Things that Final Fantasy Remake and Rebirth have done right so far

 I, in my official capacity as a writer for Christ Centered Gamer, have reviewed both FF7 Remake and Rebirth. Being a veteran of the OG FF7 on PS1, I have been overall pleased with both. Before I cover what they've done right, I'm going to mention two annoying things first as a form of preemptive balance. Also, I shall avoid dropping major spoilers except where absolutely necessary.

First, being effectively a stealth sequel of the original, I find the remakes to be, for a total series noob, to be a bit too indulgent on assuming the player knows how the original story goes at times, especially all the side materials. I gather the developers want to streamline the bloated original canon and the remakes are a distilled version of it, but you have to go out of your way to get the full context for some of it.

Second, Rebirth's pacing is bogged down with its open world mechanics. I got to the point where, outside of the bare minimum, I went out of my way to speedrun through its Ubisoft-style open world objectives because all the fetch quests and minigames became boring fast. When the story could finally do its thing, the game was really interesting then.

Now that I got that out of the way, let's cover what they did right.

1. Wutai is built up better.

The original 1997 Midgar-Wutai war was really hard to believe given the frail lore on hand. They tell us a war happened, but Wutai and Midgar appear so lopsided compared to each other I didn't see how Wutai wasn't bodied since day one. The side material released after the original game made it somewhat more believable, but they still had to dance around the issue of how the original beggared a ton of disbelief.

The remakes fix the issue by showing Shinra was much less powerful then, and even to this point, Wutai was still strong enough even the ceasefire they agreed on is tenuous. Given the projected finale of trilogy is likely going to show us Wutai given the story progress, this does a better job of setting them up.

2. Shinra makes more sense.

1997 Shinra was as cliche as you can get with the whole stereotypical evil megacorporation writing device. Most of their actions were very poorly explained, with them seemingly blowing off two bombings of the cash cow that was Mako Reactors and how oddly inattentive they were to the heroes except when they bothered to care.

The remakes show Shinra has logical, if still optimistic reasons for their actions. The reactor bombings now have the motive of temporary toleration, so they can use them as false flags for their own goals. Further, it made me hard pressed to accept they cared about Midgar itself when they were clearly leaving so much infrastructure to rot, given all the monsters and crumbling social structure it was barely supporting at times in the original. The remakes show this is indeed intentional, as Midgar, while still valuable, is clearly seen by Shinra as a stepping stone to bigger and better things.

On a character level, several Shinra executives are less cartoon evil and instead are more sensible. President Shinra has actual logic behind his evil instead of the Captain Planet tier depth of the 1997 version. He lays out clear and convincing reasons why Avalanche is full of crap (i.e. - for all their complaining about Mako energy, what better ideas do they want to fill the void with?). He also doesn't show up in person to the Sector 5 bombing attempt, where Barret could have easily shot him, instead sensibly appearing via a holographic medium to avoid that. Heidegger and Scarlet's military contributions to Shinra are made more obvious aside from strawbossing people due to vague clout. The Turks are portrayed less like cliche high-class kneebreakers and instead come off as human beings.

World logic as to how they became a world power is now more rounded. The remakes add a ton of lore justifying their rise, how they continue to exert influence, and how they are retaining their power. Unlike the original, which just shows most of the places they control passively accept Shinra, the remakes show that lots of resentment is still present for many areas. Junon, for one, is still seething, having been a power in its own right, and even after capitulating, still has a bunch of would-be rebels who continue to hate Shinra.

3. The world itself makes more sense.

The 1997 game was basically a sci-fi game plot portrayed through the lens of a fantasy turn-based RPG presentation. As a result of this and the much simpler 3D of its time, areas look smaller than they should be, distances are truncated, and for all the supposed damage Shinra inflicts with Mako, we saw none of it except in story-critical areas.

The remakes fix quite a bit of this. Evidence of the backstory war is very clear underneath Midgar and in other world areas. Mako reactors and their environmental effects are both explained in findable lore and shown in various areas, with the Corel reactors especially shown to have caused most of the desertification of the region.

While making it an action RPG game with much more realistic proportions is arguable as being good or bad, I'd argue it was used well. Several weird bits, like how you get to Shinra HQ towards the end of the Midgar arc, were massively improved by making it appear far more difficult than the original "just climb a bunch of wreckage" sequence in 1997. They also do a better job of showing off what most of the stock backdrops merely implied. Towns and cities have content fully proportional to their size, and it feels like a far more lived-in world.

4. Characters make more sense.

For all the flaws if the new writing, the protagonists are generally improved. Here's a summary of each who got a glowup that was most noticeable:

* Cloud is far less a stock anti-hero with mental issues and now is far more rounded, with his mental issues showing a much better understanding of how real PTSD and schizophrenia work.

* Barret comes off less "angry Mr. T impersonator" and has many more moments of showing his brains and why he's charismatic enough to inspire others to join his cause. 

* Yuffie was massively reworked to be a mandatory character, rewrote her personality to be far less grating, and overall made her logically fit into the overarching plot.

* Cid is less a foul mouthed douche and we get to see far more of his actual engineering chops. He also had a lot of more abrasive edges toned down and made more likable as a human being.

5. Conclusion

Despite the gripes I do have with the remakes, I'm looking forward to seeing their conclusion, and hope they continue the much better writing as explained above.