(possible Rebirth spoilers)
I've seen a couple of cutscenes from Rebirth and there's one where a doctor tells Tifa that a Shinra helicopter saved her and that they "aren't all bad". Plus they seem to be setting up that there is a more "Tankie" version of Avalanche in Wutai that might be bad?
The original already pulls a switcharoo and abandons class struggle for Great Sephiroth Theory. The events after the switch just fortuitously also wreck Shinra
The original story really dropped the ball on that aspect, I think. Shinra went from a (stinky) boardroom filled with figures all vying for power to Diamond Weapon blasting Rufus and then... idk that's about it but Proud Clod sorta pops up near the end of the story to wind things up, I guess?
Maybe it's not so relatable to a westoid like me because I don't have connection to fairly recent cultural history of ruling dynasties being handed down to successors before tragedy strikes, where that unifying force is dissolved, leading to quarreling factions and widespread political disunity. I feel like if I came from a Japanese cultural background it would be more within my frame of reference to be like "Oh, I know this story - the Daimyo has fallen and now the political structure is crumbling" on reflex whereas my cultural context is much more steeped in corporations and political parties being like a hydra rather than leviathan and I have to step outside my own cultural bubble to try and understand how the story progressing this way might have been a lot more commonsensical to a Japanese game dev team than it is to me.
That, or FF7's story is a rolling disaster that was only ever barely strung together and it really starts falling apart at the seams in the third act.
It's definitely a strung together collection of vibes. The disk 1 diesel-cyberpunk Metropolis ecoterrorism arc is fun while it lasts
The whole tone for these games is off for me. The original was a bit somber and felt a bit more righteous, these come off as like the disney amusement park version of FF7 to me. idk just not for me i guess
I love the original FF7 but all I've seen of the remakes just sort of makes me cringe. I've probably aged out of the target audience, but then again, I've always found every single piece of FF7-related media since the original game pure garbage
There was definitely some "not all bad" rhetoric in rebirth. If I'm remembering right, Barrett gets his lib on a bit later in the original FF7. Playing Rebirth is kinda disappointing, because the Remake exists mostly with Shinra as the enemy, but in Rebirth that focus is shifted purely onto Sephiroth and some Kingdom Hearts style slop. They even explicitly say a few times that Shinra isn't the enemy anymore.
I didn't like Rebirth as much as Remake for multiple reasons, this included, but also it's a tedious game full of mindless bullshit that it forces you to engage with regularly. The implementation of tedious bullshit is nowhere near as fun as something like Yakuza and it ultimately drags the game down instead of spicing it up with variety.
EDIT: I'm rereading this and I sound like fucking AI, I'm sorry
I didn't like Rebirth as much as Remake for multiple reasons, this included, but also it's a tedious game full of mindless bullshit that it forces you to engage with regularly. The implementation of tedious bullshit is nowhere near as fun as something like Yakuza and it ultimately drags the game down instead of spicing it up with variety.
Cloud, I've discovered a new assassin's creed tower for you to spend 3 minutes climbing for a 45s cut-scene that fills in 1/6th of this zone's map. Be sure to do them all and then also do all the dumbass eikon crystals so Odin doesn't immediately use Gjallarhorn's Warning to buff himself after hitting you twice and then subsequently spam Gjallarhorn as fast as he can. Cloud if you want to have decent armor (and by armor I mean materia slots) you're gonna want to get on your chocobo and spend 2 minutes in the designated zone holding down Up on the d-pad until your chocobo goes through the 25 second animation of lowering its beak to the ground and sniffing so you can get the blue line that will point you to the item, but oh wait it went through a pile of gravel so you'll have to do it again even though we both know it's gonna be in that corner 10 feet away. Cloud if you want to change your materia before doing this simulator battle, you're going to have to close completely out of the simulator and my main dialogue options, open the main menu, set your materia, and then go through the 15 second long "hello cloud, you'd like to try the simulator ok let me just boot it up for you"As someone who basically 100%ed Rebirth and had a blast doing so, if Reunion (or whatever the 3rd winds up being named) has even 15% less Chadley and 'omg 2015 era open world' exploration padding, I'll be so fucking happy
I fought the overturned Bahamut simulation in Remake so I want to throw Chadley under the train in Midgar
Not be that guy but im sure there are janitors working at Shinra. What about the gardeners ? The pizza delivery guys/gals ?
Lol I wonder if they're planning on fleshing out or doing some mild retcons to Godo and the Wutai War backstory. I don't imagine they're going to handle that particularly well - some backstory is better left to the imagination.
They really seem to just have had no idea what to do with Wutai, like they made a whole prequel and the Wutai war is literally one single sequence and then they move to a totally invented scenario instead.
Please. I'm waiting for this to come out on PC and SE is dragging their feet on it. Ohhh only a 3 month exclusivity...,ok so that's come and gone. I've booked the concert in October figure it would be out by then but the silence from SE is concerning.
WHERE'S MY PC RELEASE! 
OG FF7 A/C spoilers
The OG / Advent Children had a bit of teaming with the Turks when both goals aligned temporarily. Cait Sith was an insider Shira executive named Reeve Tuesti who spied on the team but redeemed himself and relented. Sid and Vincent were Shinra as well.
So its possible the team might have more allies in the org as they seem to expand on just about everything. Through the OG FF7 the focus becomes less on Shinra and more on Sephiroth/Jenova as he summons Meteor with the Black Materia Cait sacrafices one of his avatars for.
If we're being fair, the original also has a pretty consistent undertone of 'Not All Shinra Employees' with Reeve/Cait's whole presence in the story. The Shinra Manager parts in Costa Del Sol are also pretty much pulled directly from their equivalent npc in the OG. Yuffie gives up on the whole Wutai revolution and her Shinra hate after her dad's like "yeah look its not worth it" & even supposedly goes with Vincent to Midgar to help evacuate civilians and Shinra employees at the end (although this isn't ever actually mentioned ingame iirc)
As long as we get to see
spoiler
the diamond weapon blitz the fuck out of the Shinra building with Rufus in it
I'll be satisfied.
Shinra Mayor is a traitor that helps Avalanche get up the tower too in the first Shinra section of the game.
I once watched that movie with friends for a laugh but we couldn't even riff on it
A historical re-enactment of the experience:
There's no way I would be able to go through that whole self-serious movie and not crack a rib laughing at the scene way at the end where Kadaj transforms and Cloud's reaction is "Sephiroth . . . . Whaddya want?" Like he just answered his mother's 3rd phone call that day
Heir to the most powerful and rich megacorp in the world? Geostigma doesn't care.
