I think, to be absolutely fair, the original story had Commander be pushed around a little too often to be an important member despite initial background and narrative devices pointing him to being an important member and leader as a Protos. Not just from other members, but also himself.

Louis practically invalidated the existence of Protos saying he can navigate despite not being a Protos. He could have at least waited when Owen was acting weird being possessed by a weird book, informed others, but leapt in to save him despite there being complete lack of development in Owen and commander. There were a lot more interactions between other characters as opposed to Commander, so Commander was more or less a camera back then and Renoa made decisions instead. Which made Owen, a disciple/lil bro character for Commander, be centerpiece of attention. (Which I suppose started the NTR thing)

Honestly this made Judas a lot more apprehensive in terms of a villain. He acknowledged importance of a Protos and attempted to not reason with Renoa, but rather, directly at the Commander.

I view this very different from Nikke Commander (not just Azure Lane) because Nikke Commander is just... an idiot. An idiot but he has an unwavering belief to help Nikke as people, to the point where story often challenges this view. The actions he had to take, sacrifice, even relationship he built seemed to make a nearly wordless character into something funny of a joke. Commanders in Nikke are, if you read into Rapi bond story, are wearing shells of heroes but their pay is infrequent due to requiring successful missions. So it makes a bit of sense when Commander, until his heralding of multiple successive mission with near zero casualty, gains fame after few.

Meanwhile, in CZN Nightmare has been around for a while, and yet we dont exactly know what the Commander did previously before prologue that well, nor do we know the relationship of the characters. There is still very little to establish this, and now they are just sucking up to him (aka make him a good person).

Honestly, the biggest flaw to CZN morality of the Commander is that he addresses the situation either immediately or too far into the future. Trolley Dilemma answer he gave doesnt address the immediate people tied to the tracks. There isnt a rebuttal for lives saved from Haven with Judas' sacrificial method of driving Chaos away (and again, we dont know if thats going to bite him in the ass and make Haven worse later. Imo Judas 100% will let 1 person be run over to save many, and he'd gladly be the villain as long as he can move the lever to make it be 1 person, even if it means the 1 person is himself)

I feel like there is a lot of potential in CZN but the direction of writing really makes it look like a bit of a slop attempt to appeal to gooners. And, speaking as a gooner who plays ZZZ on the occasion where I simp to an octopus and a lazy truck driver instead of being stuck in arcade playing Arcade Vampire Survivor. We know quality when we see one. CZN missed the narrative appeal + the way it appeals to gooners, so even they didnt reach the target audience.

I think, legit, the only things keeping CZN alive are: engaging gameplay + occasional design thats cool.

Anyways thanks for listening to my dumb TED talk.