What annoys me about all this is that there was a lot of potential in a remake of FF7. I love the original to death, but I'm not gonna deny it's perfect. Maybe a remake could have expanded on themes that were undercooked in the original, like AVALANCHE being just as guilty as Shinra due to their rampant terrorism or giving Vincent a larger role. Or maybe just retell the original but update the gameplay. This isn't a remake like their remakes of FF3 or 4, it's another continuation in the autistic maelstrom that's the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII.
But you know what I hate the most? It's devaluing the original's theme of death. The original game was influenced by the death of Sakaguchi's mother, and that sense of life and its importance permeated throughout the game. A lot of people died in FF7. Jessie, Biggs, Wedge, Aerith, Zack, Dyne, and the biggest takeaway I got from that is you can't undo death. You have to remember the people as they were in life and move on. That's why the scene where the party's remembering Aerith is one of my personal favorite scenes because that's the moment where it sinks in that Aerith is dead and nothing can bring her back. All anyone can do is follow her example and keep their memories of her. But the remake? Zack, Biggs, and Wedge survive lol! Why have permanent character death and examine how that affects everyone else when we can just rewrite them back to life? It's cheating and I fucking hate it. If this ends with Aerith surviving I'm gonna be pissed.