The direction square took this whole project in is criminal. And I wouldn't mind changes since I don't have nostalgia for original.. but You see what they are doing and it's destroying any emotional impact where it should've been.
Have to disagree with you here.
If you had experience with FF7 you wouldn't buy into the negative hype train " Oh this is just another multiverse bla bla bla"
Watch Advent Children and pay attention to the lifestream/aerith related moments then rethink about the ending you saw in part 2 and tell me that it doesn't fit in.
They are not straying from the source material. The lifestream has always worked this way, it's just been expanded upon.
I think that for people who are going in blind, yes it can feel like a cop out is ensuing since you don't have the full story to play through yet. I have a strong feeling that part 3 will rectify that.
For people like me that have dipped into the expanded universe, we are more accepting of what could be happening and happily theorizing.
It's entirely possible that we are being given something closer to the original but being shot from a different angle and we don't even know it. Cloud could be losing his mind as he did in OG with all the manipulation from Sephiroth/Jenova.
It's also entirely possible that the lifestream is giving us another chance at redemption. Sephiroth may not have liked how the previous events transpired and since he is tied to the Lifestream and able to influence it like Aerith, he is probably the reason behind why we are seeing alternate splits. The lifestream /planet is trying to protect itself.
They already did a great job at explaining the Gi and how they cannot be accepted into the world/lifestream as they are essentially considered a virus and not from it. Sephiroth transends this as he is a half-blood (one winged angel. Not entirely from the heavens) Cloud is of the earth but infected with cells that Sephiroth/Jenova can manipulate due to the gene therapy Hojo performed on him in Crisis Core.