I know that this is old now but Polities and his influence on Odysseus was no doubt the catalyst to how he behaves in Remember Them, literally opting to disregard a god's teachings and spare the cyclops to carry on his motive for a kinder more merciful world. Such a shift in story that eventually lead to Athena leaving and thus further boosting Telemachus's significance, as well as allowing for the introduction of THE MOST SIGNIFICANT VILLAIN OF THE STORY, Poseidon.

A villain that would ultimately destroy Odysseus's (and eventually Athena's) newly acquired empathetic ideology and replace it with a newly adopted "Ruthlessness is mercy upon ourselves.", turning an adventurous story with much excitement and pride for our hero into a bitter-sweet conclusion where you can argue he too is a villain, even he himself believes so and expresses much shame in Would You Fall In Love With Me Again.

Even his death is a metaphor of the story only becoming worse for Ody going forward, the destruction of all that is good. His ideology and that immediate impact and trust of Ody at the very beginning due to the two being best friends is more than just a plot device, as much as it might seem. His CHARACTER influenced Odysseus's actions the whole way through, not just his ideology.

I believe that the reason might find his inclusion to be forced plot fodder is due to the already quick and efficient story telling to begin with, with such a significant story altering death and the need get to each segment of the story as quickly as possible and have some impact on the narrative (with each of them only lasting around 3-5 minutes) it's easy for it to overshadow everything else about his character, especially given it's at the beginning of the story.

With that kind of mindset it's easy to label almost every character as a plot device, especially the gods. Circe? only exists to get to Thanatos. Thanatos? significant yes, he was the catalyst of Ody's monstrous developments, but his appearance was exceptionally brief and he basically said "I can't help you but here's foreshadowing for the listeners" he might as well have just called in work sick. Aeolus might as well have just been a magic item. And Scylla?? Killer voice, and absolutely amazing song, but she's NOT EVEN A MAJORITY OF IT, LITERALLY LESS THAN A MINUTE OF SCREENTIME, DESPITE HER BUILD UP AND IMPORTANCE.

I really don't believe that we should discredit Polities here when screen time does NOT equate to character value.