As much as we obsess over the LTD/romance in this game, I really don't think the devs care that much about the romance in this game. Which is not to say they don't care about the characters or their relationships. Relationships are the crux of any story, and they've taken great care in developing everyone's relationships in Part 1. I just don't think the question of who Cloud wants to bone is something they're losing sleep over. In most of the interviews I've seen, they only ever bring up the romance/LTD if it's something they're explicitly asked about. It's not really something they bring up unprompted. Are they aware that the LTD exists? Absolutely. Is thinking about how they're going to keep fans on their toes w/r/t LTD even among their third or fourth order goals when developing the subsequent parts? I doubt it
I think a lot of people overlook this; it's like when a clerith asked Kitase I think about their pairing and he answered that they'd do their best with the characters. They like those characters and their relationships. I think it really shows in the Remake, especially with Cloud and Barret, you can see their comradeship grow over the missions, and Barret understanding why he means so much to Tifa as he grows to respect him, even though so many things separated them at first. To the devs, all relationships between their characters, may they be romantic or not, are important, because they set the tone of the story.
I also tend to think that back then with the OG, they did not think that they created an infamous LTD at all. To them, on the romance part, it was pretty straightforward, and one of the interviews just shows that: "ok the heroine is going to die, we need another one so the hero won't be lonely". In short, they thought "hey, here, Aerith dies, but look, in out twist scenario, Cloud's always loved Tifa, and they end up together". Pretty simple and straightforward - except the execution lacked, may it be because by design the OG handled a good part of the story to you to fill, also because they wanted so bad to shock people with the twist "Cloud is not how you thought he was" that they completely hide his true character (making him a big arsehole too) and thus, hiding his true love for Tifa. To them, the answer was simple, and the fact that they were Japanese with another set of values for fans' theories meant that during long years they did not dispel that idea that Cloud was searching for Aerith in the Promise Land.
However to me, the way they showcase cloti shows that those days are over - at least for the LTD. They seem bent on changing some perceptions, notably towards their characters (Tifa's jealousy comes to mind, even though it's still there, but also the girls' friendship we could never see develop due to how the OG was, Aerith's flirtiness, Cloud's complete characterisation as his SOLDIER self, Barret and his place in Avalanche, etc.). In the way cloti is framed throughout the game, but also how they interact, the way you can see the distance shrinking quite naturally... I was thinking about Nojima's quote about how Cloud can't prevent the distance between him and Aerrith shrinking, but in this part, it's all Aerith's work.
In the case of Cloud and Tifa, what everyone has noticed, is how painfully large it is at the beginning of the game, when they are at the bar on in their rooms. You can sense the uneasiness, and some sort of yearning there - they want to be around each other, they seek each other, but there is still that distance that they don't dare cross. Then, Alone at last happens, and this is where you can feel that the distance starts shrinking. Then they get attacked by whispers, and from memory there, Cloud tries to reach Tifa's hand but can't - and suddenly, destiny makes sure that they go together for the next mission, and we get the train roll lol. I think it's really around there that the distance starts diminishing, really fast, it's like that train roll was the thing that made them go "nah we're good in each other's arms, thank you" lol. Joking around aside, they do get separated again, and interestingly enough, it's Aerith's presence that shrinks that distance again. You could have thought that her presence would have had the reverse effect, but that's not what happened, she triggered Tifa in an interesting way - with that arm grab that surprised Cloud so much. From there, they become much more comfortable around each other, and I think it's also going to serve as the basis that "Tifa choses to believe Cloud and his story, that this is the real Cloud" as well as "Tifa wants to confess her feelings" during the GS date.
While writing this huge chunk of a paragraph, it suddenly hit me that during that scene I referenced with the whispers, Cloud cannot reach Tifa and save her, while at the pillar, he does reach her in slow motion and saves her. I think it's somehow telling and a showcase too of the closeness they gained, metaphorically speaking of course, during the course of the game. Tifa hesitates in ch4, so she's not able to grab Cloud's hand. During the pillar scene, she does not hesitate, and is rewarded with Cloud saving her. I have wondered for the longest time why the game insisted on that hand grab, but I can see now why they did. Which does bring us to Tifa saving Cloud, which is an allusion to the end of the game of course, where she saves him too from falling down.
Rewatching that scene in slow motion in ch4, I was wrong, Tifa does not hesitate. But I got the clear impression, as both were running towards the bar, that the whispers attacked (or rather immobilised) Tifa on purpose, knowing that Cloud would not leave her alone. Sure they were standing between him and the bar, but clearly at that moment, he switched target and focused only on saving Tifa. Still, they couldn't connect in that scene, which is a stark contrast with the pillar scene, IMHO.
