On one hand, i really wish they didn't do the ending the way they did. It didn't NEED it....And then i stepped back and realized, that reaction was the entire point of Square doing something this controversial.
Remember when people up and shat a brick even when we learned that Jessie's bomb wasn't what ultimately blew up the Bombing Mission reactor? Imagine that, except with Yuffie's reveal, or Aerith's death, or the Midgar Zolom, or literally anything else in the remaining games. They'd basically be forced to hit every single checkpoint in order to appease everyone, and even still they'd miss the mark. And even if by chance they did, and it was a 1:1 remake....it would forever be in the shadow of the original, and a comparison would always have to be made. It's possible to recreate the feeling of FF7, but it's impossible to actually create new feelings in the same way if the game is forced to do everything the old one did.
The truth is that Nostalgia is an enemy that's impossible to beat, especially when you're forced to fight it directly. Square understood this, and i was initially glad long before the game released that they understood this concept.
For this very reason, I remember saying that Square would be REQUIRED to make the story completely different in order to actually create something with the same amount of impact as the original FF7....and that's exactly what they've done.
And then also as i stepped back, i realized that while Midgar in FF7 had some amazingly memorable moments.....the most memorable moments in FF7R to me were completely original, and didn't need the backing of the original to work on their own. So whatever's coming, i'm still excited. What we played in FF7R up until the KH ending was solid enough in gameplay and writing for me to not be afraid going forward. If this game was really trying to be Kingdom Hearts, i'm pretty sure i would have noticed long before i got to the ending because KH's dialogue is fucking atrocious and would not have possibly held up this long. If Nomura and Nojima's writing really was as KH as the ending, then the entire beginning of this game would have felt like the opening to Kingdom Hearts 2. complete with stupid ass Sea Salt icecream friendship gimmicks and all.....and thank god, it absolutely didn't.
The overall narrative and story is the same, except the key events are going to likely be drastically different -- after the initial shock of the crazy story wore off, i realize that FF7R Pt.II is going to be EXACTLY what I wanted in the first place.
They managed to make an entire game around the Midgar Slums in order to set up this bait-switch and i fucking loved it. Now that they're free to do anything, i'm pretty stoked for what the next parts will have. And most importantly, while we still have things to look forward to, we have absolutely NO IDEA what's behind the curtain this time.
But the brilliance in FF7R is that i really don't even care what's coming, i'm just excited to see it.
And that is a VASTLY better feeling than what i had before FF7R released, when i was afraid of how they recreated things from the original because i was afraid they were gonna fuck it up. They condensed all of that nostalgic anxiety into a single 2 hour finale at the end of the game, and now that we have that shit out of the way, we can look forward to the actual remake.