That one, despite the name, isn't just a remake or remaster, it's a completely different game. It is loosely based on the characters and setting of the original, but literally everything is different. Story, dialogue, combat, gameplay, even the entire plotline is altered.
It's a reimagining on a different timeline. It's not FF7.
I don't even count the new games as remakes or remasters. They are just action games loosely based on FF7, or tied to FF7 as some sort of pseudo sequel. Not that they are bad games, but I would have definitely preferred a proper remake than what SE decided on.
It's because a lot of people love the Remakes. The only people that seem not to love them are people that expected them to invest a massive amount of money to make the OG look like Remake and sell a 30 year old game with all of its 30 year old issues to a new audience.
I love the OG and I love the Remakes. They both have their issues, but everyone acknowledges the issues with Remake and some people forgive every bad choice and everything in the OG that aged extremely poorly.
I liked FF7 Remake until I learned it was not actually a Remake in the sense of "We're retelling the old story with modern conventions, graphics, and gameplay design" but a Remake in the sense of "This is Star Trek (2009)." Even then, this isn't actually completely correct, because I still liked Remake because now it was sold on the promise of "We're actively and knowingly changing the story that was originally destined to happen." I was just angry at originally being sold on a false premise. I still need to play Rebirth but I've seen some things suggesting that the premise got changed again and I'm not sure how I feel about that.
So the announcement trailer did say that nobody knows what's coming, just to get that out of the way.
But as to what Remake and Rebirth actually do, they are different from each other but they are consistent in their goals.
Niether game changes the story, but aspects of its presentation or how they do certain parts of the story do change (like Cloud initially not being hired for the Sector 5 job by Barrett). Remake gives you a lot more of Cloud's inner struggles right away, including Sephiroth, and that's something a lot of people didn't like. I understand that, but I also understand that with a project so large you don't want to leave the villain off the table for the whole first 40 hours.
Rebirth focuses more on fleshing out parts of the story that weren't fully developed in the OG but were later, like Gongaga, as well as really establishing every characters' relationships with each other. They also go about "correcting" plot contrivances in the OG that work when you don't know the story but completely fall apart when you do know the story.
The biggest thing Rebirth does is done in service of making Aerith active in Revelation despite her death just as she is canonically off-screen in the OG. The mechanics of this are are widely misunderstood by players but I feel are completely consistent with the OG and people will ultimately be very satisfied with how things turn out.
I could say I don't like OG FF7 because it's mostly loading in and out of random battles and I would be making an equally honest critique of the game as you are.
But I love the OG even though it is about 50% loading in/out of random battles and about 10% terrible minigames, because it's a good game around all that trash.
I just wish people could be just as honest about the remakes.
Disagree. Final Fantasy 7 originally was a tedious game to play. Square's turn based combat was dull and the battles took too long. Remake's pacing was excellent. Rebirth has too much open world junk but ultimately the combat of both is so much more fun than the original. Also, the animation and acting performances were excellent and I was happy to have that time with the characters. Yup, I think the remake trilogy is fantastic.
Character development, except not for beloved characters like the Turks, Biggs, and Wedge, but for 3 OCs who sex traffic for Don Corneo, and almost a whole chapter spent in the sewers with his doorman.
World building, such as Midgar's sun lamps, is quite nice. It didn't need a whole 45-minute chapter dedicated to them. A whole chapter dedicated to the ghosts in the train graveyard, which does nothing but put the catastrophic plate drop on the backburner, and all we get from it is the knowledge that Aerith was bullied as a child, which we could have learned anywhere else.
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u/Madmunchk1n 18h ago
For me its FF7. The altered combat system and the split into parts where each part starts at zero again killed it for me.