I was not suggesting to change the whole history, just the ending, I only put the KH reference to ilustrate my point that alternate versions of Cloud and Aerith have already been made (In fact Aerith is not even dead in the KH1 plot)
In fact as far as the project as evolved, the history as already undergone a significant change in order to give Aerith more playtime, as giving her dialogues means giving her interaction with the other party members, the only way to actually accept this patch and keep strictly attached to the cannon, will be go with the previous suggestion of the "ghost aerith" bringing her back with a transparent model, without dialogues, without anybody noticing her presence, just for the sake of gameplay.
Then again the ending won't change that much, the Advent Children movie, makes clear that the planet and all the main characters survive the ordeal, (even president Rufus that I tought was vaporised by a "Weapon"attack) the only thing that will change is that Cloud won't become depressed and lonely, has he was seen in AC.
About the "double edge sword" I agreed with you, this game in particular have been subjet to intense debate, and there is no real consess on anything about it, for starters some people even argue if the game is good or not, and there is some people that absolutly hate Aerith, while others (like me
) love her, everyone is free take their side, but I guess that many of the people interesed in this patch actually liked the flower girl, so my point is that my "happy ending" suggestion won't appeal to all the final fantasy 7 fans, but I think it will appeal to many final fantasy 7 fans that actually liked Aerith, those that didn't liked her or think that the game was perfect the way it was, and that her permanent death was indeed necesary just have to abstent from using this particular patch.
And again, maybe I was not clear enought, I didn't mean to change the ending video, (it is amazing) or anything, I just mean that she should not dissapear, just have them all escape the crater together, then you could just assume that she and cloud are ok, or if you want to keep with the cannon establised by AC assume that she returned to the lifestream shortly after the battle.
After all the original ending was not very explicit about the fate of the heroes, exept for Red XII who seems to have two kids some hundreds of years later.