Quote (required @ Oct 30 2012 11:44pm)
been confirmed, don't look for excuses
After reading all the interviews from those strategy guides, it's obvious to me that there is no direct correlation. There is never one instance in those entire interviews, where they explicitly say that FF7's world is a direct spin-off from the events that happened in FF10 or FF10-2. The main point of those interviews is just to talk about the similarities of how the world of FF7 and FF10 formed. The main concept behind the two worlds: where each has a sort of lifestream element, people returning to the planet when they die, etc: That is what those are really about. And they beat around the bush and completely avoid the question when they are asked if they are actually related. They just keep talking about the similarities of the worlds and their formation, but they never once confirm or deny that VII is a "sequel". Nothing at all has been confirmed, most everything is just fan speculation about those interviews to be perfectly honest.
And it's not like any of the major FF developers have come out since then and confirmed or denied any of the rumors. And those interviews happened YEARS ago, there has been plenty of time. There is still no concrete evidence of anything, especially because nothing has actually happened in game to actually confirm it. That's the most important thing to me, there is nothing in any of those 3 games that actually hints at it(besides the name Shinra, which isn't a big deal, FF character names repeat all the time even though they are in different dimensions).
When it comes down to it, this is just an ingenious marketing ploy for FFX-2, just to let the fans loosely tie on a connection with the mega giant FF7 is a brilliant idea. It's no secret FFX-2 is, if not the worst, one of the worst games in the FF series according to most fans. It could use a little more hype.