Leaving aside the fact that no, it does not "need" to add an easy mode, isn't it pretty clear by now that this isn't going to happen? Who is this article for?
Difficulty level is a basic form of #AccessibilityInGaming, one that's overlooked and even worse: frowned upon and ridiculed.
Including an easy mode means including more gamers, difficulty by design is no excuse.
Excuse me for tagging
I agree accessibility is important and as it happens I've recently had the opportunity to discuss the issue with Cherry for an article. I also think that adding an easy mode to Sekiro means making a fundamentally different game.
"easy mode" is a really blunt instrument, there are other ways. To start with it is worth looking at what the designer's intent is, what they want the players to experience. Many assume that From's goal is to make games that require a high skill bar; that's not true.
As Hidetaka Miyazaki said in an interview their goal is not to make games for people who have a high skill level, their goal is to make games for people who enjoy the feeling of success through persistence, which is a fundamentally different thing
It's an important distinction, it means that if someone enjoys the feeling of success through persistence but can't succeed to matter how much they persist, that's directly against the designers' vision.
So the question then becomes about how to avoid the barriers that prevent that player from experiencing what the designer wanted them to experience. I.e. how to allow more people to feel that success through persistence, NOT how to remove the need to persist
Welcome to my life Corey. You should have seen my January, I lost the whole month (hardly eating or sleeping) trying to fix the fallout of some shitbag spreading lies about accessibility legislation on his website and scaring a bunch of developers.