Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth has its cake and eats it too, as it treads through all of the big story beats present in the original game while also enacting subtle changes with massive implications. We still don't know what it will all add up to in the end.

However, we can look at the chunk of the original story covered in Rebirth and detail the biggest changes to the story. Most of these changes either add context to the world or make us scratch our heads and ask more questions about the strange trajectory this remake saga is taking.

7 Glenn Lodbrok

The war with Wutai is more heavily at the forefront of the story. Conflict between Wutai and Shinra is sewed behind the scenes by Glenn Lodbrok and Rufus Shinra. The former is a new character to the world of Final Fantasy 7, having been first introduced in the First Soldier mobile game.

By the end of the game, war with Wutai appears to be in full swing, with Cid even mentioning that Midgar has already been severely bombed. The ending reveals that Glenn is just another disguise of Sephiroth, which Rufus should have seen coming since he killed him in the first place.

6 Yuffie

The Final Fantasy 7 Remake DLC chapter, Intermission, already adds so much to Yuffie's story other than making her a simple Materia thief. Recruiting her in Rebirth is mandatory, unlike in the original game, and she is working directly with Wutai.

In Lower Junon, she throws the party to Shinra to better help her plan of assassinating Rufus Shinra. After the thwarted attempt on the president's life, she becomes a member of the party by the time you reach Costa del Sol.

In the original game, you recruit her to the party by fighting her in a random battle and then answering the correct dialogue options after the encounter.

5 Tifa Has A Severe Near-Death Experience

Chapter 9 of the game ends with a climactic showdown between the party and Scarlet in a giant mech. After the battle, Cloud nearly kills Tifa under Sephiroth's control. She falls into the lifestream and has what we can only describe as a deeply spiritual near-death experience.

She has visions of her past and then sees one of the weapons being attacked and defended by two different types of Whispers. It almost mirrors Cloud's experience in the lifestream in the original game's second disc.

4 No Rocket Town

Rocket Town is where you recruit Cid and have a showdown with Shinra and Palmer. After that chapter, you make a daring escape with the Tiny Bronco that lands in the ocean, becoming your next vehicle.

Rebirth takes out the town entirely and introduces Cid as the Bronco pilot who ferries you across the world. You eventually use the Bronco as a boat once you hit Chapter 13. Cid is also significantly friendlier in Rebirth than the grumpy, jaded pilot we are first introduced to in the 1997 game.

There's certainly a chance Rocket Town will be in the third game.

3 Fort Condor Is Missing

A variation of the Fort Condor minigame introduced in Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intermission is available as a protorelic quest in Lower Junon. However, the actual Fort Condor is nowhere to be seen. In the original game, Fort Condor is where you periodically engage in a tower defense minigame to defend a condor nest from Shinra.

It eventually hatches, and you get the Phoenix summon. There is still a chance the party will head to Fort Condor in the sequel since, in the original game's second disc, the party fights the company for a piece of the Huge Materia. Introducing the real Fort Condor when the minigame already exists might have felt redundant for Rebirth.

2 Multiple Timelines

Rebirth doesn't give us all the answers to questions presented in Final Fantasy 7 Remake. It does, however, clear up a few things about the mysterious other world where Zak is still alive. Sephiroth says there are multiple timelines, and in all of them, the world eventually ends.

The two worlds come to a head when Zak and Cloud actually meet up and fight Sephiroth together. Though we get some exposition, we still don't know what the existence of multiple timelines means for the future.

It's important to take everything Sephiroth says with a grain of salt. He constantly tries to manipulate and taunt Cloud and only tells people what he thinks is necessary in order to get what he wants.

1 The Gi Are Essential To The Black Materia

The Gi are unimportant to the overall story in the 1997 game. Their role drastically becomes more important in Rebirth. In Chapter 10, the soul of one guides the party through the cave and explains that they created the Black Materia as a way to destroy the world and free their souls.

Because they are aliens, they didn't return to the lifestream after dying and are stuck in a limbo. It's an interesting way to utilize a minor plot point to turn them into something much bigger.