How the rest will be divided up (my theory)

[JJ Strife]

Geographically, it’s a lot. But story-wise, not a lot really happens, especially compared to Midgar’s density. Since they’re still ironing out the details of how they’ll handle exploration, I imagine it’s entirely possible we’ll be jumping a bit between important plot points.

Yeah that's true. But that's my whole argument here: that it's the geographical side of things which now becomes the main determinant.

Like if you were to measure the length of parts of the original game compared to the Remake, it would be something like this:

Dialogue between 2 characters: 1 minute in original game -> 3 minutes in remake.
Travelling between 2 areas: 5 minutes in original game-> 1 hour in remake.

So I think the only way the next game could end at Aerith's Death is if they completely scrap the geographical scale of things. Maybe if they just turned everything into a linear path between towns, like in FFX, then it would be possible. But that would be so disappointing after the massive beautiful worlds in games like FFXIV and FFXV, so I just can't see them doing it.

• North Corel: hub.
• Gold Saucer: hub.
• Corel flashback.
• Corel Prison with Dyne final boss.

That would be fine with me. But after how they did the first game, I just get the sense that they'll want each game to end with something that's relevant to the larger Sephiroth/Jenova plot. They want each part to feel like a self-contained story. That would make it unlikely to end up the Dyne stuff, because that has so little connection to everything that happens prior to it. It's more of a side-quest really.