Precisely, that's how I'm thinking of it too. He attempted creating a singularity of time that allowed him access to the past and the party saw glimpses of the future. They didn't understand or grasp the significance, but that's what it was. Sephiroth possessing future, precise contextual knowledge of later game events/plot-points and Cloud seemingly receiving said knowledge with no awareness of their meaning, would be explained by this. Clearly, Sephiroth is gonna try something to give himself a leg up to essentially, do a
better job at becoming a god.
In terms of the adaption of the Remake, this is what gives space to the writers to color outside of the lines in regards to telling the story of FFVII in the Remake. Things can be different just enough while also fitting within the confines of the narrative.
But if time is a flat circle, then maybe Fate, in this case, is determined not by a god but by who people are - things were always going to happen the way they were because, barring outside knowledge, people are who they are and were never going to respond to events in a different way. Sephiroth's attempts to tweak how people act and what they do from the "outside" (so to speak) is what gets them riled up - he's not an influence that's "supposed" to be present. Thus, It's not a deviation from the original that gets them going necessarily; it's an attempt by a human to veer things off the "natural" course using "forbidden knowledge."
Then again...assuming the devs aren't lying (or only referring to this first game) when they say the intent is to preserve the original story, it's tricky to say how any future knowledge on the part of Sephiroth jives with that, especially if we take the Remake ending to mean that the Whispers have been subdued somehow, though I suppose that depends on how exactly Sephiroth plans to change his Bad End and how overt he plans to make his actions.
Pretty much. That makes sense. The Planet is able to sense or hold a sort of temporal awareness/realizaiton when something outside the flow is acting to interfere in the progression of events. It probably exists on a level that isn't really part of the planet but the future....
....Which explains how the Whispers are from a future timeline that works to protect its own existence
and the destiny that created them. They move to hone in on things that threaten their progression from within the planet. They don't exist in the present, only from the future.
This does preserve the original story while giving them space to mix things up and not leave everyone predicting precisely what will happen. They do want to leave some measure of uncertainty and surprise in their work, after all.
