The creator's own words and the general policy of square at the time, as well as several similarly unfinished Square works put out in the same time. FF7 WAS rushed, but they got it mostly finished. Certainly a lot moreso than Xenogears or SaGa frontier.
Really, the most obvious sign that it was rushed is that the original Japanese version was missing an important part of the story: the explanation for why Cloud was in Midgar.
That whole flashback with Zack didn't make it in for the initial release.
Can you imagine trying to figure out that damn story without that scene?
I think the people who believe her death was a very last minute decision are butchering a quote from one of the creators of the game who said that they decided to add in her death after going through the death of their mother.
That itself is actually an erroneous fandom assumption. Sakaguchi's mother died in 1988, during the making of Final Fantasy III.
While that did inspire him creatively, it was more so with regard to the Lifestream concept in general. He speaks about it at length in the foreword to the "making of" book made for The Spirits Within.
Aerith's death was a suggestion on Nomura's part, and a decision he and Kitase came to during a long phone conversation.
I think most games are unfinished, or at least Square games.
Most games I've looked into the backgrounds of have leftover unfinished areas, features, minigames, items, etc. It's just how it is.
This is certainly the case. For instance, the Secret Seekers as we call them over on the official PlayStation boards have spent years delving into Shadow of the Colossus.
In the last year, there's been an avalanche of discovery, culminating in them learning a warp code and discovering a lot of stuff -- most notably that there's a giant dam in the inaccessible eastern part of the map, along with a shit-ton of mountains, grasslands and some desert-like areas.
Actually, that may not be the most notable thing. The most notable detail may be the fact that in the demos of the game, the giant Shrine of Worship was actually solid from top to bottom, though the collision detection was off a bit in some of the higher areas. As well, the beta copy of the final version of the game -- yep, the Secret Seekers have even acquired that -- featured the entire temple with
perfect collision detection and
grabbable edges everywhere, confirming once and for all that the developers had once intended for the player to be able to get up there.
Why didn't they include this option in the final version? None of us know for sure, but my belief is that this high vantage allows the player to see a lot of void pits in the geometry, and texture gaps throughout the Forbidden Land.
This most recent discovery actually came just days ago, leaving the Secret Seekers wondering what the hell is left to discover after years of searching. Their work is basically over.
Another incomplete element of the game was a special item called "Eye of the Colossus," which would have switched the player's view to the colossi's vision. You'd have still controlled the player's character, but would have done so while watching from the vantage of your opponent.
There's probably a number of reasons why that was scrapped, not the least of which would have been issues with the camera angles and difficulties in actually seeing where you were going.
The Shadow of the Colossus art book that came out around the time of the game also revealed details on several colossi that weren't included in the final version of the game for various reasons.
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Most of CC does depict Sephiroth as one of the good guys, and while it does the same with Cloud, up until Nibelhiem Sephiroth was the most prominent ally of Zack's (sort of debatable in favor of Angeal or Aerith, I know, but it's a really close match) and his 'fall' is pretty rapid and jarring, especially if you're a newb to the Compilation.
