I mean, plenty of people die in Star Wars. Motherfuckers are getting blown away all the time, whether it's Stormtroopers getting mowed down by the dozens, entire planets getting blown up or younglings getting killed (albeit off camera).
What Gilroy and his team have done differently is *the reaction* of the characters to killing and dying. Look at the opening scene with Andor in the series when he shoots the security dude in the face... that mirrors his opening sequence in Rogue One. The regret and pain on his face for those killings are palpable... contrast that with the way dudes are typically dispatched in Star Wars... characters rarely bat an eye about just blowing people away left and right.
So it's those character *reactions* to the killing that gives the show a different feel to me. I remember at one point in Rogue One, for example, when they are at the battle of Scariff... one of the "regular" Rebel solders gets shot and we see another one shout "No!" and go to check on him in the middle of the battle... I remember that really standing out because I'd never seen something like that in Star Wars before... just a regular character having a real reaction to his buddy getting shot.