Quote Originally Posted by Iscah View Post
I do actually agree that 5.3 would have played out better and more in line with the overall themes of Shadowbringers (nothing should last forever and there's a beauty in man's ephemerality) if the Exarch had truly died – but that wouldn't have precluded us still waking up young G'raha afterwards, just not as an alleged continuation of the same character we'd been dealing with throughout 5.X.

(My preferred take would be that the Exarch died without passing his soul into the vessel, so we could still pass his memories but not soul to young G'raha and everything would play out much the same since then – except that G'raha would be talking about the Exarch in third person.)

All that said, even if they'd simply closed the loop and had the Exarch die, without us waking up his younger self at all, the writers may have still opted to force the storyline simply because it does give that critical context to Shadowbringers and while some may be frustrated by it, on the other end there are people who are disappointed that they had no idea that they should have played it first.
G'raha has proven useful even up to 5.5's story, so I think it's a wise decision for them to use G'raha instead of having to come up with other means to continue the story.