Kitase on FFVII’s initial development: “Our first plans were interrupted, since we had to help out with Chrono Trigger, which had turned into a huge project. But as soon as we had done what we could with that game, we started over from the beginning with FFVII. And back then we were fully focused on the disk system that was gonna be released for the Nintendo 64 (the 64DD). We never actually received a working prototype, but we did everything according to the planned specifications.”

Nomura on experimenting with the N64 analog stick: “We had an idea about how you would be able to look around in the dungeons with the help of it, but we never really got further than that.”

Kitase: “We actually began work from the ground up on three separate occasions. First directly after FFVI, then again after Chrono Trigger, and finally when we decided that CD-ROM technology was going to be a necessity and that it would therefore be released on the PlayStation.”

Nomura: “But some of the ideas we had been discussing from the beginning are actually still intact in the finished game. And other ones, like Edea, ended up in FFVIII.”

Originally the game was going to end at the 1st visit to north crater and Aerith would die there in that ending, however Square thought the game was too short so they basically killed Aerith sooner and filled disc 2 explaining clouds past clearer and making you fight shinra til disc 3. Then you go to the crater and kick his ass again

i think that aeris was meant to die in this game. I heard that they originally planned to do it at the northern crater but some reason, move it earlier. which explains the dialogue here.

actually there was a file left on the FFVII database that was basically aeris’s text and sprite if you hacked her back to life in disc 2 oddly enough they never removed this factor and nobdoy even knows why it’s there. Maybe to foreshadow a future FFVII event?

There is still some parts of Disc 2 and 3 where she speaks if you have her in the party, this is simply because it wasn’t always the plan to kill her off, it was a decision made later in the game and some speach boxes still survive.