ConfusedTorchic posted... aside from the fact you have three different timelines running concurrently with repeated flashbacks to the original ps1 games timeline, with references to it to contrast with the changes, and the fact that they've straight up told us it was not going to be the same as the original, sure seems real sequel like to me.
No, you're just accepting the bait like a regular victim of con artists, whom you can do nothing about because they hide in a legitimate business building overseas. The "separate timelines" are
more like pocket dimensions with parallels and familiar persons, all doomed to fall apart. Tales of Xillia 2 did this better. Rebirth feels like a flurry of handwaves and broken promises. Remake ended by telling us
fate has been beaten back and changed, and now Zach and Biggs are alive as a result. Rebirth says they're just in a doomed pocket dimension, except Biggs dies anyways as soon as the probably-an-AI-writer realized there was no use for him in the story. And Aerith is awake there now, able to talk to Cloud in the Remake trilogy dimension after her living body is killed in a your-choices- and-actions- don't-matter- because-the- villain-somehow- stabbed-her-anyways moment. This indicates that the other "timelines" collapse over time, meaning that
(if you WERE to assume a sequel) either og VII's timeline or the Remake timeline will also come undone, eventually, once its participants are all returned to the Lifestream of the primary dimension. No, really, that is what it means if you pay attention to what Aerith tells Cloud before the final chapter, as well as
what Biggs tells Zach seconds before getting shot.