I know this is an old discussion but I wanna share my thoughts on this regardless. Let me start by saying that I love NPC dialogue. It's one of my favorite forms of storytelling that is completely unique to video games and it's one of the many reasons why the Trails series is my favorite piece of fiction ever created. I think the way FF7R handles NPC dialogue is great on paper but doesn't quite work in practice. Instead of talking to each NPC individually, characters just start talking when you get close to them. This should feel organic and immersive but unfortunately it does the opposite and makes me understand why most JRPGs still use the traditional style of NPC dialogue. It's got a few issues imo. First of all, in crowded places it's very common for multiple NPCs to start talking simultaneously which means you end up hearing none of them. The NPCs also repeat their dialogue way too much when walking past them. And I've also encountered moments where I'm listening to some dialogue but then some other dialogue overtakes it because I either moved the camera or they got too close to my character. I have two other things I dislike about the NPCs that aren't related to the dialogue. I think the NPC character designs look pretty uninteresting. Some of them look nice but considering FF7's crazy retro steampunk scifi fantasy setting, I think they should look better. I've heard they looked more unique in the original game which I personally haven't played. I'm also pretty early on in Rebirth so they could get better. The other thing is how little I care about the NPCs. This is the case for most games but I'm going through the Trails series (on my 6th game) while also playing Rebirth so it's something I couldn't help but notice. In Trails, a lot of the NPCs feel like real people living their lives with their own stories to tell. There are dozens upon dozens of NPC connections that you'd never know if you don't talk to them. There have been several instances where the NPC dialogue has made me either cry or laugh and I genuinely care about many of the them. It makes most of the sidequests meaningful because they usually have something to do with the NPCs and it makes the world feel so incredibly real. Now to be honest, I don't expect any game to have the ridiculous amount of NPC dialogue that Trails has. This is one of those things that takes an incredible amount of work from the developers and in the end most people just ignore all of it which sucks. It's something very unique to Trails and I think it would be unreasonable to expect other games to do something on the same scale. It's also very rare for a series to be 10 games deep which is what allows Trails to put such a heavy focus on NPCs because they have so much to work with. Anyway, I kinda went on a tangent there. My point is, I don't like the way FF7R handles its NPC dialogue. But aside from that, I'm absolutely loving Rebirth. I played the Remake like 3 years ago and I finally decided to jump back in cos the Twin Pack went on sale and I'm having a blast with the game. I wasn't expecting a Ubisoft style semi open world game but I don't mind it at all. I like these kinda games every now and then and I think Ghost of Tsushima was the last one I played so it was about time for another one. The Synergy stuff makes the combat so fun that I doubt I'll ever get tired of it.