Quote Originally Posted by Shioban View Post
From the Third Live Letter;



They removed it temporarily only to realise chocobo companions were more suitable due to the lack of open world content, and made the removal permanent.
ARR changed direction with a HEAVY focus on instanced content vs. open world content, making it so that the NPCs in the story-line would support you instead of a path companion (healing/tanking/damage).
Sorry, could you reference the link please? The closest 3rd letter I find were actually dated from February 17, 2011:
http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com...bbc24abc29469f

At a glimpse, there's no mentioning about the path companion there. Not to mention that the live letter are 3 years old.