Endwalker's story had me, but lost me. Ethical issues especially (spoilers)

[Cleretic]

If I can add in my two cents here, there was a bit of dialogue at some point in the game stating that our Azem had not only walked out on the Convocation when they decided to summon Zodiark, but had also refused to join Venat and her followers for the summoning of Hydaelyn. I don't know that they would have intentionally mentioned that if they wanted to us to be super duper on Hydaelyn's side.

For a minor clarification on the clarification, it's not that Azem outwardly refused to join Venat's crew, it's that they received no response at all. Which could mean a lot of things (but is unlikely to mean 'they dead'). Which is probably the right angle to do, because they want to make it clear that neither of those plans were necessarily 'the right thing to do' at the time; in the present day it's quite clear that Hydaelyn's plan was the one with legs and too late to act on any arguments anyway, but in the time of the Ancients it was a very present and very unclear question, and the entire direction about that part of the story is that it's not entirely clear who was morally right.

Azem is basically meant to be our analog in the Ancient days (whether or not we actually want that). Because of that, Azem actually making a definitive statement on either side would be essentially declaring that statement to be 'ours', and therefore the correct take. If Azem directly and explicitly rejected Venat's offer, and we are Azem... well, that must mean that we should reject her, surely.

To avoid that, it works better to have Azem basically opting out of the whole debate without comment.