How old are each of the main characters in lore?

[Lauront]

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.

I'd like some Estinien-styled dialogue options/responses to him.

[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.

[Kesey]

I mean, he's primarily written by a woman, the way men tend to write female characters. I say turnabout's fair play, in this case.

So only females can write about females and males can only write about males? I'm not sure that's a fair assessment when other male characters like Thancred, Alphinaud, and Estinien are on point.

[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.

[MilkieTea]

I mean, he's primarily written by a woman, the way men tend to write female characters. I say turnabout's fair play, in this case.

1. This.
2. G'raha's behavior is completely appropriate given the context of it. He's just gone through 100 years of pain, suffering, and the tormenting idea that the future he envisioned will happen *regardless* of what he does. And then here you come, a beacon of light (or darkness in this case) and rather than let him sacrifice himself to save you, you fight *with him*, you treat him as your equal, and you give him a future he could *never* have imagined. Now he gets to fight alongside you, safe and secure in the knowledge that whatever comes next won't be that horrible future he saw. If he wants to hang off my arm and give me puppy dog eyes and flick his ears at me, I'll let him. Heck, I'll encourage it - because he's happy.

But maybe that's just my WoL's personality bleeding into mine. She views G'raha similarly to how she viewed Haurchefant - gentle romanticism.

[Fenral]

So only females can write about females and males can only write about males? I'm not sure that's a fair assessment when other male characters like Thancred, Alphinaud, and Estinien are on point.

G'raha's a male character, but written to fit the "heroine" archetype. I'm saying he's along the same lines as, say, Matoi from Phantasy Star Online 2, down to not allowing responses like, "Down girl, please. I see you as a daughter." Our own Alisaie acts the same way, too, actually.

I do acknowledge there's some discomfort in being fawned on by someone you're not into, but there's nothing inherently wrong with his character type.

[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.

[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.

[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.