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

[Solarra]

-Zodiark is a symbol of the chaos and destruction that the true villain, Meteion, later represents. Therefore, Zodiark's role in the story is not necessarily filler, but rather serves as a representation of the stakes and consequences of the conflict.
-Venat's actions are driven by a desire to protect and preserve the world and its inhabitants, rather than causing harm or despair. Venat believes that by forcing the inhabitants to confront and overcome despair, they will be better prepared to face the ultimate threat of Meteion.

Re: Zodiark - I didn't interpret Zodiak's nature that way at all. He is the opposite of Hydaelyn (stasis) and represents uncontrolled growth/activity rather than destruction. I saw it more as a Yin/Yang type issue where balance between the two was desirable and neither one was evil.
The game also tells us explicitly that Zodiark is the will of the star, but then at the end of EW we have people referring to Venat/Hydaelyn as 'the will of the star', which she obviously couldn't be if that role was already filled by Zodiark.

As to her actions being driven by a desire to protect and preserve, they are anything but as far as I can see. She seems to have taken the idea that nothing can change the timeline where we travelled to Elpis and warned the Ancients but nothing was changed by our actions. All her actions seem to stem either from the idea history cannot be unwritten (Shb called and would like a word) or that it could be changed but the Ancients were somehow unfit to continue and that the only way forward for humanity is to continue with the timeline we had told her about and literally rip everything up (the sundering) and start again. You can't get a more radical or destructive path than that, besides killing everyone outright so there is no possibility of rebirth.

For me, the mixed messaging that has emerged over this expansion has been a large source of my discontent with it.
We should trust our friends and do everything to keep them safe but it's bad when the Ascian's try to do that
Genocide is wrong and that makes the Ascian's evil but it's ok when Venat/Hydaelyn does it.
History can be changed but not when the plot demands it can't be
The Garlean Empire is evil until EW when actually it turns out they're just a bit misguided and we bush aside the brutal supression of other races, human experiments, torture etc

It's not like there haven't been retcons before but the sheer number and scale of them in EW is a problem for me. It feels like this expansion turns so much that we'd come to believe on it's head and not in a particularly believable fashion, because most of the time it the story doesn't acknowledge there has been an about-face.

[Necrotica]

As to her actions being driven by a desire to protect and preserve, they are anything but as far as I can see. She seems to have taken the idea that nothing can change the timeline where we travelled to Elpis and warned the Ancients but nothing was changed by our actions. All her actions seem to stem either from the idea history cannot be unwritten (Shb called and would like a word) or that it could be changed but the Ancients were somehow unfit to continue and that the only way forward for humanity is to continue with the timeline we had told her about and literally rip everything up (the sundering) and start again. You can't get a more radical or destructive path than that, besides killing everyone outright so there is no possibility of rebirth.

For me, the mixed messaging that has emerged over this expansion has been a large source of my discontent with it.
We should trust our friends and do everything to keep them safe but it's bad when the Ascian's try to do that
Genocide is wrong and that makes the Ascian's evil but it's ok when Venat/Hydaelyn does it.
History can be changed but not when the plot demands it can't be
The Garlean Empire is evil until EW when actually it turns out they're just a bit misguided and we bush aside the brutal supression of other races, human experiments, torture etc

It's not like there haven't been retcons before but the sheer number and scale of them in EW is a problem for me. It feels like this expansion turns so much that we'd come to believe on it's head and not in a particularly believable fashion, because most of the time it the story doesn't acknowledge there has been an about-face.

Still disgusts me what Venat did. Because she did it against her own people. Emet didn't turn against his own people. He was trying to save them. Venat wiped out her own race so that another race could live. Doesn't get more evil than that.