The Aerith effect

[Crop]

I'm afraid the player choices don't alter the scene except the player's own perspective of it, but it has been stated by the team they smurfed and even toned the scene down to make it less obvious.

Yes it does. After the scene I believe Tifa can either say something like "were you watching us" or "were you listening to us" to the rest of the team depending on choices made previously in the game.

EDIT: Here, I found this http://clerith.heliohost.org/LowAffectionHWAnalysis.htm

The scene is actually even more different than I thought depending on choices made.