Yeah, a consistent end is missing, but what will we get: some freaky cinematic like at the start, or a pantheon diving down the sky to pat on our shoulder, or some... big surprise? Anyways, only the end is missing, as you correctly recapped the game's settings. This also helps accepting some devs' choices (not-really-death penalties, hunger/stamina system, former life skills recovery, weird mobs, etc).

Welcome aboard. You decided to buy the game; you now have to decide how to play it, because for now (in E.A.), you are not bound to do anything in this open, randomly generated world, or to force you on achieving anything, except what you recapped in your OP, and that can stay vague and abstracted for quite a long time (it's just to set the "landscape").