I absolutely hate it, and I don't know how anyone behind this decision thoguht it was a good idea.
Anyone I talked to (not talking about people on these forums of course) hates the idea as much or much much more.
Really sad to see something everybody was looking forward to, especially SGE and RPR mains, locked behind a quest chain that a great portion of the playerbase absolutely detests.

And no, it's not just the pre-requisite. They said the progression is quest-based, so I imagine the whole relic progression is tied to more Hildibrand/Manderville humor quests unquely. And it's not even "just skip cutscenes", especially if quests are all the relic grind you get. And yeah, I also expect them to look like joke weapons, similar to the Saucer ones.
And to those who say "they're just skins, if you don't like them don't do it": no, they're not just skin.They're powerful weapons, and BiS on their last step. It's only side content up to a point.

Oh, and I'm someone who did do the whole questchain up to Kugane Ohashi, both for the BLU spells and for the mentor roulette. And I deeply regretted it. Not only going through the quests is painful even if you skip, the trials are very unfun and pretty wipey (they're hard whle not being the fun type of hard either), so unlocking them kinda screws your trials roulette forever.

Anyway I'll probably just skip it, but I'm neither a raider who needs BiS, nor a SGE or RPR main who's excitedly awaiting their first glowy weapon.
I'll just take my time finishing resistance weapons and start working on some of the older ones, but I'll miss the fun of working on new stuff with friends (which probably won't be possible anyway since progression is quest-based so probably solo).