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

[Lauront]

Completely agree.

Bit of a tangent, but for anyone whose read Attack on Titan(Heavily recommend it btw), one thing I love about its story is how its careful not to take a hard stance on any side of its primary conflict through to the very end. It acknowledges that despite there being people that stand to benefit from genocide, whether the perpetrator is right or wrong for doing what they felt was necessary is ultimately up to the individual, and naturally, there is no shortage of people who would vilify them for it. Even when characters are spared from tragedy, they're capable of looking towards their savior and recognize that they're no saint but might in fact just be a monster that just happened to take their side.

The main protagonist (or antagonist depending on how you choose to view things) of that story is what I wanted Hydaelyn to become. I never wanted her to be the final big bad, nor did I expect it. What I wanted, NOT expected, but wanted was her to be was someone willing to go to extreme lengths to ensure we benefit from the world she cultivated, even if there are those who would brand her a devil for it. But instead, we get someone whose actions are excused by all, including by Emet who by all logic should've been furious that such crucial information has been withheld from them for seemingly no reason. It's one thing for him to accept loss, it's another for him to accept that this was the only way when we know for a fact that there was ATLEAST one other path that might've granted different results. Hydaelyn is a perpetrator of suffering and despair, but the sad part is that nobody other than her actually cares, and that's just boring.

Same, I really enjoy AoT for that reason. As for Venat? I was expecting something along the lines of Yunalesca, not an outright villain and even a sympathetic character in many respects, but one insistent on a set of methods she wanted mankind to use... we did sort of get that, but the in-story characterisation of it, barring her own words (whereas with Yunalesca the party rather than herself rebuked her), did not live up.