What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[Berteaux_Braumegain]

There is one thing that I can think of suddenly that bothers me about Endwalker, though I'll explain my rationale so the answer isn't just "Zenos".

So, it all starts with Shadowbringers (5.0), when Zenos kills his dad and basically causes Garlemald to implode. This removes Black Rose from the table and also gives a way for Eorzea to collaborate with Garlemald in the future rather than beating them into submission and forcing friendship after the fact. It bothered me a little bit that Varis was removed from the table prior to any kind of character development, but still, so far so good.

Then Zenos starts trying to destroy the world. And starts brainwashing people worldwide with these torture devices. And has Garlemald completely destroyed. And mutilates his father's corpse. And steals our body and uses it to try and attack our friends. And has the brainwashed masses try to suicide bomb everywhere when Anima is dispersed. A lot of really horrible things, basically! So now I'm ready. I'm expecting to finally defeat Zenos once and for all and get justice for all of the madness he's left in his wake.

But at the story's end, the focus isn't really on this. Instead, the focus is on him showing up to save the world so that we will pay attention and give him what he wants. Which we do. And there's... no real punishment in that?

Zenos' fellow cohort Hermes is presented as a sympathetic antagonist, but even he gets sent to the Hell Dimension with Yotsuyu's asshole brother. And this is after being humiliated, humbled, and made to realize that he was wrong about his choices in the past. Meanwhile, Zenos gets the exciting final fight he wants, exits the story more or less as a hero (admittedly more-so in the eyes of the audience than the in-universe characters), and is implied to possibly save the Warrior of Light's life at the end with the remote. And before that, he gets a similar spiel as he did in Stormblood where he projects himself onto our Warrior of Light and basically tries to define us as what he wants us to be. And his responses are either happiness that you say what he wants to hear, excitement you want to kill him, or mild annoyance that you're pretending to be something other than what (he says) you really are.

So ultimately, Zenos helps save the world and also gets the final say in what your character is. Naturally, we can't turn down the prospect of a duel, lest we set him back to his pre-Alisaie mentality or just let him walk away Scott-free for all he's done. But we don't even get the option to tell him off or punish him in some way beyond making him slightly disappointed that he lost again and somewhat reflective on the fact that he never really cared about people because Varis was a bad father. He more or less gets what he wants again and gets to pass away (maybe) on his terms.