I didn't see much of a reaction to Papalymo's death and Minfilia was always a divisive figure to the point that the development team itself made use of her in a parody released on April's Fools one year. So in the end, both deaths were safe and inoffensive options.

It's just weird to me that characters such as Emet-Selch are consistently winning popularity polls but are killed off yet even minor characters amongst the protagonists are clad in ridiculous levels of plot armour.

Then again, the game in general seems to be desperately trying to pretend as if its pushing the various conflicts as a 'clash of ideals' only to then resort to gaslighting later on when people point out that, actually, Emet only resorted to genocide because Venat did so first and forced his hand.

Maybe it's just a sign of the times. Even the shift in localisation seems to be trending towards appeasing Twitter users more than those of us who found the original style of the game to our liking.