FFXIII trilogy walked so FFVII Remake could run!
I always found it kind of funny, when people said, FF had become to linear. The world map usually isn't too involved in the beginning anyway and you might find only one maybe two places were anything other than the main narrative was possible at a given time. BUT! That was important cause it made the world more interactive and explorable, even though the games might have been linear in general. The problem here isn't linearitiy but modes of play, ways to interact with the game.
I think it's kind of funny that FFX had this figured out with little nooks and crannies you could explore/ find on the linear maps and the game being regularly broken up by either (the possibility of) mini-games or another mode of play like the cloister of trials. Giving the whole thing a sense of worldness to it.
The FFXIII trilogy took quite a while to rediscover this, after FFXIII was a graphical masterpiece that was so linear and devoid of any other mode of play that it get a bit tedious at times (I still love XIII, but it's undeniably my least favourite of the trilogy to replay). FFVII Remake comes with the lessons learned and implemented in FFXIII-2 and Lightning Returns giving us back areas that are more interestingly designed and broken up often by actual dungeon navigation, either a mini-game to make a way or some mechanics you gotta figure out for additonal materia etc.
On top of that the FFVII Remake can build on the gameplay system the FFXIII Trilogy experimented with: marrying action combat with turn-based party control. I think there can be no arguing, that the system is just so incredible fun, having you build a good party synergy while switiching into one character or another for the action. The shock system not being mandatory to beat the bosses also is a huge bonus as it gives the opportunity for massive damage but doesn't force the players to learn just a sole strategy that has to be used to actually make the fights go over quickly. And then they even added strategy elements like exploiting certain bosses weakness to elements, debuffs or using a certain time frame to attack so the boss will be paralyzed or something. It's just top notch.
Apart from that I also think this game just improved on the original Midgar section. I was never the biggest OG FFVII fan But I always loved Midgar and thought it was just a really imaginative place, with interesting world building and the huge corporation sucking the life out of the planet was just a great antagonistic entity. So when the Remake was supposed to be only Midgar I didn't even mind. On the one hand, even if it was bad I wouldn't loose anything and on the other, I really wanted to see more of the world building in Midgar and I love almost everything about it!
You spent more time in the slums, getting to know it's people the way they live down there, solving little problems here and there, that might feel like stupid side quests for some, but I think they were well implemented either to get to know Sector 7 and 5 or in the case of Wall Market even to send you around the place and give everything a bit of structure. (talking about Wall Market, I'm really happy the queer representation here now isn't just rapey gay man really wanting to molest Cloud, but insead really fabulous and actually colorful)
The addtional character time and additional characters also add a lot to the whole world, making the destruction of Sector 7 feel soo much more meaningful. In the original I knew, that it was bad it happened, but I didn't loose anything really. Biggs, Wedge and Jessie for example barely made an impression on me and I never feeled very connected to the slums themselves. Here that is so different, and they really home in on the destruction and suffering Shinra brings (especially in Chapter 13, it's a really nice gut punch and just hurts to see).
Shinra is also way better characterized with their propaganda and actions being very clear: manipulating news, cutting footage as it pleases them and only investing in anything that will make them money. So when you come across monster invested power plants or places left to rot, you can see just all of the decay. Midgar was literally build on top of existing villages, build on an existing fantasy world, with its environment and eco-system now trying to adapt to the new conditions. Sewers infested with Sahagin and corporate filth, spider monsters building their nests in abandoned railways, and ghosts haunting a train graveyard. It just makes the climate crisis messaging so much stronger. People have always changed nature to their liking, every society in this world has grown out of nature, relies on it and adapts it. (yes, even hunter and gatheres domesticated animals or even burned parts of forests in a controlled measure to make the soil more fertile.) It's just the manner and extend to which this is possible that is changed, humans aren't parasites that destroy nature, but powerful actors that can shape it in a way that they might destroy themselves. Fighting Shinra because they focus more on profit just feels so right here.
This might also be, why I didn't even mind section like the Train Graveyard being not just a screen but a whole-ass section, that builds on the world and even gives us some insights into the characters pasts and relations.
Character relations is also a real strong point of this game. Apart from the lovable interactions and abundance of voiced dialog here, there are also the little statistics running in the background (without the Aerith will remember this prompt Bioware games love so much), making the outcome of scenes feel really organic. You interacted everytime with Tifa or gave answers that relate to her? Yeah, she is the first to help you in the Sephiroth endfight. Here you go. All of this is really bringing back Roleplaying into a FF game, that might have been missing since FFX (apart from FFXIV maybe, you know, were you make your own character).
Shippers don't come at me for writing Tifa there, in my headcanon Cloud, Tifa and Aerith are a throuple anyway. They're all romantically involved, okay?
Now, their are also changes that might be more controversial. the Arbiters. At first when finishing the game I thought they were a horrible addition. I didn't want to fight fate or have some weird KH/Advent Children-like over-the-top-action. And the Meta Commentary about fans expectations? I didn't really care. I embraced the changes to the original anyway. Give me more explicit condonement of Avalanche, give me more time with the characters, give me more clear signs of Sephiroth being important to the story and Clouds past right away (the flashbacks scenes are just so much more clear here, I LOVE it!). Then later I replayed the game on hard mode and then I didn't mind too much. It didn't really take away from the messaging for fighting against capitalism and climate crisis.
Now? Now, after having replayed the OGFFVII I actually hope the comming changes will clear up some problems of the original. Like the messaging of overcoming trauma not being tied to (merely) such an spiritual outlook, but to actually overcoming the problems and trying to prevent climate catastrophe. That doesn't mean I don't want any stakes or any losses. Overcoming trauma is important to be able to save the planet, but comming to terms with your own past should end in us trying to build a better world, were something like this doesn't happen again - and for that blowing up apipeline Mako reactor and toppling capitalism is essential.
I always found it kind of funny, when people said, FF had become to linear. The world map usually isn't too involved in the beginning anyway and you might find only one maybe two places were anything other than the main narrative was possible at a given time. BUT! That was important cause it made the world more interactive and explorable, even though the games might have been linear in general. The problem here isn't linearitiy but modes of play, ways to interact with the game.
I think it's kind of funny that FFX had this figured out with little nooks and crannies you could explore/ find on the linear maps and the game being regularly broken up by either (the possibility of) mini-games or another mode of play like the cloister of trials. Giving the whole thing a sense of worldness to it.
The FFXIII trilogy took quite a while to rediscover this, after FFXIII was a graphical masterpiece that was so linear and devoid of any other mode of play that it get a bit tedious at times (I still love XIII, but it's undeniably my least favourite of the trilogy to replay). FFVII Remake comes with the lessons learned and implemented in FFXIII-2 and Lightning Returns giving us back areas that are more interestingly designed and broken up often by actual dungeon navigation, either a mini-game to make a way or some mechanics you gotta figure out for additonal materia etc.
On top of that the FFVII Remake can build on the gameplay system the FFXIII Trilogy experimented with: marrying action combat with turn-based party control. I think there can be no arguing, that the system is just so incredible fun, having you build a good party synergy while switiching into one character or another for the action. The shock system not being mandatory to beat the bosses also is a huge bonus as it gives the opportunity for massive damage but doesn't force the players to learn just a sole strategy that has to be used to actually make the fights go over quickly. And then they even added strategy elements like exploiting certain bosses weakness to elements, debuffs or using a certain time frame to attack so the boss will be paralyzed or something. It's just top notch.
Apart from that I also think this game just improved on the original Midgar section. I was never the biggest OG FFVII fan But I always loved Midgar and thought it was just a really imaginative place, with interesting world building and the huge corporation sucking the life out of the planet was just a great antagonistic entity. So when the Remake was supposed to be only Midgar I didn't even mind. On the one hand, even if it was bad I wouldn't loose anything and on the other, I really wanted to see more of the world building in Midgar and I love almost everything about it!
You spent more time in the slums, getting to know it's people the way they live down there, solving little problems here and there, that might feel like stupid side quests for some, but I think they were well implemented either to get to know Sector 7 and 5 or in the case of Wall Market even to send you around the place and give everything a bit of structure. (talking about Wall Market, I'm really happy the queer representation here now isn't just rapey gay man really wanting to molest Cloud, but insead really fabulous and actually colorful)
The addtional character time and additional characters also add a lot to the whole world, making the destruction of Sector 7 feel soo much more meaningful. In the original I knew, that it was bad it happened, but I didn't loose anything really. Biggs, Wedge and Jessie for example barely made an impression on me and I never feeled very connected to the slums themselves. Here that is so different, and they really home in on the destruction and suffering Shinra brings (especially in Chapter 13, it's a really nice gut punch and just hurts to see).
Shinra is also way better characterized with their propaganda and actions being very clear: manipulating news, cutting footage as it pleases them and only investing in anything that will make them money. So when you come across monster invested power plants or places left to rot, you can see just all of the decay. Midgar was literally build on top of existing villages, build on an existing fantasy world, with its environment and eco-system now trying to adapt to the new conditions. Sewers infested with Sahagin and corporate filth, spider monsters building their nests in abandoned railways, and ghosts haunting a train graveyard. It just makes the climate crisis messaging so much stronger. People have always changed nature to their liking, every society in this world has grown out of nature, relies on it and adapts it. (yes, even hunter and gatheres domesticated animals or even burned parts of forests in a controlled measure to make the soil more fertile.) It's just the manner and extend to which this is possible that is changed, humans aren't parasites that destroy nature, but powerful actors that can shape it in a way that they might destroy themselves. Fighting Shinra because they focus more on profit just feels so right here.
This might also be, why I didn't even mind section like the Train Graveyard being not just a screen but a whole-ass section, that builds on the world and even gives us some insights into the characters pasts and relations.
Character relations is also a real strong point of this game. Apart from the lovable interactions and abundance of voiced dialog here, there are also the little statistics running in the background (without the Aerith will remember this prompt Bioware games love so much), making the outcome of scenes feel really organic. You interacted everytime with Tifa or gave answers that relate to her? Yeah, she is the first to help you in the Sephiroth endfight. Here you go. All of this is really bringing back Roleplaying into a FF game, that might have been missing since FFX (apart from FFXIV maybe, you know, were you make your own character).
Now, their are also changes that might be more controversial. the Arbiters. At first when finishing the game I thought they were a horrible addition. I didn't want to fight fate or have some weird KH/Advent Children-like over-the-top-action. And the Meta Commentary about fans expectations? I didn't really care. I embraced the changes to the original anyway. Give me more explicit condonement of Avalanche, give me more time with the characters, give me more clear signs of Sephiroth being important to the story and Clouds past right away (the flashbacks scenes are just so much more clear here, I LOVE it!). Then later I replayed the game on hard mode and then I didn't mind too much. It didn't really take away from the messaging for fighting against capitalism and climate crisis.
Now? Now, after having replayed the OGFFVII I actually hope the comming changes will clear up some problems of the original. Like the messaging of overcoming trauma not being tied to (merely) such an spiritual outlook, but to actually overcoming the problems and trying to prevent climate catastrophe. That doesn't mean I don't want any stakes or any losses. Overcoming trauma is important to be able to save the planet, but comming to terms with your own past should end in us trying to build a better world, were something like this doesn't happen again - and for that blowing up a