someone in the past? That that was a gamble they apparently decided to take, despite survivors of the 8UC wanting to live on and focus on improving the lot left to them?

Sure, that's the crux of the story of the 8UC timeline. But when it comes to the Elpis trip that part either is resolved and not a problem (to the players) or is an acceptable risk (to the characters), so it doesn't matter for the comparison often raised; moralizing about the 8UC decision doesn't help us when talking about the WoL's Elpis trip and the notion of them staying to save the Ancient world, so my brain just went 'what happens if we don't get caught up in that part', because we always do.

And my conclusion is that the 8UC timeline is absolutely fine without G'raha (depending on what the Tower left behind I could even debatably see it being better), but the Source is screwed without the Warrior of Light returning.