Square themselves were afraid to touch the original game for years because they knew how high of a regard people held it in. If I recall, the only reason they decided to take on this project now is because if they waited much longer a lot of the original dev staff would be too old, or just plain be too dead to make it happen. Given the less than enthusiastic response to some of the more controversial elements, they were completely right to think that they'd inevitably be letting some of their fans down. There's a reason Nomura went out of his way to say the remake doesn't replace the original. they all know how dear it is to people, so I really can't fathom them having the remake be an in-canon reboot with all of that in mind. They wanted this game to be as exciting for new players as it was for old, so why would the plot hinge so much on prior knowledge in that even? At least with KH they made the previous entries easily accessible. The compilation is effectively scattered to the winds, its unreasonable to expect people to have that information going in to the remake. This is a story they want everyone to experience, so I think any time shenanigans will be contained solely to the world of the remake, no stealth sequeling here.
