So, there's one more thing I wanted to write about but didn't wanna overpost.
Maybe this too has been touched upon, but I dunno where to look. It's about ending cutscene and Zack.
The scene with Zack in the ending has given rise to some fierce debate in the fandom forum of my native language, and I started digging into youtube. That's when I took notice of something peculiar: there are
no whispers in pre-rendered cutscenes, all of them are in-game engine footage. Maybe the whispers as they are now just did not exist at this point. Firstly, all the epic visionary including whispers never utilized FMV, like whispers surrounding Shinra building. Secondly, the plate drop FMV sequence has a very blunt cut-in of in-game Wedge trying to chase whispers away (I'm not sure about the president) and then it returns to gloriously animated Cait Sith.
If this attests to whispers being introduced late in development, it sheds light on the nature of Zack's scene in the ending: what if, when being rendered, it was supposed to be just a metaphor, a juxtaposition of sorts, and not really an implication of Zack's possible survival?
Remember how there's a couple of frames with Zack and Cloud nearing the edge of a cliff looking similar to the scenery where Zack was killed? It may have been left unedited in the final cut because of lyrics sync or something.
My take is something like this might have happened during development:
1) Hamaguchi approached Nomura about fighting Sephiroth in Midgar and it was greenlit. Maybe it was still a point where 'living Zack' concept didn't exist and where the team was still on the path they talked about in the interview: leave everything unsuspicious aside from Biggs being alive.
2) All the FMV cutscenes have been rendered, without whispers
3) Some time passed and at least several months prior to Spring 2019 the team decided to go really crazy and introduced whispers into the plot.
It just happened to me that the Sephiroth fight which was conceived in the stage of rendering FMVs might have happened without fate/time ghosts thing: it might have been in the battle sim or video presentation room in Shinra building. It also could have been Marco or his buddy doing the job. This would (somehow) explain a really confusing plot point of video presentation room glitch, because it's never been satisfyingly touched upon - maybe, just maybe it was supposed to be a foreshadowing to a VR fight with black-caped Sephiroth.
Anyways the thing I was trying to say is, the ending cutscene was not
intended to depict Zack survive his final stand, but it became such and even more confusing because of added context, and the creators just let it be, despite this questionable two-second scenery of Zack's possible death.
I'd really appreciate your opinion on that and the previous post, 'cause I really don't know if all this is just too outlandish to warrant discussion