Whenever anyone else is selling vanilla ice cream, they mean vanilla ice cream.  While vanilla ice cream can be made differently, nobody says vanilla ice cream when they mean vanilla ice cream with chocolate chunks thrown in.  

Personally, I wouldn't mind as I like chocolate chunks. I'd even prefer it.

Other people hate chocolate chunks, and would not have bought the ice cream if they knew chocolate chunks were in it.  By advertising your product as vanilla ice cream, they reasonably believed there would be no chocolate chunks, based on the common understanding of the words.  They would therefore feel justifiably ripped off by your chocolate chunk tainting the vanilla ice cream they were promised.

See, this is where we differ. I personally think this 'spoiler' is easily the most interesting, unique, engaging, and fun-sounding twist on the story I've heard so far. I went from 'eeeeh...I guess it'll be fun and I'm getting it because I loved the original so much' to 'holy shit I have to play this and there's so much creative potential there!'

In the end, you are in charge of your own perception of the changes made in an adaptation or retelling or remake. Based on everything I heard the creators say leading up to this, I think this is well within the realm of what we could have expected. Yeah, I guess some people aren't going to like it, but so far it's just...a first step in a direction people don't like or might not like. It's still WAY too early to know if this direction is going to be all that different or not. If it is? Cool! I actually hope it is because the meta-storytelling is interesting to me. (Reminds me of anime and comic books/movies). If it ends up still basically being 90% the same game from here on out, I'm happy with that, too. 

I still think it's WAY too early to know if the direction they're going is good or not. all we know is that it has the potential to be wildly different from the original and what many of us came to expect. Subverting expectations CAN be a good thing and often is (Yeah, I know The Last Jedi was NOT a subversion that most people liked, but that's the exception), so I'm still going to withhold judgement until parts 2 and 3 are released. 

all I see is people eager to be upset about something long before they have any real right to know where this is going. be apprehensive, sure. I get it. but not only have none of you (unless you're in Australia or EU) actually played the game, but parts 2 and 3 aren't even out yet. all we have is conjecture on top of theories and extrapolation. We're about three steps away actually being able to judge this based on the whole. Could it be bad? sure, it could. I don't think it will be. It COULD be the best and most interesting take on the FFVII world we've ever seen, going above and beyond the rest of the franchise to date. We don't know and can't. all I see is people whining that the sanctity of their plotline might very literally be defeated. 

Even more because this change can just make a small deviation and return to the same plot with just a small change of path which isn't changing the major plot.

The issue you're missing though is what the fanbase was led to believe. 

You can say that some people like chocolate and some people like vanilla.  But if I like vanilla, you tell me you're going to make some great vanilla ice cream, you sell me a cone telling me it's vanilla, and then it turns out it's actually chocolate, then that's a problem. 

You're making some assumptions about my tastesl.  Personally, I like FF7 but it's not even in my top 100 games.  It's not something I'm so passionately invested in that I'm upset at it being changed.  TBH the changes really haven't influenced how likely I am to buy the game in one way or another.

My issue is that this is not what anyone should have anticipated.  I am not responsible for what I think a remake will be.  Language works based on people having a consensus on what words mean.  If Square's definition of remake is different than everyone else's, then the misunderstanding is entirely they're fault.  Honestly, did you anticipate anything like the changes described in the spoilers when you thought of what a remake might be?

To quote you, "all we know is it has the potential to be wildly different from the original".  It's pretty clear based on the fact that they introduced a plot point specifically to explain they can now make major changes to the story, that they intend to do just that.  By no definition should a remake be wildly different than the original, and people who were sold on the prospect of a remake are justifiably disappointed.  Especially for people who are going to avoid spoilers and are going to wind up buying something they may not have decided to purchase if they knew what it was.  

There is a difference between subverting expectations that an audience built for themselves, as in the last Jedi (which I actually liked), and specifically leading consumers to believe a product will be something it is not.  If I'm watching a Spider-man movie and they subvert my expectations by making Aunt May hot, that's subverting my expectations.  If I'm watching Spider-man movie and there's no Spider-man in it, that's false advertising.  

Maybe the changes will actually lead to a better story.  But that's really neither here nor there.  When you tell people to expect one thing, and you give them something completely different, they will justifiably be disappointed. 

Why not? Comic stories get remade all the time, and films get remade for international audiences all the time, as well. Remakes usually have the same characters, the same world, and MOST of the same story and plot. Based on what I've seen and read, FFVII Remake is exactly that, with a turning point at the end that gives the creators unlimited potential to alter things or go in a different direction. Remake isn't the same as Remaster. If this was a Remaster I'd agree with you, but as it is it's a whole new game made from the ground up with the same characters, same world, same plot, same narrative...at least at first. 

'what-if' scenarios are a completely viable way to remake a piece of media. 'what if aerith survived' is something I genuinely would be SO excited to experience. 'what if' it was a meta story about fandom and creators at war with one another?' is another. I get that some people might not like that, but it's within the realm of what can be considered a 'remake' for sure, even if it's on the fringes. 

Also, only part 1 is called 'remake', and it's pretty faithful. PArts 2 and 3 might do the chaos theory thing and end up in a wholly different direction. That excites me so much more than just retreading what we already got. Would a shot for shot remake of FFVII in a new engine with a new gameplay genre be ballin? yeah, yeah it would. I'd buy that and love it. would an AU adaptation of the source material that starts with the same building blocks and makes something new and original also be good? yeah, that sounds perfect to me. both sound great, and both are variants on what a 'remake' can be. I think it's just a matter of many fans arguing about what THEIR interpretation of 'remake' is vs what Nomura is interpreting it as. 

I can assure you that, while this is certainly on the fringes, there's nothing wrong with pushing boundaries and going forth into uncharted territory. Who knows, maybe this will be better than the original? You can't really know until you play through the whole thing. That's kind of the point I'm trying to get across, here. I can totally agree that this might be a direction people will be upset about, but I see WAY too much premature bitching about how it's ruining the sanctity of the game's narrative before we even know what direction it's going. All we know is that they've opened the doors to dozens of different possibilities.

When this all started, it sounded like a linear path. Now, it sounds like a branching path with dozens of potential end points. We still exist within the world of FFVII, we're still starting from the same point, but the idea that we could get a wholly new experience out of this has me more excited for Final Fantasy than I've been since 2006. XV was good, but this looks far, FAR better. 

When has a comic ever been remade?  I've never seen anything in the comic book industry referred to as a remake.  The Spider-man movie is not a remake of a comic book.  I'm not even sure how that would work.  I've been a comic book fan for the last two decades, and I've never heard of a comic book remake.

The bulk of your post talks about how you like the changes, and if that's so, then great for you.  Hope you enjoy the game.  Doesn't change the fact that this isn't what anyone else means by the term remake. 

If you call my pizzeria and order a large pizza and I come to your house with a giant slice of rye bread with salsa and cheddar cheese, you'd be confused and upset.  You wouldn't say "oh well we just need to expand our definition of what pizza could be" or "oh well that's just his definition of pizza".  You'd say this isn't pizza.  And you'd be right.  Because if everyone means one thing by a word, and I use that word to describe something different, then I am being misleading.

Let's assume though the word remake is vague for argument's sake.  Then we look to other things in the marketing to see what fans should have expected.

"Of course, all the memorable elements and key moments from the original have been faithfully reproduced, and you can enjoy experiencing those again."

There are moments that have definitely not been faithfully reproduced, and cannot be enjoyed again, and it is heavily implied that other moments will not be faithfully reproduced either.  And if Aeris lives as you would like, then one of the most important moments will not be reproduced.

"In terms of how faithful the remake is to the original Final Fantasy VII, from the perspective of the storyline, it is very faithful indeed." 

Also just not true.  Once you introduce all the meta and alternate reality stuff, this is not very faithful to the storyline.  Despite being asked several times, nobody can provide an example of a less faithful remake, so calling this "very faithful" is clearly misleading.

 "Well, the main story is still the same, but I have added in many new scenes that happen between the main events of the original, which show how the relationship between Cloud and the other characters deepened. [For example], Cloud's childhood friend Tifa shows him a flat in Midgar, and they come to live in the same building. It is a Japanese-styled flat and the scene itself is quite sweet. So, I want people to look forward to [those additions]."'

This is what people expected.  The main plot being the same, but details being added to fill in holes or flesh things out that did not rewrite the story or contradict the established plot.  Not what we got.

Based on how the word remake is used, and what the developers had said, this is not the product they have been advertising, and fans who wanted what was advertised have reason to be upset.

If you want to use your comicbook saviness you know fully well what is a reboot, since that is something they do every 5-10 year. And that isn't what was made here.

I don't think that I mentioned reboots or suggested we apply comic book standards to the gaming industry.  Plus I read Marvel which doesn't exactly do reboots.

If you want to use comic book terms however, this is most similar to a new imprint such as Marvel's ultimate line of comics which keeps the basics framework, but sets in a new continuity.  Just like that imprint things basically started off at the same point (spider bites boy, uncle ben dies, etc), but after establishing the basics, things spin off in new directions.  Although this also does share some elements with DC's line wide reboots such as Crisis on Infinite Earth where there is actually a conflict between multiple alternate timelines in the DCU.  

Again though, comics are such a different medium that it makes little sense to analogize them directly to video games.  To understand what remake should mean in this context, we should actually look at other games that are remakes.  And when compared to them, this is certainly a major outlier.  It's been asked several times, but nobody can provide an example of a remake that strays even nearly this far from the source material.  If you think of one let me know.