Quote Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams View Post
I guarantee you that I could drop the average Final Fantasy fan at the start of Shadowbringers and they would get their bearings quite easily within the first 5 minutes of the story. You have your world, and now you're in a new one that's in danger. The bad guys want to destroy that world and doing so would also affect your own because they are connected. This, at a basic level, is not something that is beyond their capacity to understand. They can be filled in on the finer details later-obviously this does not hold for Endwalker because it is specifically built upon the end of Shadowbringers.

I'm very open about my criticism of Y'shtola. She is little more than a pretty face whose numerous fakeouts combined with her snarky personality have completely turned me off from her character. She may have allegedly cared about the Night's Blessed but her ego and arrogance clearly prevented her from displaying much of that in Shadowbringers. G'raha Tia was arguably one of the more intriguing characters in Shadowbringers but was reduced to a laughingstock when they turned his personality into that of an insufferable hero-worshipper who is written more like a fanfiction character whose purpose is to make the reader feel good, assuming they like him. His goal is to be our fanboy, and I think it's ridiculous. Give me someone like Morrigan from Dragon Age who actively questioned and argued with us about our choices, instead of a yes-man.
I love how you ignore how all of the Scions Shb arcs had a conclusion. Thancred with coming to terms with Minfillia and Ryne, Urianger with him trying to do whats best for everyone, Alphinaud's entire character growth, and G'raha Tia finally being able to let go of his burden and to live out his dream with adventuring with the WoL. There was never the need for them to carry all that ShB baggage going into Endwalker because they all had their conclusions prior to it. Also I really dont care if you like to criticize certain characters, I for one share some of your criticisms, especially regarding Y'shtola but Im not going to just ignore the stuff that worked with her and all the other characters that still keeps them relevant. This story is an on going narrative, and whatever story comes in 6.1-6.5 we'll just have to wait and see how potentially accessible it'll be for new players to just skip everything prior and jump into 7.0