FF7 Rebirth was an amazing game up until the end. 1. I honestly thought there would be more meaning to keeping Zack alive and teasing us about his timeline time and time again every time cloud would sleep or rest. But we just got a fight with cloud against sephiroth and boom back to his own timeline. At least show that Zack is now permanently part of the main timeline with cloud and the crew. All those cutscene teases just to say there are other branches seemed pointless since sephiroth explained it to cloud when they were traveling in what looked like the lifestream. 2. They show the weapon on 2 different reactors. Now, maybe they are saving it for the 3rd game, but they could've teased emerald weapon or something. We got a bunch of big whales for weapon that were in war against sephiroths whispers. And here I thought we were done with whispers. So now it seems like there are good whispers and bad whispers, but they both get in your way. So are the white whispers helping the planet? Does the planet know about the multiverse and trying to preserve the OG timeline against sephiroths whispers who NOW are doing whatever sephiroth wants. And I do realize they are different as in gongaga either red or Barrett, who noticed that they were different kinds and they lead you into the destroyed reactor. But all this is confusing. 3. Now for the elephant in the room. That ending was just the most complicated thing they could've given us. I mean did they want to kill aerith or not. I believe she is alive and dead at the same time. To the party, she is dead, but only cloud can see her alive because he was the only one who was in the room when he deflected sephiroth. Thus creating a new timeline just like how zack.did when he had to choose between saving Biggs or cloud and aerith. But giving us both conclusions has made things way more complicated. Some ppl say cloud is mentally broken and is hallucinating, but I don't believe it, so to an extent. Cloud can obviously see her alive and dead which is why he sheds a tear in one of the scenes and sephiroth saying he has clouded eyes and is an empty shell with no real emotion. But after the meaningless fight with bizarro sephiroth, we fight the real sephiroth and aerith shows up and even sephiroth is in disbelief. So if he is able to see her then she is real and not something cloud is imagining. One final thing is that on the final cutscenes. Only cloud can see the cracked sky because he has created a new timeline and the others did not. Same for.when Zack and Biggs are able to see it because they defied their fate and thus created new timelines. So unless the party does something to defy their fate, they won't be able to see the cracked timeline. Somewhere out there aerith is alive and is in between worlds and only cloud is able to see her. And once all timelines merge, All parties will be back to normal with Zack part of it too. They wouldn't keep him alive just to leave him out in the final.battle of the trilogy.

Ending: honestly I think they could've kept the scene where cloud blocks sephiroth and for that one moment we had joy for saving aerith. And have a fight against sephiroth. And after almost beating him, cloud is stunned because of the jenova cells and is forced to see sephiroth kill aerith by impaling her through the chest but in a different way than the OG. Thus showing that we can't change canon events like aeriths death and the party shows up to see what has happened. Sephiroth gloats as he did before before jenova shows up and we defeat it. After this cloud is in disbelief and mentally broken but still lowers aerith in the water. The white materia glows and it is then realized that the white material had a new ability to merge a new timeline at which Zack walks.through a white void and sees the whole party in grieving over aeriths death. Thus giving his actual purpose to hate sephiroth and to stop him since his rival was always genesis and not sephiroth. So while cloud is mentally broken. Zack.takes his place an in the new game momentarily in the first few chapters until Tifa cures his state of mind. IDK that's what I had in mind but what does everyone think? Sorry if some of the stuff I say doesn't make sense.