The story's issue isn't pacing. It's presentation and logic.

[Gvaedyn]

I’ve just finished the game. While I did enjoy it a lot, I preferred Remake's story over Rebirth. It felt like the latest entry is just a time filler that’s leading to much bigger events, and while I’ve not played the original much, this opinion seems to match with what I’ve read online – that Rebirth represents a portion of the OG which was quite light on story.
I know a lot of people refer to the pacing being a bit of an issue with all the extra side content and the distance between main story beats, but I personally found that the actual problem was that most of the main story beats just come out of nowhere, with very little context or connection.

If we take Remake, for example, we have a very coherent story that has a clear beginning, middle and end, with all the events having a natural development to them that guides the player nicely from one to the next. There are a few breaks in-between and some duds (like Chapter 11), but all-in-all there’s a clear reason why things are happening, and where we are going. It’s also slower paced, and not afraid to maintain that pace by any means necessary (such as walking the rooftops with Aerith), but the payoff is that we get to experience some wonderful atmosphere and character development. When there’s an emotional event, the game isn’t afraid to take it’s time to explore this, such as the plate fall of Sector 7. There’s a structure in place that works, and I think it’s success hinges on the fact that they took a four hour segment and expanded upon it, while also taking the time to develop this new iteration of the story.

However, Rebirth suffers from not having a lot of ground to cover, and likely less development time. The main narrative of Rebirth, for the most part, boils down to “follow these robed men and see what happens”. It’s representative of the party not fully understanding the villains’ plans, and it works in theory, but the events in-between are so disjointed and, at times, jarring.

I want to use Barret’s storyline as an example. The party visit his hometown, and we start learning more about his background. This is fine. Soon after this, the party end up at the Gold Saucer and suddenly, after many years, Barret’s best friend just comes out of the woodwork and happens to shoot up the place. The party must do chocobo racing to progress, and then there’s an emotional scene of Dyne getting found and subsequently killed, followed by a silly boss fight. If we compare the cutscenes of Barret's reaction to Dyne's death versus the Sector 7 platefall, the former barely has time to breath - it just jumps to the next segment.

I understand this was an event in the original game, but Rebirth was an opportunity to flesh this out beyond just adding a few tweaks to what takes place. In my opinion, there should have been more of a build-up that logically connects Barret’s arrival with that of Dyne taking the actions that he did, so that it doesn’t just seem like a random event.
I could also talk about the random boss fights. Neither Hojo nor Palmer seem to have any real reason why they turn up in the places that they do, and there’s no narrative impact for defeating them. It just happens. And in general, it seems like a lot of events in this game "just happen".

I’ll say lastly that the ending of Rebirth is another example. The final event is meant to be one of the most emotional in gaming history, and sure enough I felt it did a good job of capturing that. Some may argue about the shenanigans taking place not being a good addition to the story, and I personally felt like some of the scenes took away from the build-up to Aeirth’s demise, but I’ll reserve my judgement for Part 3. Yet, we then have this ten-phase boss battle that really takes away the opportunity for the player to fully experience the emotions that come from witnessing an event like this.

As I said, I really enjoyed this game, but I felt narratively speaking there was a missed opportunity to dig deeper like the Remake did.

[Weltall8000]

Kinda highlights the original story's handling of a lot of this portion of the game as a bunch of vignettes.

The search/pursuit for Sephiroth was there, but often fell to the background of whatever the quest for the current village was.

[Diabolical Taco]

Originally posted by Weltall8000:

Kinda highlights the original story's handling of a lot of this portion of the game as a bunch of vignettes.

The search/pursuit for Sephiroth was there, but often fell to the background of whatever the quest for the current village was.

In yet another thread I have to give credit to this guy. Hard agree. The journey from the OG that Rebirth covers was, by far, the least interesting part of the OG as well except for how it begins and ends.

I'm continuously baffled by the, I guess we'll call it "fandom," that fails to figure this out while some of us see it clear as day.

[sajmon]

Originally posted by Diabolical Taco:

Originally posted by Weltall8000:

Kinda highlights the original story's handling of a lot of this portion of the game as a bunch of vignettes.

The search/pursuit for Sephiroth was there, but often fell to the background of whatever the quest for the current village was.

In yet another thread I have to give credit to this guy. Hard agree. The journey from the OG that Rebirth covers was, by far, the least interesting part of the OG as well except for how it begins and ends.

I'm continuously baffled by the, I guess we'll call it "fandom," that fails to figure this out while some of us see it clear as day.

you see what you wanna see

[Weltall8000]

Originally posted by sajmon:

Originally posted by Diabolical Taco:

In yet another thread I have to give credit to this guy. Hard agree. The journey from the OG that Rebirth covers was, by far, the least interesting part of the OG as well except for how it begins and ends.

I'm continuously baffled by the, I guess we'll call it "fandom," that fails to figure this out while some of us see it clear as day.

you see what you wanna see

Yes, you do.

[sajmon]

Originally posted by Weltall8000:

Originally posted by sajmon:

you see what you wanna see

Yes, you do.

no, i see what i dont wanna see

[Xengre]

I'm not sure where you found issue exactly with the Corel/Dyne situation. In real life things can happen at a rapid pace with no breather and that is precisely what made the Corel situation what it was. Thrust into a situation of blame, a prison area where they have few options to escape or clear their name, a sudden reveal of a past thought dead friend who has gone down the wrong path, and so forth. That is precisely the very nature of that entire situation. Sometimes things spiral out of control and you have to keep going until you reach the end while avoiding being dragged under in the process. Often such situations give you little time to process or accept what is happening and you either survive or get swallowed.

I do think it could have been cool to take another angle and explore the whole Dyne / Barret stuff further, but that just wasn't what that segment was about. I wish they could have done more with Barret in another part of the story to give him such a moment as compensation though, especially since they have otherwise mostly done so well with his character in the Remakes.

For Hojo's beach situation... yeah, it isn't very good. What he says contradicts what he does and in the original he is merely there to relax and does not cause any trouble. Further, he is made to be far more vile in the Remakes than the OG unless you know his lore which you wouldn't know at that point so despite his Aerith/Red situation it is more acceptable to let him go on the beach and avoid conflict in the OG but not here. I found Aerith letting him go a bit perplexing, too, especially considering her scene about him afterwards and the threat he poses, not to mention they're already labeled criminals and what he just did in public would have prevented public from impeding them.

Palmer's stuff makes sense except the mech... I think that was just another similar situation to the Hojo where they wanted to force another fight that was honestly unnecessary.

Originally posted by Weltall8000:

Kinda highlights the original story's handling of a lot of this portion of the game as a bunch of vignettes.

The search/pursuit for Sephiroth was there, but often fell to the background of whatever the quest for the current village was.

That is one interesting way of putting it. Often, the overarching story feels disconnected from the local events in a kind of disjointed immersion breaking way when you start thinking about it. In others where it is somewhat forced to tie in, like the beach, it feels downright weird due to the change.

I think as a whole from what I'm seeing so far, as far as I've played, they're doing good with Rebirth but it has moments that are kind of '???' That was unnecessary or could have been better handled and feels unnatural. It feels even weirder as a conflict of design because Sephiroth/Jenova is more present in his interactions/impact yet also not really impactful enough for the events that feel like mini trips to each location where we often put aside the main situation as if it is on pause.

One point worth mention OP is that while this segment of the game doesn't cover a ton of story, because FF7 didn't exactly have a complex story in its own right compared to its much more complex lore or compared to a more story heavy game like FF8, not all games have abundant story. Many JRPGs can be boiled down to, ultimately, relatively minor stories mostly extended by the local events as you travel. In fact, most games in general tend to have very limited amounts of actual story like the Horizon games, Ghost of Tsushima, Deus Ex games, Zelda games, Cyberpunk 2077, etc. while some like Elden Ring and such have nearly none keeping to the bare minimum. Where Remake and games like Tales of Abyss, Grandia (original), etc. are very story heavy linear oriented games some like Rebirth are most focused on the local events and fleshing out character interactions/scenes. Granted, Rebirth nails it at times and other times does not. Fortunately, those few times I've seen only make up a tiny part of the entire situation. For example, other than the Hojo beach fight the rest of the chapter in Costa Del Sol was completely fine story wise and character interactions.

Ugh I need to find time to finish the game and see this ending. I know some spoilers but not enough to properly comment but I've definitely seen different takes on it. Quite curious what I shall think when I get there.

[Gvaedyn]

Originally posted by Xengre:

I'm not sure where you found issue exactly with the Corel/Dyne situation. In real life things can happen at a rapid pace with no breather and that is precisely what made the Corel situation what it was. Thrust into a situation of blame, a prison area where they have few options to escape or clear their name, a sudden reveal of a past thought dead friend who has gone down the wrong path, and so forth. That is precisely the very nature of that entire situation. Sometimes things spiral out of control and you have to keep going until you reach the end while avoiding being dragged under in the process. Often such situations give you little time to process or accept what is happening and you either survive or get swallowed.

I do think it could have been cool to take another angle and explore the whole Dyne / Barret stuff further, but that just wasn't what that segment was about. I wish they could have done more with Barret in another part of the story to give him such a moment as compensation though, especially since they have otherwise mostly done so well with his character in the Remakes.

For Hojo's beach situation... yeah, it isn't very good. What he says contradicts what he does and in the original he is merely there to relax and does not cause any trouble. Further, he is made to be far more vile in the Remakes than the OG unless you know his lore which you wouldn't know at that point so despite his Aerith/Red situation it is more acceptable to let him go on the beach and avoid conflict in the OG but not here. I found Aerith letting him go a bit perplexing, too, especially considering her scene about him afterwards and the threat he poses, not to mention they're already labeled criminals and what he just did in public would have prevented public from impeding them.

Palmer's stuff makes sense except the mech... I think that was just another similar situation to the Hojo where they wanted to force another fight that was honestly unnecessary.

Originally posted by Weltall8000:

Kinda highlights the original story's handling of a lot of this portion of the game as a bunch of vignettes.

The search/pursuit for Sephiroth was there, but often fell to the background of whatever the quest for the current village was.

That is one interesting way of putting it. Often, the overarching story feels disconnected from the local events in a kind of disjointed immersion breaking way when you start thinking about it. In others where it is somewhat forced to tie in, like the beach, it feels downright weird due to the change.

I think as a whole from what I'm seeing so far, as far as I've played, they're doing good with Rebirth but it has moments that are kind of '???' That was unnecessary or could have been better handled and feels unnatural. It feels even weirder as a conflict of design because Sephiroth/Jenova is more present in his interactions/impact yet also not really impactful enough for the events that feel like mini trips to each location where we often put aside the main situation as if it is on pause.

One point worth mention OP is that while this segment of the game doesn't cover a ton of story, because FF7 didn't exactly have a complex story in its own right compared to its much more complex lore or compared to a more story heavy game like FF8, not all games have abundant story. Many JRPGs can be boiled down to, ultimately, relatively minor stories mostly extended by the local events as you travel. In fact, most games in general tend to have very limited amounts of actual story like the Horizon games, Ghost of Tsushima, Deus Ex games, Zelda games, Cyberpunk 2077, etc. while some like Elden Ring and such have nearly none keeping to the bare minimum. Where Remake and games like Tales of Abyss, Grandia (original), etc. are very story heavy linear oriented games some like Rebirth are most focused on the local events and fleshing out character interactions/scenes. Granted, Rebirth nails it at times and other times does not. Fortunately, those few times I've seen only make up a tiny part of the entire situation. For example, other than the Hojo beach fight the rest of the chapter in Costa Del Sol was completely fine story wise and character interactions.

Ugh I need to find time to finish the game and see this ending. I know some spoilers but not enough to properly comment but I've definitely seen different takes on it. Quite curious what I shall think when I get there.

Thanks for the thoughtful and respectful response, especially with the areas you disagreed with. :)