I haven't followed Ghost until seeing them open for Iron Maiden 3 times last year, and this is the first time seeing such videos and the changing of Papa. I find it all really odd, yet kind of intriguing. I've never been a fan of their gimmick (but found the music to be pretty solid), but this has been the first time I've been interested in kind of like, I guess you can say, the story of the band.
Kinda with Cram on this one as well. I wasn't blown away by the act - and by the way, anyone that says "Tobias is an odd guy", well, you just have to hear his stage rap to know that; what was he talking about, "female genitalia" at the Maiden show? - but it wasn't bad, and it's sort of interesting the "theater of the mind" side of this (Bruce Dickinson's thing).
The nature of the banter has changed with each version of Papa (and even between Meliora & Popestar-era Papa), as each is a different character. I didn't care for Popestar-era Papa, but I understand the logic in the arc towards the "crackdown" from PapaNil.
I'm a bit concerned that there could be some jumping of the shark with Ghost, now that the old Ghouls (MP in particular) aren't around to counter-balance TF. It's interesting how much of the vibe and visuals were MP.
Regarding the Papa Emeritus character being off-limits, that is not a subject of the lawsuit, it's something that has come up in parallel, without any legal action around it, so I don't see anything that should stop him from continuing as-is.
I was thinking the other day, how much good music I've found via the Ghost family tree, it's probably a good 1/3 of what I've been listening to recently:
-Magna Cartal Cartel (MP, SS, TF, though now just MP)
-TID (MP, SS)
-Subvision (TF, SS, MP)
-The Great Discord (AH, plus Fia Kempe)
-pg.lost (MH, plus one of the guitarists from TGD)
-Dead Soul (Niels Nielsen, a.k.a. "Cowbell Ghoul", who was both their tour manager and one of their recording engineers)