How old are each of the main characters in lore?

[MoofiaBossVal]

I feel G'raha's behavior is inappropriate. The 5.4 scene in the cave where he wants to spend more time with you instead of focusing on the mission is inappropriate and creepy. The community can claim he is just a fan boy but he has to learn personal boundaries.

Eh, I've mixed feelings on him.


Current story spoilers 5.5 MSQ

First: G'raha trying to cut into the WoL's life.

By the time of Shadowbringers, the WoL is famous and lots of people want to know him, and he's being called by everyone in the realm to help them out. The WoL just doesn't have enough time to help out and hang out with everybody. The WoL already has a circle of friends that he's spent a lot of time, are his preferred crew to tackle problems with, and the people he prefers to spend his time with.

The WoL worked with him during the Crystal Tower questline for all of 1 or 2 hours. This was before the WoL had really formed a circle of friends with the Scions. So in Shadowbringers, you have G'raha - a stranger to the WoL - trying to cut into the WoL's life. "Take me on an adventure with you". I mean, yeah, by the time he says that in 5.3, I've known him long enough that it'd feel nature, but it feels really weird that he was harboring this desire during 5.0, and says it to you in Kholusia. It's like a fanboy seeing a celebrity idol at the mall and saying "please let me be your best friend!".


Second: G'raha Tia is NOT an old man.

I think the other problem with G'raha Tia is that... he's supposed to have come from a time period in which he woke up and everyone he knew was dead, and there was immense bloodshed and the new people he made friends with were dying left and right, and then he goes to the First and lives there for a hundred years... and he's known generations of people from their birth, watched them grow up, get married, grow old, and die. He should be a really old man, but he never ACTS like it. He acts like a fresh faced teenager. He TALKS about being an old man, but I never feel it. ​This is in the same expansion that had Emet-Selch, who felt like a really old man who had lost his civilization and his friends and his family. This is the same expansion that had Ardbert, who really felt like he had lost his civilization and his family and his friends.

It's also extremely bizzare that G'raha Tia just so casually leaves the Crystarium behind. He lived 20 years in Eorzea. He lived 100 years at the Crystarium. The people of the Crystarium should be family to him. This should be his home, more so than Eorzea ever was. I cannot believe a grandpa or an elder or an old man like that would just up and leave his community just like that to go adventuring with some celebrity he had met for 2 hours over 100 years ago in some far off land that was just a vague memory. Now, obviously once his body was crystalizing, stashing his consciousness into his body on the Source was the obvious thing to do, but he was clearly planning to go back to Eorzea long before then, otherwise he wouldn't have made the extra crystal.


Third: G'raha Tia is just the same character as Alphinaud.
​
G'raha Tia fulfills the same role as Alphinaud in the narrative: the bright eyed dorky little brother to the WoL/deuteragonist of the story who is a magus and the man with the plan. Literally the same character, just a different design and voice actor. It's especially telling that G'raha Tia and Alphinaud hardly ever talk in the same scene, let alone talk to each other... because that'd draw attention to the fact that they are literally the same. When one character is in focus in the narrative, the other has virtually no lines at all. I would've been content with Alphinaud being sidelined and G'raha Tia hogging the spotlight for 5.0 through 5.3... but then he survives 5.3, and continues hogging Alphinaud's place in 5.4. It isn't until 5.5 that Alphinaud gets back his role again... and it's rather telling that G'raha Tia has pretty much no lines in 5.5 and it's jarring. You have two characters both competing to fulfill the same role in the narrative and it's very jarring.

Stormblood had a similar problem with Lyse and Alisae. They were the same character both competing for attention: the spunky bash bro sister who flips out at the drop of a hat. Fortunately Lyse was written out of the story by having her leave the Scions, so Alisae is able to fulfill her role uncontested. I don't know why the writers forgot to do that with Alphinaud and G'raha Tia. More than one character per role is redundant. Get rid of one. I prefer Alphinaud to G'raha, but G'raha Tia is clearly preferred by the current writer and no way he's going to die after surviving 5.3, and if killing off Alphinaud means we don't have this content anymore and scenes can be written naturally, then so be it. I just don't want this conflict anymore.

[Fenral]

Trying not to take your stuff too far out of context, but there are a couple points I have to object to:

The WoL worked with him during the Crystal Tower questline for all of 1 or 2 hours.

The Crystal Tower storyline ran from 2.1 to 2.5. In real-world time, he was in Mor Dhona for about a year-and-a-half. His role was ambiguous, but his design was distinct enough, and certain rules like "raids are tangential to canon" had yet to be firmly established (thanks to the Binding Coil being hard canon), so plenty of people had plenty of time to draw their own conclusions before he was unceremoniously stuffed in a box for five years. We now know that all of this was intentional, and that he was being saved for a potential second reboot, but at the time it was a lot to process.

G'raha Tia is just the same character as Alphinaud.

He's not, though. It's possible he was originally meant to replace Alphi in the event of the aforementioned second reboot, but for now he's actually around to reinforce Alphinaud as a character. He's still distinguished by his fatalistic streak, but if you talk to him between quest objectives, you'll realize he's mostly hanging around to shill Alphi as the true protagonist. If I'm reading the cards right, though, that probably won't be for much longer, and we already know which of them is in the Endwalker teaser.

Oh, oops, I double posted.

[Erendis]

@MoofiaBossVal You say it like G'raha had a choice to live on the First after we left. Even when creating crystals for transference he was already heavily damaged by the tower and probably did not expect to live long. And after Elidibus used tower to summon all the shades it was only a matter of hours when G'raha will turn to crystal. So his choices really were:
1. To die on the First and stay dead.
2. To die on the First and try to have a second life on the Source.

[Turethir]

I wish with G'raha that they'd gone a different route - I agree that he seems to have too many similarities to existing Scions (I feel his role is pretty much covered by Urianger and Alphinaud - the only "niche" he seems to have is the Allagan blood which they've relied on for two patches now).

I would have rather his arc been that due to his efforts on the First - building up the Crystarium and summoning the people who would save the shard, including his role in that - that he would realise he's a hero in his own right, and that while we were still his inspiration, that he's ready to go off and have his own adventures. I'd have loved to have seen him thank us, and go off to strike his own path in Eorzea.

Then he could have come back into the story at points where it makes sense to have him there, which would be a fun surprise for his fans. As it is I feel like he's just sort of... bloat? He was far more tolerable in 5.5 I felt, but he didn't really add anything.

[Kesey]

I wish with G'raha that they'd gone a different route - I agree that he seems to have too many similarities to existing Scions (I feel his role is pretty much covered by Urianger and Alphinaud - the only "niche" he seems to have is the Allagan blood which they've relied on for two patches now).

I would have rather his arc been that due to his efforts on the First - building up the Crystarium and summoning the people who would save the shard, including his role in that - that he would realise he's a hero in his own right, and that while we were still his inspiration, that he's ready to go off and have his own adventures. I'd have loved to have seen him thank us, and go off to strike his own path in Eorzea.

Then he could have come back into the story at points where it makes sense to have him there, which would be a fun surprise for his fans. As it is I feel like he's just sort of... bloat? He was far more tolerable in 5.5 I felt, but he didn't really add anything.

This, honestly, was would have been the best course of action. Now he's on the border of a predator and really would serve the narrative best by dying. All this his dream to travel with us to be hero is nonsense because he's an actual hero on the First and in the dark timeline. He already got what he wanted. Why couldn't we have just went to his body on the source at the end of 5.3 and just laid his staff at his feet? That way each world would have their own monument to him.

His whole I have Allagan blood thing isn't a strong enough plot point that the writers could have circumvented with some other solution. If he is just hanging around till 3/4's of the way through Endwalker just be all I have the Allagan blood to allow access to the spaceship to the moon, then again why has he lived beyond the 5.3 storyline?

And since we're using obscure references, G'raha is very similar in behavior Jed Parry from Ian McEwan's novel Enduring Love. How one shared tragic experience can lead to psychological problems when one doesn't understand the context of personal boundaries.

And those who shrug off his character faux pas as flattery to be endured should really put themselves in the shoes of players who may have been victims of unwelcomed advances and now have to relive it in a video game they enjoy.

[Fenral]

And those who shrug off his character faux pas as flattery to be endured should really put themselves in the shoes of players who may have been victims of unwelcomed advances and now have to relive it in a video game they enjoy.

Putting myself in my own shoes then, and yeah, not seeing it. Nice try, though.

He's really mild. Like, really. We can joke about subtext until the cows come home, but in reality he does maintain about two yalms of distance at all times. And most of his enthusiasm this patch was directed at Estinien, so it's not like he's stuck exclusively to the PC. Right now, his main purpose seems to be reintroducing important characters to the portion of the fanbase that was skipping cutscenes before Shadowbringers.

I do agree that it should have been pre-timeskip G'raha with us, but that's why I think there maybe something up with his current trajectory.

[Rosenstrauch]

I find myself in the third position on this, in that I wholly believe the Exarch's heroic sacrifice against Elidibus should have been his actual demise. It would have been a fine enough sendoff to his character, and we could still have woken up the sleeping G'raha Tia at the Exarch's behest. Then G'raha Tia could have joined the Scions, perhaps fashioning the Exarch's half-filled soul crystal into a job stone, and the story going forward could have dealt with him trying to live up to the legacy his future self left for him instead of... awkwardly fanboying out over characters like Lyse, Matoya, and Estinien.

[Fenral]

I like spending time with G'raha as a full party member, but I do agree things have gone just a little too well for him lately. Assuming they don't just kill him (which would kind of invalidate large chunks of Shadowbringers), I think a lot of his character issues could be put to good use if someone (either Alphi or Fandaniel) were to remind/thank him for basically allowing current events to play out the way they are. Basically, the "adventure" he always wanted and is now getting is a world-ending event even greater in scale than what he was trying to stop, and now lots of people are going to die because he dared to want something. (Obviously it wouldn't stick, but it would be a good starting place for his 6.0 character arc, if he gets one.)


Not sure if anyone here remembers Samurai Flamenco, but it touched on a similar idea.

[Iscah]

The WoL worked with G'raha Tia during the Crystal Tower questline for all of 1 or 2 hours.

Fenral already picked on this but I want to echo it, because even if you don't count for the "year and a half of real-world time" that the quest presentation spanned, the time we as a player spend doing the quests seems to be massively shortened from the time that the characters actually spend on things.

It doesn't get touched on much, since the passage of time is kept vague, but the best example I know of is early in Heavensward when Cid rescues you from Bismarck, and he explains that he came to the Sea of Clouds on business and learned that you had arrived "some days before" him - indicating that even though we-the-player have been there for maybe an hour or so, that has taken our character a few days of time we simply don't experience in the game. All the inbetween mundane things like meals and sleep and time to rest, and probably all the odd jobs we're constantly running for people.

So for a similar time frame, we must have spent days or weeks directly working with the NOAH team, plus however much time fits into the gaps between quests. Certainly long enough for us to think of G'raha as someone we have known for quite a while, if intermittently, by the time he seals himself in the tower.

[Iscah]

I find myself in the third position on this, in that I wholly believe the Exarch's heroic sacrifice against Elidibus should have been his actual demise. It would have been a fine enough sendoff to his character, and we could still have woken up the sleeping G'raha Tia at the Exarch's behest. Then G'raha Tia could have joined the Scions, perhaps fashioning the Exarch's half-filled soul crystal into a job stone, and the story going forward could have dealt with him trying to live up to the legacy his future self left for him instead of... awkwardly fanboying out over characters like Lyse, Matoya, and Estinien.

This is what I wanted to see happen. It wouldn't have changed much functionally - he could still be playing the same role in the story, and the only real difference would be that he talks about the Exarch as a person whose thoughts he knows very well, but still as a separate person and in the past tense. He would be entrusted with the Exarch's legacy but still primarily be his younger self.

Plus for the Exarch, I feel like he earned his death there, in a good way. He's waited so long and given so much, and now his work is done and he departs with a smile, encouraging us that it's not the end - go, wake him up. Take him on the adventure I dreamed of.