User blog comment:TheCarrotSaysYumYum/FT0 - Game of Truth, Review./@comment-4829046-20140817120045/@comment-7418318-20140817131319

We got a load of flashbacks about Gray's past as it happened before Ice Trail, so maybe that's why.

In a way Ice Trail doesn't really matter. All the character defining moments we already know from the flashbacks of his training, destruction of his town and Ur's death. And it seems at the start of IT he already is over Ur's death, so the most relevant moment of the unknown in-between time is already over.

Juding from just the first chapter, I'd say the entire adventure we're about to see is just completely self-contained filler material that doesn't move his character development forward one bit, as far as the main series is concerned. He already is pretty much the same way as he was at the beginning of the series.

Zero is very different here. We know next to nothing about Mavis and the other founders. Hell we know next to nothing about the guild itself or anyone in it before the current generations. There's a lot to explore here and a lot of room for characters to development.