it would have been soooo much better had they not changed/added to the story. and i dont understand why you cant just say "oh ok, i see what youre saying. sucks to be you!" and move on. instead you defend them for doing the one thing that we all asked them not to do. and i do not understand that.
lol C'mon dude, you're giving your opinion and then asking me to stop giving my opinion. As for what you're specifically saying about how there is no logical argument for the changes since the game has "Remake" in the name, there are a bunch of arguments. The main one is that artists don't just want to meet expectations. They want to surprise you. Some people will look at a surprise negatively, while others look at it positively. It's a risk, but that's what they wanted to do. And they did that while still providing a very faithful remake for the bulk of the game.
If you look at the critical reviews for this game, you'll see there are some critics who mention "questionable story changes", but there's many others who praised the devs for "redefining what the word Remake means" and how the game went further than what they asked for and expected. And based on what I've seen around the internet from fans, there's been a similar mix of responses. I've come across many fans who are really excited about what the new direction means.
I'm very reluctant to accept any of that as insteresting and even part of the canon since that none of that was even hinted at possible before, the most esoteric thing 7 had that I can think of is the idea that some people can navigate the lifestream after death, but now we have timelines and fate ghosts and time travel, my problem are not the changes, but that the changes seem too extreme and incoherent with the universe we already know, it's fine if we have time travel in 8 since it's a brand new universe with specific rules, but introducing that element now to 7 starts diluting this universe with new gimmicks, remember when Hojo uploaded his brain to the internet? it's canon now, it's mysterious and surprising, that doesn't mean I have to like it.
You mention the lifestream as if it's just a blurb in the original game. It's the most fundamental aspect of the story, and it's about how the planet is alive and made up of all the souls on the planet. And a vital part of the story is how Aerith is an ancient being who can communicate with the living planet force, and then we have the villain Sephiroth who was desperately trying to merge with it to become an all-powerful deity. And finally, Sephiroth's whole plan was based on how the lifestream would emerge and act as a NATURAL CORRECTING FORCE when damage is done (so he could merge with it). Sound a lot like the whispers and their purpose?
And to tie it in even further, it's the above two characters, Aerith and Sephiroth, who have the connection with the whispers in the remake. So you can think of the whispers as a similar part of the planet's living force, but they focus on correcting time instead of correcting physical damage.
XIII-2: New time travel story out of nowhere (I don't care much for that universe but it's such a drastic departure it's almost unrecognizable as the same game, LR even more so)
I 100% agree that FFXIII-2 handled time-travel very poorly. I had to stop playing that game 3/4 of the way through because of how time travel ruined any sense of meaning in the game with there being so many different versions of every location. But the difference with the remake is the use of just a small number of set timelines. And we don't really even see the other timelines until the very end. So as you said, it really depends on how Part 2 develops the plot. And I certainly have more confidence in the FF7R team than I do in the FF13 team due to the quality levels of the original games in each series.
I would argue one more timeline already removed all menaing and consequence for the original timeline, which is the one we care about, they basically abandoned the orginal game, the one we like, to hop into a brand new one, kind of insulting if you ask me.
That's not the case though because this new timeline looks to have been triggered by the original Sephiroth's actions. So it was the culmination of the original timeline's events that led to this new one. There's a carryover. It's not like everything was just completely wiped and restarted.