The game needs to focus on Shinra. In the original game, the Midgar part was all about Avalanche vs Shinra; Sephiroth wasn't even important, and he wasn't even shown. He got mentioned once by President Shinra, and the next time he comes into play is when you see the corpse of President Shinra. The remake should respect that. I already don't like that Sephiroth is appearing in Cloud's mind to taunt him.
In all fairness, Cloud's hearing voices and having mini-seizures right from the first bombing mission, Sephiroth is mentioned in a flashback as soon as you meet Tifa, and Cloud is clearly specifically hearing Sephiroth's voice during the Pillar mission.
I agree that it shouldn't be the major focus of this part of the game - fleshing out Shinra's villainy (and showing more of the company's various executives, Hojo, the Turks, et cetera) is what this segment of the story is and should be about. But there's plenty of Sephiroth teasing well outside the interactions with President Shinra.
I hope we don't see much of him, but I think it's justifiable to show him a *little* bit. I hope they're tasteful about it, though, and keep it largely to just a small amount of brief glimpses and teasing until the game's climax at Shinra HQ.
At this point I'd be ok with no more media blow outs, unless it's a blow out that gives an idea of the structure of this game. Like is it like Crisis Core, how you went on missions in that game and returned to Shinra HQ and stuff but now it's Seventh Heaven
The whole vibe I'm getting is still of a short-ish linear ARPG, rather than a massive JRPG like VII was. Which isn't necessarily bad but I'd like to know where to set expectations
Agreed - they've done a good job of showing us areas from the original game, but I want to see more of what's *new*. I'd love to (for example) see stuff about how you can revisit earlier areas of the game, what sort of new sidequests are in there, whether you can visit every sector (and hang out in the upper plate), and so on.