Best and worst parts of the game!

[Phoenix Rising]

Yeah, they foreshadow it. The clever thing is, they foreshadow it in such a subtle way you don't notice it until after you've already played the game. It would have been stupid if they had litterally mentioned the fact they look familiar or something. What they did, was they made it out that certain characters were acting the way they expected each other to. Irvine was the only one who remembered from the start, but when they don't react he probably comes to the conclusion that he's got the wrong people - he only restarts his theory when Edea comes into play. There are other hints, such as Squall recognizing Edea's name, Irvine not wanting to shoot her (with a feeble excuse to cover it), pretty much all of Ellone's scenes has her speaking to characters like she knew them, also it was a good way of developing Squall better, like how he'd always viewed the world like friendships end, and now everyones here again. I really loved how they handled it.

I still say the Squall is Dead theory is more likely.

I'd say the most likely theory is that they didn't really put much thought into what they were writing, and wrote themselves into a corner, so the GFs made them forget.

Even if they didn't put a lot of thought into it, why did almost everything after Disk 1 seem like a completely different game altogether? It was fairly realistic and believable, then you have things like Moombas. You also have entire side plots that are brought up and then subsequently dropped, such as NORG and Rinoa's relationship with Seifer.