I think both of you don't really understand but we're likely to cut corners rather than add too much in the main story in p3. Do you realise how gigantic the story from 2 discs that is left remains to be told? We have so much shit to do and that with a completely redone Wutai plot.
What they are going to do is streamline this to the ground so it makes sense to follow a main storyquest and not be like in the OG and have plenty of threads to follow or not. We're going to have nods to the Compilation, but things like splitting the party after Tifa leaves etc. creates too much confusion when we have the huge materia quest brewing since p2 already, the Weapons awoken, Meteor summoned etc. And with probably new parts for Aerith and Zack too!
I mean really look at what we have to do and what you ask for: that's several hours of gameplay for something that is truly not necessary, especially if you consider that Kitase was ready to cut off Barret's back story in Corel. I'm just saying, but honestly when I make predictions I try to remain reasonable considering that they have to cram the two heavy story discs into one game.
We also need to remember one crucial difference between p2 and p3.
Rebirth was the introduction to the worldmap segment of the game. This was the fun adventure segment of the story
And the vast majority of the 100+ hour gametime is in world exploration and discovery, in that adventure.
P3 will most likely have way less time devoted to that, since the majority of the regions of the story have already been discovered.
Not only that but the party itself is now in a more focused part of the arc.
In Lord of the rings terms you start in the shire, then you spread out your story, Frodo goes to mordor, the rest to Rohan, then Rohan AND Gondor, And the paths of the dead, more characters, more story-arc, more time required to flesh them all out, things slow down. In the end though you get the counteroffensive and everything focusses back in on one point, Mordor, and everyone is reunited after completing their arcs.
FFVII, like most stories, started at a very focused point, Midgar and the bombings of the reactors and the fight against Shinra. Then the plot opened up and the possibilities became broader with Sephiroth, Aerith, (and now fate), as we fled Midgar in pursuit of Sephiroth we had a very broad vision of what the future held, stuff had to be handled and figured out. Things had to be explored. We then get the world map, or Rebirths open world in remake. Here we can do all kinds of things tangentially, it all runs parallel as we slowly move towards climax. We're exploring, we're bonding, we're setting up parallel character arcs, all kinds of stuff.
Through all that we get insight into the final objective concerning Sephiroth and the black materia and as certain concepts start popping up in different parts the story slowly starts to converge again and pick up pace. Aeriths death is essentially the end of the part of the story that I call "the halcyon days", where the characters build up the bonds that will then in turn give them the strength to together overcome what they would otherwise not have been able to handle. Think of how Zidane helps everyone throughout FFIX and how that then returns in "you're not alone". Cloud has essentially done that build up in Rebirth, and P3 will be the pay-off.
But the point is that once the story conglomerates it refocuses, with Aeriths death the party is now firmly pointed towards Sephiroth in North crater, the first encounter with the great evil that will result in the heroes failure because he has not yet overcome his inner trial.
After this we'll get a period of re-adjustment, the party goes away, it broadens a bit again so that people can finalize their personal arcs and achieve the narrative state needed to overcome the final trial. Then the story will refocus and move towards the final showdown.
This mean that P3 will have a very similar structure to p1/2 together, it will have way less time to spend on exploration, because the broad part of the story mostly consists of wrapping things up, and by stint of it being story wrap-ups these will be very story focused. All this points towards the same thing imo, WAY less time spent on mini-games and exploration, way more time on 'non-filler" scenes.
This also has implications on things like Affection mechanics btw, great for the broad team building part of "halcyon days", not that fitting for the arrow focused part coming up next.
