@IlMomo86:
Alright, here's my 2 cents on some of your points. I've left the other points which we agree upon out since there won't be much more to say about them anyway.
1. Shinra/Domino: disagree. You see, what irked me since the beginning in the original game was that this superpowerful company had nothing so simple as a cam surveillance in its reactors and some modicum of (real) security in their HQ building, all of whom would've made Avalanche striking two important blows at Shinra impossible. The remake worked hard to make it believable, painting Avalanche as a more structured organization, Shinra as willing to play a charade, Wutai being (used as) a (perceived) threat and Domino as a double-agent rather than simply a moron. Granted it could've been executed better, but I appreciate the direction.
I see what you mean, I have been thinking that maybe part of the reason for the different approach in both games also stems from changes in the real world during the last 2 decades: Mass surveillance via cameras at every street corner wasn't around in 1997, it only started to gradually become a thing after 9/11. The 90's were that peaceful time between the Cold War and the new age of global terrorism, so there was no need for mass surveillance back then, which is perhaps why the developers of the original neglected it. Today we have it in every major city, so the developers probably wanted to include that in a modern version of the game as well so that the game's level of technological progress would still look futuristic. The original game did look futuristic for 1997 standards even without mass camera surveillance, but I guess it wouldn't look like that anymore today when even we have cameras everywhere in the real world.
But then again, wouldn't a camera network in the Shinra headquarters make Mayor Domino's work for Avalanche even more difficult, or impossible? It's not that I'm against expanding his character in general, I just found the location he uses as a base for his Avalanche support to be somewhat ridiculous.
On a funny side note, the original DID have a camera surveillance system in the headquarters (you see it in a brief FMV when first riding the elevator to the 60th floor), but the dude responsible for watching the monitors was just sleeping on his job, lol!
2. Terror strategy: disagree 95%; on a personal sidenote, I am italian. It has happened in the history of our country that intelligence-service and corrupted politician allowed their own citizens to be bombed, painting others as the culprit. And sadly, it also happened and was recorded, of managers to celebrate when an earthquake or similar destroyed whole cities, as they were worried that too little space was left for builders to profit. Two popular strategies are at play, "unite people with terror" and "if there's no demand, someone has to create it". It's not such a long stretch of imagination that an evil huge company who is willing to build its third megalopolis (after Midgar itself and Junon) would pull off such a trick. Fantasy -yes- but not that unbelievable. Bombing reactors is a very good way also to slow down the mako exhaustion and paint Midgar as an obsolete model to be replaced with the improved Neo-Midgar. Of course all of this holds together if Wutai is still depicted as a surrendered and inoffensive nation, as in the original, because if it will be portrayed as a serious force to be reckoned then bombing two reactors is a lot less credible. So I 5% agree.
I agree that uniting people with terror might be a viable strategy for Shinra, but I also think they could've achieved that without blowing such a huge whole into their own wallet. We're never given exact numbers as to how rich Shinra really is or how long the reactors have been around, but Cid mentions that they discovered Mako energy sometime after the failed rocket launch. We don't know how many years ago the launch was, but Cid was already an adult back then and he's now 32, so the reactors must've accumulated Shinra's enormous wealth over a very short time frame (a decade perhaps). From this I conclude that each reactor must be worth an unimaginable fortune, one that an intelligent company wouldn't sacrifice so easily. Even if Shinra managed to kill all of Avalanche in such a reactor explosion, they still couldn't consider that a victory, as the financial damage to themselves would likely outweigh the strategic gains.
Especially since their problems would likely not end after Avalanche's destruction: history has shown us repeatedly that wherever there is an oppressive regime, resistance movements against them will form eventually, some of them going as far as engaging in a military conflict with the regime. So after getting rid of Avalanche completely, it would only be a matter of time until the next Anti-Shinra-group emerges. (The original even hinted at the existence of other rebel groups by implying that such a group sabotaged the Corel reactor, so the possibility of a repetition is there.) I doubt that the company could continue the reactor-blowing strategy every time such a group hits the scene, even with the Neo-Midgar plan as a backup.
Neo-Midgar is probably still a long way off, considering that it relies on them first finding the promised land (and at the time of the bombings they didn't even have Aerith yet), and building such a gigantic metropolis would surely take some time as well, possibly decades. Hojo's research on the Ancient would probably also be a factor on their time table (although the 120 years stated in the original were probably too much, lol). Therefore nuking the reactors seems risky to me considering that the availability of Neo-Midgar is not yet certain.
Their Wutai-plan will depend on what the developers decide to do with Wutai in general, but I imagine there'll be some changes as well. In the original Godo says at the Pagoda that Wutai had lost the war, but in the remake (I don't remember the exact moment, help me please) it was stated somewhere that they only have an armistice, and that fighting could break out again if tensions should rise. One can only speculate where this will go.
3. Good Vs Evil: actually, disagree. The Shinra does the bombing, correct, but the group knows not, yet it doesn't stop anyone except Tifa from being willing to bomb again. Tifa suggests later that turning lightpower off will hurt the people of the slums, Barret rebuffs, Tifa complies. And since the damage done is a more stressed point, I'd say the only one who got a character expansion in this case is Tifa, and the group is still painted somewhat negatively, not to mention Cloud being a lot more merciless. Shinra on the other hand is expanded as well, with people being more clearly on Shinra's side than before, Cloud outright stating that Mako did indeed improve the life of many, and pres.Shinra speaking for his case twice, all provide some added layers.
The group doesn't know it, but the PLAYER knows it. My point here was that the original game had ethics and morality as one of its core themes by urging the player to think about Avalanche's actions and – since the player is the one controlling Avalanche – even scrutinizing their own role in the game. By making it clear to the player that Avalanche is not responsible for civilian deaths in the city due to Shinra causing the larger explosion, they removed the need for the player to question his party's actions. Avalanche is still in a moral gray area, but they're no longer murderers themselves, presenting them as more innocent to the audience. The theme of ethics and morality may still be present in the overall game, but not to the same degree anymore, imho.
4. Pres.Shinra: agree and disagree ... pres.Shinra is actually handled better, as a character. In the first time he makes the point that his actions are still supported by many consumers. And in the second occasion he says that without Shinra's man-power nobody could help anyone. Instead of being just a snobbish bastard, he makes a few good points. Granted though, the second chance he gets to throw his speech is quite an ill-written scene overall.
The President's first speech at the reactor sounded more sophisticated, I agree. And yeah, his death scene was the writers' fault.
7. Bad pacing: agree and disagree. The train graveyard and the underplate were added dungeons for sure, but at least they were expansion of interesting concepts in the original. Unlike the deepground lab, to mention one. And since Tifa and Cloud don't actually believe Corneo much, it is somewhat justified that they aren't in a hurry until they see the shinracopters going toward the pillar. A couple of times it gets trite, I agree with this. The "Drum" is a good idea (later on this) and the Deepground and second Sewers are atrocious.
Agreed on the interesting concepts, I actually love the train graveyard and would've wished that it was longer in the original game (looked so cool!). I would often spend my time there farming Ethers from Deenglows and Striking Staffs from Eligors for sale later on. The longer dungeon itself didn't bug me, it was only the characters' slow and time-wasting behavior during the cutscenes there. Even if they doubt Corneo, as long as even a small possibility remains that he said the truth they probably shouldn't risk being too late.
Oh yeah, thanks for reminding me about the Deepground lab, 100% agree with you there. There wasn't any reason to even go there other than rescuing Wedge, who should not have survived in the first place.
8. Falling plate: it stands to reason that, even in the original, not just everyone in the slums died, since some were thinking about running away. It also stays true in the remake that hundreds of people died still. Showing the most important characters in the slums (Betty, Marle, Wymer) all alive and well, though, is admittedly too much mercy on the audience.
True, we never get exact numbers about the death tolls in either game, so some of it is left up to imagination. Since the original never mentions any survivors (doesn't mean that there weren't) and the remake shows you a lot of them, my assumption is that in the original the majority died, while in the remake the majority survived.
9. Biggs, Wedge and Jessie (yes, she too: notice the gloves in the desk beside Biggs) alive in the ending. This I consider to be the most serious offense. The events of their deaths were written and executed brilliantly, and preceded by due character developement to give them more impact. And bam, they bring it to this childish, unimaginative and dull conclusion. Everyone lives, whoooo-hooooo. Dunno if it was the Whispers' defeat or not, I don't care. How can you build everything up to such a beautiful goodbye sequence and then ruin it like this. I am shocked really, I think this is the worst of all the remake. Worse than Zack, and hinting at a very negative direction they could be taking this. I was speechless at such a waste of good narrative. Not going to go the route "I bet Kitase wrote the deaths and Nomura wrote their return" because I cannot be 100% sure about it. But you get my meaning.
Wow, I didn't notice that at first, thanks! I had to watch some scenes again to verify that they do indeed look like Jesse's gloves. So if every single Avalanche member from Barret's group survived, it makes the entire plate drop feel even more meaningless. Wholeheartedly agree.
10. Hojo spilling THAT bean: 95% agree with you. I understand why they did it. Kitase said that Sephiroth's build up as a character was inspired by Spielberg's Jaws: you feel there's a threat but you don't see it. Good idea, but hard to play again once every player and their grandma know who Sephiroth is. They had to consider a new way to play plot points, along with the fact that it had to get interesting since the first part of the Remake compilation. Thus they went guns-out with foreshadowing. I get it. Along the interesting points of the game was Cloud's unreliable character, so they wanted to throw in a bit of that. I get it. But that line at that point in time was criminal. A very bad idea indeed.
13. Jenova: 100% agree. Once again, I understand throwing Jenova in the mix earlier, but that execution is craptacular. Another thing which was easily solved with a few lines. There are four phases of Jenova's charaterization, at first you don't know at all what it is, second phase you think it's Sephiroth's human mother who was mutated by experiments, third you think is a Cetra of sorts, fourth you learn its true nature, much later, at Icicle Inn. Just go straight up to phase two and say it's Sephiroth's mother and there you have it, there's at least a cause for Jenova to be there. The fact they didn't need to do that proves how little they care for the comprehension by new players.
Hojo's line and Jenova: Yeah I get it too why they did both. I think their decision to make the first game Midgar-only was already a mistake, as that seemingly created more problems than it solved. They wanted to include important stuff from the FF7 story, but Midgar was simply too early for some of that. Had they decided to make Part 1 longer (cargo ship at least), they would've had more room for those story elements and could've avoided many narrative problems. And in Hojo's case, I'm sure Nomura just wanted another opportunity to show off his beloved fate-ghosts, lol.
16. chap18 isn't the only problem: here is where we most disagree. While other changes we can discuss of how good or bad they were, this is the one that poses the serious problem. I don't know if you've red my long list of plot points in the spoilerblock, but chap18 is where the damage gets serious. Because chap 18 isn't re-proposing or re-imagining the story themes for better or worse, it's straight-up contradicting them. There are a few way this could still get back on track (one of the most smartest is, the whole FF7R is actually happening during the "Cloud's Mind" section of the original game) or use the new plot points somewhat in service of the classic themes (there are a few youtuber theories on how that could work) but all in all it would still be needless contrivance, and that is still assuming optimistically that they DO recognize diverting from the original as a problematic choice, which I wouldn't be that sure. Chap18 is at an entirely different level of every other change, I'm convinced of it.
Actually we DO agree on this one! I too think that the whole whisper-fate-time-travel-nonsense was the worst crime to the story. I merely wanted to bring up some points from other chapters as well because everybody on the internet seems to be talking primarily about chapter 18 when judging the story's writing. I did read your analysis on the game's themes (original and remake), and found it very reasonable. Chapter 18 is the most serious problem indeed, just not the ONLY one, that's all I wanted to say.