That's definitely one of the big changes for this run of Bond, and it totally works. The whole point of the Craig films was to add more depth and realism to the franchise. And him getting over Vespa was the thread that went through (almost) all of the Craig Bond movies. Seydoux was great in both Spectre and this film, in that you can see the connection between her and Bond.
I really liked the Craig era of Bond films. It has a definite beginning and a definite end, and NTTD was a much better way to end his run than Spectre (although I liked that film as well).
I hope when they finally reboot the franchise (again), they go in a similar route with their next Bond and have an actor just as good as Craig was.
Does it totally work though? There's a lot of retconning that went on as this whole "tie all the films together" was never the plan, until they finally regained the rights to use Spectre again. Tying Blofeld to Bond as a "brother" type (even though not literal bros) was an idiotic idea, almost straight out of Austin Powers. Did nobody tell them?
I love the Craig films for the most part (Spectre was pretty awful past the halfway point though - which was the result of chaotic production).
On a side note, why do some people pronounce it "Vespa", as you wrote here? Most don't, but it seems to mostly be americans who do this at times. (her name is Vesper)