The time jannies were absolutely the worst part of the narrative, I almost always just got annoyed when they would show up. Them carrying Hojo away was amusing but otherwise they just came across as an obnoxious story element.
Im going to be controversial and say I loved the time jannies. It was a glaringly obvious metaphor for staying on the trodden path, but the game was rigid enough that I felt like things really needed to go off the rails. Plus I really enjoyed the mysterious look and vibe they were giving off. Morally I enjoyed the issue presented of saving a couple hundred people now at the cost of knowing what the future will bring.
You probably need to make peace with them, because they are coming back for select scenes judging from the trailers.
Again though, I have very limited experience with this sort of story direction. Did the Kingdom Hearts series’s narrative really sour the stew in terms of these sorts of tales by Square-Enix games?
Here's the thing. As a fan I think the narrative is good, even great when you follow this stuff as it comes out like me. However, When your a new fan who has to shift his way through the pile, its usually better off to start in release order and skip as needed when your playing something that just doesnt work. Like chain of memories has an awesome narrative, but with the card gameplay your better off reading the manga and looking up the details on TV tropes.
For example I got sick of ever crisis on my phone so I had to watch the cutscenes online. Good story and decent gameplay system, I just dont have time for grinding shit.
A good story is fine - but eventually it needs to end in a somewhat satisfactory way and if you're going to have a story run this long you need to be super careful about lore contradictions (and Nomura isn't) otherwise it feels messy.
There's not really that many lore contradictions though in KH and FF7. Admittedly... KH3 has some scenes that pissed me off. (Oh heartless can break keyblades now? Come on guys you cant use magic without a keyblade?) But KH3 gets a pass from me because I can tell they wanted to get that dam thing done and build a bridge to a better game. (VERSUS)
The 7R series has done a really good job of expanding on the world and lore because when you really get down to it. The original game did not have that much going on behind the scenes. There was shinra, there was Wutai and that's it.
A friendly reminder that Nomura is not the one who is the head writer of the VII remakes. That’s Kazushige Nojima, who is also the one who pushed for it to be more different in the first place.
Thank you. I keep saying this but there's some kind of meme virus where people see his name and assume he's responsible for every narrative decision. He's a got a team of guys with their own ideas and more often then not he had to reign them in when making the Remake. He was not the one who came up with fighting sephiroth ACC style at the end, hell he even protested against it at first.
Dude is honestly super humble, especially when going back and reading interviews for the orignal FF7. He fully admits a game is only as good as the people you have on the team. I think the real problem with him is the fact that he's very content to stay out of the spotlight and let his games do the talking. So people infer, assume and make up all kinds of wild shit when nobody is correcting the record.
I'll give you a perfect example. I always thought he did the deepground tsviets from Dirge and made them all wild, cool and kickass. The reality is he did not come up with the idea, the tron lines, the names or their basic personality's. What he did was give them an apperence and streamline their function based on descriptions given to him by the writer Hiroki Chiba (Great enemy ideas, TERRIBLE CUCK ROMANCE ugh)
Like there's this guy Nero the Sable
Nomura was told this guy was super badass. rode bikes and did all this acrobatic shit, but he also doesn't have use of his arms. So nomura was like "wtf? how does this guy do all this if he cant use his hands? Oh I know. I'll give him wing arms." And there you have it. (Sourced from the ultimana interview) He's responsible for a lot of stuff and gives his two cents on a lot of works he isnt even officially credited on, but he's not filling in every detail.
One more example for the road, They couldn't figure out if Red XIII was gonna just run on all fours or ride a chocobo somehow so they asked him and he said he rides.
How do you quantify that? It's stuff like that all the time for him and I think he's very under appreciated.