There are some awesome refrences to most of the older FF's in the game, but so were the others. Every FF game had a refrence to past games in them.

I personally love (SPOILER)Lindblum: the city in FFIX and a ship people. I like other similarities to the other bits and pieces as mentioned already.

I think that square have just decided "well....they want a VII remake in next gen graphics, this will do for now."