Aerith never had to be sacrificed to call forth Holy. In the original, she prayed and succeeded just moments before Sephiroth killed her.

The issue was that after she had summoned Holy, Sephiroth had been holding it back until Cloud kills Sephiroth at the very end of the game. However, because this was too late due to various reasons (Aerith never telling Cloud much of anything, Cloud having to overcome his mental issues and travel around the planet to find out Aerith's plans the hard way) and Meteor was too close already, Holy didn't have the chance to converge in time to stop Meteor.

This is the part where Aerith's death does makes the difference, since she had to call forth the Lifestream to boost Holy's power at the very last moment.


This means there are several minor factors that the remake can (and almost already has) deviated from the original that would no longer necessitate Aerith's death.
- If Aerith comes clean and tells the party everything sooner, then the sooner they can stop Sephiroth. This has already started, considering that in the Remake Cloud already had visions of Aerith's death, and Aerith had already partially explained the Cetra and saw visions of Meteor long before they ever reach the City of the Ancients.
- If Cloud discovers the truth and overcomes his mental issues early, then the Jenova spawns and Sephiroth can no longer control him directly to get him to hand over Meteor to Sephiroth. This is also a possibility, considering Cloud reacted when Hojo revealed he wasn't a SOLDIER before the Whispers intervened. In the original, Cloud just outright denies it with a "what are you talking about?" and moves on. There's also the issue that he had already overcome a version of Sephiroth with his party in the final Whisper fight, so the emotional dread Cloud feels towards Sephiroth is overall lessened.

This can also mean that in order to replicate the shock value of Aerith's death to both Cloud and the audience, there can be a butterfly effect where in an effort to prevent Aerith's death, Tifa dies (while shielding Aerith) instead.

Unfortunately, with this route, there is nothing to necessitate the close call of calling forth the Lifestream directly to stop Meteor from falling, so while the overall impact could be similar, it is still not the same.

This might be "Rebuild of Final Fantasy VII"? I mean while Cloud behaves just like in the 90s, there have been changed to other stuff. I mean with Dirge, the remake could give Vincent more relevance with his Chaos form updated too. Same with Genesis after whatever happened in his last moments from Crisis Core and Dirge. They could event retcon Advent Children too

Genesis most likely won't make any appearance more than being mentioned as his presence means promotion for Gackt, so if Genesis make appearance SE have to pay some extra which I can't see happening within this remake.

:heh:

They should be able to keep Vincent's DoC Chaos. If that happened, problem is whether they kept Death Penalty as Vincent's final weapon as DoC established Death Penalty as 'ultimate weapon' aside Omega Weapon added to the whole narrative.

Speaking about retcon itself, major retcon I can see happening for remake is involvement of Minerva.

:D

Personally I think the Whispers were a clever idea and smaller deviations in the story earlier were believable.

For example, when Barret cut Cloud off from joining them on the second bombing run at Sector 5. I think using the Whispers to break Jessie's leg to get Cloud back in was believable.
Many other moments, like making sure Cloud survives the fall into Aerith's church, making sure President Shinra dies when Cloud wasn't willing to kill him directly, and making sure they fail to stop the tower collapsing were all well executed.

I would even go as far to say that all of those incidents made the Whispers into a acceptable final boss fight, where they question destiny and whether it's right to let nature take its course.

However, I would say they went too far with the Zack scene and Sephiroth's presence. The Whispers were already a believable presence with some reasonable development before they overcomplicated it with the possibility of alternate timelines.
Allowing Whisper?Sephiroth to be defeatable, also has far reaching implications for Cloud's psyche that I think would lessen the impact later in the story.

Had they just left it at Wedge surviving and kept Sephiroth out of the boss fight (or at least remodeled him to look deformed like the other Whispers), I would have been fine with the execution.

I personally think using Sephiroth there was a good idea with all things considered.
From a player POV, it makes no sense to keep the "jaws" type of execution since the game is split. If it wasn't for Sephiroth, the final boss would have been either Jenova, Arsenal or the Boss of the bike chase. While they are good boss on their own, they are not really suitablle as a climatic final fight. Also, Kitase blatantly explained in an interview that a lot of people know Cloud and Sephiroth by fame or from other games, so keeping Sephiroth hidden in the first game doesn't really make much sense.
In term of the narrative, it makes even more sense because Sephiroth is actively trying to break fate so he can fulfill his desire as a "stalwart" or "legit ruler" of the planet. Considering he is heavily hinted to be the post OG FF7 / AC one, he must know how fate works just like Aerith since he was in the lifestream for so long.

As such, I wouldn't be surprised if Sephiroth sees in Cloud another puppet to do his bidding. But instead of repeating the events of OG FF7 (black materia), Cloud trying to rebel against Destiny is more beneficial to Sephiroth, hence why the latter invited him. Obviously, their respective objective is not the same at all, but the means, "breaking free from destiny", are the all the same.
So from my perspective, what Sephiroth did was exploiting that moment where the Harbringer was defeated to have a hold on destiny for his master plan. I'm not too sure how he did, but considering Sephiroth, I'm not too surprised he could make such appearance. And frankly, that's still just a projection and not even his real body to begin with.

For Zack, I'm not too sure what they are trying to do. I assume they showed Zack coming back with another Cloud was to show destiny has been shaken off to the point it affects other universe/timeline (assuming there is a single Harbringer dictating destiny for the whole pack of wordline).
Cloud cannot exist the way he is if the past was retconned, and the fact He and Aerith cross path with Zack and that Cloud without seeing each other is evidence to me that they didn't affect their own wordline. As such, I still think Cloud's psyche is still heavily altered by the mako poisoning and PTSD he got with Zack's death from his worldline.
That being said, it is possible that the worldlines will merge into a single one at some point, or simply intersect. I assume Nojima and Nomura want to give a run to fans' money who were fantasming about the idea of Zack still alive. A possible what if scenario.

That said, I'm personally not totally satisfied with the execution regarding Cloud's party itself. Aerith was very vague when it came to Destiny since the whispers were interfering during her explanations in Hojo's lab. But even at the crossroad, Aerith was still a bit cryptic. Even so, the team basically agreed to go after Sephiroth, even though all the stuff about Destiny wasn't really clear since they witnessed only 1 vision thus far. This is particularly surprising for Barret since there wasn't any hint he could come back from his little trip in Destiny's crossroad.

I don't think it was a good idea to allow Sephiroth to be beatable. Narratively, it dampens his presence in the future because the narrative has already allowed for Cloud to overcome Sephiroth with the party now.

Even in the original game, overcoming a projection was something Cloud struggled with (considering he couldn't resist giving up the black materia).

There are other ways they could have handled it, like let Sephiroth nuke the party but decide to back off in the end.

From my perspective, it seems Sephiroth was merely gauging the party. Of course, his AC form is hinted to be stronger than his Rebirth and Safer form from OG FF7 (attacks like Octoslash, Heartless Angel and seemly Supernova with a countdown definitely aren't jobber moves after all), but he didn't really pushed himself or going relentless. He was pretty much taking his sweet time during the fight and cutscenes. Also, he could have easily end Cloud at the edge of creation considering how things went. In fact, Cloud couldn't do a damn thing even with some BS movements akin to AC as Sephiroth still countered him with ease. That's really not the same as what Cloud did in OG FF7 and AC with Omnislash, hence why Sephiroth blatantly says "it wasn't enough".

So I think we shouldn't worry about Sephiroth's power level just yet. He did went ham on them after the whole deal with the harbringer, but I don't believe he is anywhere close to go full force there, moreso how he never felt pressured during the fight against the party (aside of the "pressured" gameplay mechanic), with all the taunts and "reminiscence" as he call it. Frankly, my impressions and other acquainted + streamers I've followed are quite similar: if that's Sephi just for the first game, he is going to be quite a handful later on.
Of course, that's just a conjucture, but his body language and choice of words in JP at the end felt extremely condescending, as if he still had a lot of cards under his sleeve. Even Cloud concluded he was nowhere near defeating him when they decided to move on to track him down. So really, Sephiroth really gave the impression he let Cloud's party live so they can struggle against destiny which would be beneficial to him anyway.

Speaking of which, I'm surprised Sephiroth uses "ore" instead of "watashi". In OG FF7, He used ore before his descent to madness, then switched to watashi once he vowed to end humanity and claim the planet for "the ancients".

As someone who thought that everything took a downward spiral after the JENOVA fight, my biggest issue with their changes is how exactly will they raise the stakes at this point?

They literally had you fight and win against destiny/fate as the final boss of the game. Well not really final boss as they had to tick the "fight Sephiroth" checkbox in their list of things to do for the remake, but we literally defeated destiny/fate. How exactly is stopping a physical entity like METEOR going to compare when we defeated the metaphysical representation of the inevitable?

Days after beating the game and I'm still scratching my head at the decision to go down this path. I understand that changes have to be made and have been made for the sake of expanding on the story. I also understand the argument that most people who play this game are already aware of what's going to happen since OG exists so some deviations must me made to surprise OG players.

It just feels like a badly written fanfic ya know? Maybe things will get back on track come part 2, but the final sequences of the game felt like a fever dream.

Not to mention fundamentally pointless as all it did was tell the players that the story is now wide open now that the plot device dementors are no longer in the way of us telling the story in however way we see fit! The corrective force of OG is no more! SE seriously decided that an entire multi-phase boss fight was needed to let the players know that FF7R's story is going to be different.

Am I in the minority that just wanted things to play out normally with the Motor Ball being the final boss of Part 1? End it with the notion that the world is full of endless possibilities now that we are no longer confined to Midgar. An allusion to the fact that things may/will no longer play out exactly as we think it will now that the world is no longer confined to such a small space.

Yet rather than foreboding foreshadowing, we got a hamfisted Chapter 18. Well at least it was cool I guess even with the spectacularly lackluster boss fight at the end.

I'm not sure why you mention raising the stakes, since Cloud & co only managed to defeat an entity that would dictate how things will be foreordained (they aren't even the source of why X or Y events are triggered). They didn't defeated the inevitable, but a factor that will dictate the next events of their adventure. As such, it doesn't mean they can just easily nuke Meteor for the giggles. If anything, now they don't even have fate as a back up to be certain Meteor is stopped by Holy and the lifestream. They don't have their safety net anymore, which is why Aerith called that "boundless and frightening freedom".
The concept of defeating destiny doesn't really have any similarity in term of physical prowess. They only broke free from the "rails" of the script, but all the factors that would be an obstacle (Sephiroth, Hojo and so on) are still there. And we don't even know if things won't be any uglier from there.

Also, I believe the reason of forcing the players to go through such plot elements is to actually validate OG FF7 as a whole: heavy implication FF7R is actually a sequel, explaining why it would deviate in term of narrative, instead of "just because".
But the one thing I disagree with you is the statement that it "wasn't foreshadowed". Every single whisper apparition foreshadowed it.
Obviously, guessing what they were doing the very first time is a stretch, but I frankly started figuring out about their actual purpose when Cloud faced Reno for the first time, as I noted the drastic difference (Cloud almost finishing off Reno, Whisper saving Aerith and so on). My theory was pretty much settled in stone with Sector 7 plate, since Reno and Rude wouldn't have been able to trigger the plate destruction without their interventions.
Not only that, but Aerith behaviour was fishy as hell very early, with some implications she knew things she wasn't supposed to at that point of the game.

IMO stakes already raised by fact Sephiroth confronting Cloud and co. as that pretty much telling both players and Cloud that Sephiroth is ready to do personal intervention, if he thought its necessary compare to OG. Even more if you at least watched Advent Children Director Cut as this Sephiroth with wings should be the same as Sephiroth who impales Cloud when Cloud tried to defeat him with Omnislash just like the OG, clear warning that same trick won't work twice.

I'm very supporting this change as, if we ended it with OG boss that is motor ball, it only going as far establishing Rufus as the one they should be careful about as he's the one aside of Turks who made clear impact within Disc 1 contents while the main villain is Sephiroth and its not a secret to public anymore like Kitase said, so it works hyping him to some degree even with Shinra company sub-plot in mind.

I personally won't say it bad fanfic as: First, every whispers appearance marks change in story and both old and new players can trace it to see what kind of change it may lead to, so there's some kind of replay value to OG. Second, the change of timeline works in favor of explaining Cloud headache and confusions compare to OG that just concluded as super serious identity crisis thanks to mako poisoning and PTSD; it also gave incentive to old players to see, "Should I keep everything the same as OG" if some major decision making thrown on next installments as now you know change is bound to happens.

Similar to what you said, the difference is that now its not about confined in a city but you're not confined in a story with fixed route fixed outcome.

:D

By raising the stakes I mean not just story, but gameplay as well. We just fought fate, an entity that would dictate the path future events would take place. How exactly do you top that? That's a boss typically reserved either at the very end of the story or as an optional superboss with added lore flavoring. Though maybe I'm just not a big fan of the events of OG being wrapped up into a preordained fate that they have to defeat so that they no longer have to follow the script of OG. Feels like a bad fanfic plot device to justify why X or Y event no longer happens or happens differently.

I give you that perhaps it was foreshadowed in the sense that things were playing differently than we expected them to. But I'd argue that good foreshadowing requires for things to click when it is eventually revealed. I love it when stories have that big reveal and it all suddenly makes sense and you feel dumb for not realizing that's being subtly explained to you all along. That holy bleep moment ya know?

This sort of foreshadowing requires you to have such extensive knowledge of the original game for the player to realize that things seem off. The examples you cited? Yeah I noticed that too and did kinda see where they were going with it especially when they showed up en masse to delay you from getting to the sector pillar.

But how exactly does one with zero knowledge of FF7 supposed to know that plot dementors are doing what they do to keep the story on track? If you are indeed correct that this game is supposed to be a sequel, then why brand it as a remake? How do people without FF7 background suppose to realize the foreshadowing being done when they lack the necessary background knowledge to know things are amiss? So it's a remake of the OG but I'm supposed to know OG cause it's also a sequel to OG...got it. If that's the implication then call it what it is and not a remake.

So now the story of FF7 is wide open with the sole exception of someone summoning Meteor and ramming it into the planet. That's the one thing we can be sure with 100% certainty will happen. They could have decided to change and rearrange plot events however they please so long as it leads to that conclusion. I'm not even arguing that point, surprise me please.

But plot dementors? Hell nevermind plot dementors. Fighting fate itself as the penultimate boss (cause gotta have Sephiroth as the final boss cause reasons). Maybe in Part 2 sure I could have stomached it better, but Part 1? From a narrative and gameplay standpoint, how do you top that? We're gonna fight Ultimate Weapon! Cool story bro, I just fought fate and kicked it in the ass. Final form Jenova? Yeah already fought One-Winged Advent Children Sephiroth at the motherbleeping edge of creation complete with OG high noon showdown sound effects.

So had an epiphany when I wrote Ultimate Weapon. So these plot dementors are supposed to be agents of fate, the will of the planet itself. They try to keep the flow of events in order as the planet wills it to be. Okay great. The WEAPONS themselves are agents spawned by the planet to protect itself. The planet knows that some nutjob wants to ram meteor into it. The planet is seemingly sentient, or at least capable of sensing danger as it created the WEAPONS to protect itself. The agent of fate it created was defeated and now preordained events that led up to METEOR being stopped is no longer set in stone. So the will of the planet spawns the WEAPONS early to start wrecking face as there is no longer the safety net of METEOR being stopped.

Perhaps as early as the very beginning of Part 2 cause hey how do you top defeating an agent of the will of the planet? Fate itself? By having the other more physical will of the planet start rampaging early on when you have no means of combating it that's only trying to protect itself from the events our protagonists allowed to come to pass.

I'll just say that I'm not arguing against changing the story. That's fine. Pleasantly surprise me. Doing it in such a way at the end of Part 1? Somehow doing all these crazy Chapter 18 things somewhere in Part 2 would have been palatable, but right near the beginning of the story? It would have been fine to keep it strictly against Shinra being the big bad of Part 1 and throwing the expanded Avalanche and the ongoing tensions/escalations with Wutai to spice things up. That would have done great to expand the story and keep such a grandiose thing as fate in reserve. But instead we only got tiny morsels of Avalanche/Wutai while going full DEFEAT FATE and of course SEPHIROTH.

A good fanfic would have gone the route of adding more bulk to the underlying lore of the story. Expand on things that the OG couldn't or didn't really touch base on all too much. A bad fanfic is how Chapter 18 played out. Just my personal preference in narrative I suppose.

Avalanche already get fair portion.

Its not like they do more in OG. If anything Remake portrayal alone is more than enough and more participation than what we got would be weird in consideration of their OG Disc 1. TBH IMO leaving Avalanche and Wutai matters to next installment is better decision so there's reason why they have to actually care about advance of Rufus as well as making Yuffie canon, instead of skippable party member, probably with Cait Sith as well within game content limitation.

I don't get how the first game is all about fate as, in general, content we got is no different than OG Disc 1.
Sure there are Whispers and Sephiroth, but they're just telling players the journey won't be the same as OG game; the characters haven't really going deep about it or high-strung all fighting against fate from start even if Aerith somehow keep pushing them to do so, so worry not Rufus, Avalanche and Wutai are still on their list unless turned out they go straight to Cosmo Canyon after this.

:heh:

If that's true, then something doesn't feel right. If this is the same Sephiroth from Advent Children, then (during his fight with Cloud in Advent Children) why wasn't he chucking buildings at Cloud like he did in the remake? The only thing I remember him doing concerning buildings is cutting them, and that's it. Sure, he revealed having an angel wing, but he only revealed it near the end of the fight (he did showed having an angel wing in the original, but that was in one of his transformed state in the end of the game). Also, it seems that (in the remake) he actually used magic (or at least in that cutscene where he pinned Cloud and a party member down before another party member saves you), when the only time (in his human state, not his transformed state) he used magic was in the flashback. So what stopped Sephiroth from using magic against Cloud in Advent Children?

Your assumption that "fighting destiny" should be part of the end game or superboss is expected, but that doesn't mean every story should fit that mold. As I implied before, the fact the story will not follow at 100% the original script is already something that might lead to much more hardship for the party. In term of gameplay, I dunno about you, but the fight wasn't particularly grand with just multi phases of future "Cloud" "Barret" and "Tifa" along with the ultra big boy who was just a common HP bar. When it comes to gameplay, you could easily tell those bosses weren't exactly imposing but served mostly as an obstacle narrative wise. As such, I don't see how you can't expect something topping that in term of gameplay. If anything, it isn't exactly that difficult. I'd say even OG Safer Sephiroth is vastly more imposing than the Arbiter trio and Arbiter giant.
And in term of storytelling, the real threat was always Sephiroth, Jenova and to some extent Shinra. Destiny was merely something that would lock the events in place, so I don't see how defeating the "lock" would make the narrative have less stakes. We can imagine some serious scenario like 1 or several weapons allied to Sephiroth because he corrupted them through the lifestream and whatnot. Unlike the whispers, the weapons are there to protect the planet and as such, they will eliminate the "threat". In comparison, the whispers would not be able to kill the party at all since their journey is part of the script they had to protect (even though gameplay wise, you still can get a game over, but there isn't no way around that). Finally, nothing can stop Nojima and Nomura to ramp Sephiroth even more if needed.

Regarding newcomers for FF7, I don't believe they absolutely need to know what was supposed to happen, since the game outright tell you that things are being different now. They are pretty much in the same situation as veterans who tried OG FF7 the first time. The experience will be somewhat diminished, but I don't believe it is necessary.

I don't expect everyone to like the ending, but I believe it is way too early to cry heresy while we don't know how different the events of Disc 1 and Disc 2 will pan out.

We don't exactly know if he is AC Sephiroth or Sephiroth from much later than that, considering all the stuff that can happen with timelines and stuff. However, it isn't really surprising Sephiroth got different abilities there because they aren't in the real world but in the realm of destiny where Sephiroth actually absorbed the Whispers after they were defeated by Cloud's party (which might explain why Cloud could do some AC stunts already because of wonky settings).
Another simple explanation would be the devs deciding to update his moveset for the game.
If anything, we never really had a fight against Sephiroth in his "human" form except the Omnislash duel, and AC being a bit questionable since it was Sephiroth channeled into Kadaj body through Jenova's cells.

But it is very obvious FF7R Sephiroth at the end is aware of the future, which explains why he wants to break free from the destiny where he is fated to fail. So at the very least, his position is similar to Aerith's, from either a different timeline/axis or inheriting future knowledge because of the lifestream.

I think the question better asked is if we trust Square Enix enough to make rather large alterations to the story without harming the overall spirit of the original. Can it stick to the overall themes of OG while delivering us a fresh experience? Given SE's track record in recent history as well as the rather...grandiose way they decided to present their narrative change?

I mean I'm hopeful sure. Given SE's track record? Eh...Especially if the solution to the problem is to make Sephiroth an even bigger villain.

And come on now the changes made in FF7R would only make sense to someone with knowledge of OG. This game makes absolutely no sense to the newcomer. How would you know things are different now if you have no basis for comparison? That's like playing spot the difference between these two photos with only one photo available to you.

What's the point of making these changes if all it does is diminishes the experience for the people you want to buy the game? Myself and many others with their nostalgia goggles bought the game cause it's remake, yet you're going to tell the newcomers to go play OG so remake makes sense? If the point was to have a lackluster boss fight (and boy was that boss lackluster. There's I reason I claim that the game took a nosedive after JENOVA and it's not just the story) and contrive a way to have a Sephiroth fight. Then Kudos to SE as they succeeded? in their endeavors.

The ending was designed to be controversial/cool and it succeeded in that regard. If nothing else it gets people talking about the sequel...that won't come out for at least another couple of years. There's no talk of heresy coming from me, but there is talk from my end about how this whole fate/destiny/timeline plot device shtick is a whole load of nonsense.

Change the game as you see fit based on how you envision FF7 could be without restraints of the 90s (though I daresay that they were more free to play with the story back then...I mean where's the Hojo attempted bestiality scene?). But to justify the narrative change with alternate timelines? Confronting destiny? Overcoming fate?

In another game or for FF16 sure. But I just never felt that FF7's story/theme was about that.

Trackrecord shouldn't even be considered here. It is like complaining about an anime studio for X series because of how Y series was handled, despite the staff is different.
I'm pretty certain the vast majority of the old guard was pleased by the fleshed out characterization for nearly every character from OG FF7. This demonstrates that they actually know how to handle the characters, which is enough to conclude they do understand the essence of the franchise. I don't believe the team has "no idea" how to handle the narrative of the story if they nailed the characters so precisely.

Like I said, newcomers don't need to have knowledge from OG FF7. It sure helps so you know where some plot parts are coming from, but from what I could tell with some people who never played the original game, they were confused but they understood something is different from the original game considering how things were explained by Red and Aerith (and the actual fact it is a revisited game). As I said, the experience might be diminished for some people since it would be much harder for newcomers to figure out something is different from OG FF7 before chapter 17 explanations, but as I said, the experience is pretty much the same as what happened to veterans when they were playing OG FF7 the first time. Case in point, the story is on its own, extremely similar in its general scope, with additional themes to it.
That's why I believe Nojima and Nomura's move was probably an attempt to present the franchise to newcomers while avoiding to be predictable for people who played OG FF7.


I personally believe they are fully aware some people wouldn't like the ending at all, but they still took that risk, even though they cannot deliver the rest soon after that. That by itself is a very risky gamble but they took it anyway. I don't believe they made the ending so people would keep arguing about it for years while part 2 is still in production, considering it may sour people opinions even more.

On the flipside, I'm not saying the ending is perfect, and few things should have been handled differently.
For instance, while I believe the concept of Fate was fitting for FF7 as a whole, the way how ghosts were used wasn't exactly the most appropriate. I would have relied on Cloud's faulty memory way more (and using some overlap flashforward) so we see the actual changes in a more subtle way than ghosts intervening in a very blatant manner. And as I said before, the way how the party could catch Aerith's drift very quickly in front of the portal at the start of chapter 18.
Also, Zack's "timeline" was something that should have been kept for later because it doesn't have any impact on the current situation at all. So it gives way too many questions without any room to figure out what is the actual point of this.

I don't get what you tried to complain about.

First, I myself wrote that SE already notify every change of event with Whispers.
So for new players that wanted to trace back the scene to find changes and consequences, they only need to see where is sighting of Whispers.
"Oh, on Remake this scene have Whisper, so in OG it happened like this" Is it that difficult? Does it prevent enjoyment of players who wanted to try OG FF VII? Which part of it make no sense? If anything, I found it as good potential for more comparison video between OG and Remake from players that also play FF VII so new players interested to visit OG for the pure 1997 writing experience while waiting for next installment.

I do have knowledge on OG and I don't see the change is that bad as: first, it still first game, so there's no telling if it will be that bad, but to look forward of what consequences may happens to FF VII casts; second it fixes several problem of OG such as Sephiroth that do needed to be introduced earlier instead of being random dude with long sword that somehow became more significant by Disc 2 just because of Cloud headache, its a pleasant surprise for me who follow FF VII Compilation and Dissidia as he use a portion of his moveset; third, it distinguish the game firmly from OG while at same time held OG in high regards for being the true history.

If parents told their son that the reason he need to wake up every morning is to go to school, does it diminish value the son already going to school every morning for more than three years? If we really going with non-sense excuse, then dragging meteor to earth because you learned you're a monster descendant with MC as your hype man is a non-sense too until CC expand Sephiroth insecurities for not knowing his parents in comparison to Angeal and Genesis despite known as the strongest man alive.

Second, Sephiroth is always the biggest villain.

Dirge of Cerberus, even with Deepground tried pulling Omega, "Hojo" still consider it 'backup' compare to what Sephiroth achieve. Before Crisis and Crisis Core still noted Sephiroth as unreal swordsman that Lifestream-powered Genesis is considerably minor compare to regular Sephiroth.

The change is only introduce him earlier as him being final boss is not a secret anymore, which IMO is quite positive as this also made his hype is not dependant to Cloud jumbled memories but to his own action to drive fate into his favor while introducing to new players, "This is strength of that popular man who constantly stay as top boss of this series".

You're arguing apples and oranges here. You can have great characters with bad plot and vice versa. Let's use the mainline FF15 for example. The story in that game is a huge dumpster fire that was barely patched together even with all the DLC they threw at it. The characters? They were great and they carried what was otherwise a barely mediocre game. FF7 OG? Great characters, I'd argue a good story for an rpg. FF7R Part 1? Great characters, story was chugging along decently until they jumped the shark.

Can they get back on track without having to retcon the whole fate nonsense? Eh I'm doubtful, but got years to reconcile/forget the story and just play it for the characters and hope it gets back on track.

As for the rest, well let's just agree to disagree.

And I don't get what you're responding to? My argument is that using destiny/fate as your plot device makes no sense and doesn't fit the overall theme of FF7. And for what? Just to tell your audience that things will no longer be the same? To force an unnecessary Sephiroth boss fight just cause that's what fans would want (nevermind that both the harbinger and Sephiroth fight were lackluster boss fights at best)? To absolutely shred the pacing of the narrative just to again hammer home the point that things WILL BE DIFFERENT.

They were already doing that by (barely) expanding the roles Avalanche and Wutai played in the world. But nah that wasn't good enough. Need a bigger oomph for the finale of Part 1.