Seems a bit early to claim that the story goes against the themes of the original, when we haven't even gotten the whole story.
I don't get how loss could still not be a major part of the story. In fact, Cloud has had trauma already (and I'd assume that more is obviously yet to come), e.g. Zack is dead in his original timeline, so his trauma remains. I definitely don't agree on anything being poorly told yet. They could drop the ball, but we'll see.
The Remake actually had some surprisingly smart and emotional moments, that the original never had at that point.
I am definitely more on Max Dood's line of thought as I see a lot of potential in this. Obviously, in a good and bad way, but I am a lot more optimistic at this point.
But to each their own.
I know we don't know yet, but the point is they're signposting a lot of weird changes to the core of the story. If there were signs that the ending of the first game was just something to make the ending more dramatic I could maybe suck it up and pretend that the moment wasn't canon, but between the name of the second game and the voice over at the beginning of the trailer it's pretty clear what they want us to think.
The point of THE THING happening was that it was the PLAYER that experienced loss alongside Cloud. Cloud has trauma that existed before the game, but that's all flashback stuff which is second hand to the player. THE THING was the most emotionally visceral thing to happen in video games up to that point (aided by FFVII being one of the very first big games where the graphics and FMVs were good enough to convey emotion without speech). Sure, it might lose some impact for people who know it's coming, but to get rid of it is like saying "I've seen Citizen Kane already, if they remake it they should make Rosebud his ex-girlfriend to keep it fresh".
As for not being poorly told? The whispers were awful and the game ended in a ridiculous boss fight against mystical arbiters of destiny. The original game had magic, sure, but it was all given a scientific background to ground it in the world's reality. The whisper plot and the end are so far removed from anything in original game that it was really jarring to experience. :/
Really, they should have limited changes to things like the Jessie sub-story. Things that are additive and flesh characters out instead of making it different.
