I was sifting through some interviews with yoshi p the other day and i came across some interesting ones but this one stood out to me. It was done after 5.3/5.4 i believe.

“We don’t like adlib in terms of like, ‘Oh, this character is going to go or this character is going to die.’ It’s not random, either. At the same time, yes, people might notice that those in the core cast may not have died over the course of the story,” he explains. Since Final Fantasy XIV constantly depicts wars, conflicts, and battles, he says it’s “unrealistic to not have any sort of sacrifices even on the ally side. So I mean, I don’t mean to scare you… this is not, by any means a threat of any sort, but don’t get too comfortable knowing that, ‘Oh, these characters are safe’ because you might be in for quite a shock.”

So it seems here even Yoshi P understands that a story like 14's needs to have some sacrifices/death to make it realistic, and that going forward we should essentially expect to part ways with some characters, yet after playing Endwalker this doesnt seem the case at all. Im curious on what changed. I would think such a high stakes, major conflict/battle as he calls it would be the prime time for something like this yet....nothing.