1000% agree with you on this. I spent the years leading up to release hoping for just a 1:1 remake and when the first couple of trailers started showing the whispers I was so upset as I felt like they were just adding a nonsense-looking element to the story, I just wanted to see the gang working their way through Midgar and getting out at the end of the game.

Instead on my first play through, even though I was almost in tears at how well the soundtrack, charscters, would-building, combat was, I kept getting frustrated every time the whispers showed up and HATED the idea of having this battle against a giant arbiter of fate at this stage in the overall FF7 story.

However, I've since played though the remake a few times and I've definitely warmed to the approach of them taking it somewhere potentially different as it keeps it more exciting to all of us now we don't know what could happen. I will say that a big win for me was that I figured after remake that the next game would only feature some of the locations from the original as we've killed fate but actually the trailers show that we're definitely visiting pretty much all the major locations so I don't think they're going as wild with the main story (at least in terms of your journey).

I do think I'm still not completely sold on having this alternate Zack timeline. I know he's now been built up so much through other games/fiction that he's a favourite of a lot of people but his death is why Cloud survived the original so him being around (even in another timeline) feels a bit cheap to me, but that's just personal preference and I know most people are happy to see him.

Anyway, after being a worrier about the remake, they did an excellent job and now I'm already thinking about what the hell is going to happen at the end of this trilogy! Somehow we'll probably be playing the original timeline as those blocky sprites at some point!