Spoiler guyssss I just had an epiphany

[linnaealyn]

Was going through old material and putting the pieces together over on Twitter. Started from trying to find back that screenshot of the unused portion of the Grahf, Khan, and Id animated cutscene but ended up finding out way more about how the original game was intended to play out.

This image of Grahf. Same scene, different angle, different pose. The only place Ive ever seen it is through Archive.RPGamer.com (previously the Square.net fan site. ...that I also learned was responsible for starting a fan petition to get XG localized) under their XG screenshots, the last screenshot under "Fei Fong Wong anime shots".
But I still have yet to find where they got this screenshot.

Then I found this screenshot in <Weekly Famitsu 1997-11-28> that my eyes always skimmed over in the past.

Another screenshot of an extended version of the scene. Likely the scene was going to be much longer, showing the fight between Khan and Grahf before Khan forcibly forms Fei and gets possessed by Grahf.

Beside this screenshot in Japanese it says something like "On the way back from Shitan's house Fei hears a strike of lightning and sees a hallucination" and describes what we know of this scene and then "after seeing this hallucination will Fei be awakened by another personality?"

So this scene was intended to be shown on the way back from Citan's house. Thing is, I realized just now that the scene we ended up getting was completely unchanged from that initial intention of how the story was originally going to play out. The scene starts with a strike of lightning lighting up Fei's face, then he notices the three of them and looks over at them.

In the final build of the game the scene plays when Fei is asleep on the sand cruiser. I kinda always viewed it as one of those pov dreams where you're looking at the events at a distance separated from it all, but still something about it always stood out to me.
Turns out this whole time it was left unchanged from its intended use! In this scene Fei is actually still on the mountain on the way back to Lahan and looks over at this hallucination.

Its likely the reason why they're glowing as well. In the past I only viewed the glowing colors as an easy way of cleanly illustrating the two sides of this encounter. That the cloaked man, who you soon learn is Grahf, and the red haired man are on the same side, but then the person on the other side of this conflict, who clearly looks like he's Fei's dad, is saying "I'll never let you have him, even if it kills me", giving the player more intrigue. But the glow could've also very well been used to illustrate the fact that these are hallucinations he's seeing and not actually people up there on the mountain with him.
Likely he would've been jolted out of this hallucination from the Gears flying overhead and kind of forgotten about in the moment when Citan comes running over to him.

Someone else on Twitter also pointed out the fact that this scene taking place before we ever meet Grahf in the desert makes the animated scene of Fei seeing Grahf in the desert make more sense. Fei saying "Who are you!? Who...right, I know you... You killed her..." and it plays a shot of Grahf, (circling around before zooming into his eye, much like how in the other cutscene it puts emphases on Grahf and circles around his face) illustrating that Fei is remembering seeing Grahf's face in his hallucinations right before his focus changes to trying to remember why he's thinking "you killed her" and who "her" even is.


~~
Another thing I learned- these images from <Weekly Famitsu 1998-01-09>

For ~2 years I kept hearing only speculation about what these were going to be used for the unused opening cutscene we heard about that likely would've used Stars of Tears, but no one read the Japanese on this page it seems.

It says "A flashback at Bart's Hideout. People from Fei's memories rush about in circles in his mind"
So originally we were supposed to get another animated cutscene when Fei was going through that initial arc of being overwhelmed, depressed, not knowing what to do, and not wanting to get involved with other peoples' problems.
It would definitely fit there considering he and Bart's conversation about it all in the final build of the game.

 

[linnaealyn]

Also this screenshot I thought might've been used in that opening sequence we never got, but the fact that those two others clearly weren't made me start to wonder about this one as well.

Thought it might've been another animated cutscene we would've gotten during that scene in disc 2 with Elly speaking to the wels-turned people, showing Elly and Sophia's sprites swapping between one another.
But someone else over on twitter had a better theory- that it might've been a scene that played when Fei sees Sophia's portrait for the first time as the Japanese text here says something like "Elly... who on earth are you....", bringing to mind that scene when they're remarking on how similar Elly and Sophia look, and the fact that this page is recapping the story only up to Kislev.

 

[linnaealyn]

Also-- the hallucination happening up on the mountain before getting back to Lahan makes Fei's hallucination seeing little Id inside the cockpit make a whole lot more sense since this is the only time this seems to happen to him in the final build of the game. Originally he was having hallucinations coming down the mountain and leading him into getting in the Gear.

 

[linnaealyn]

And speaking of unused cutscenes I forgot to mention these-

Was looking at this (little poster in the limited edition soundtrack)-

and noticed these three screenshots that we never see in-game.

First one looks like the Eldridge in front of the sun, looking like you can actually see the moment it begins splitting apart (referring to the manual override bolt system used by the captain to dismantle the ship. He didn't use a self destruct as many people say. Hence why it wasnt completely destroyed and you get whole blocks of the ship like the Babel block that landed "upright")

And the other two look like a different shot of Weltall-Id in the Yggdrasil's Gear hanger. One with his wings open and the other being from the same angle but after he busts through the ceiling.

because this is what we see in-game when W-Id opens its wings; its not from the front and he doesnt raise his arms as much. (
Yes, the other is from a pretty low angle but to me it still looks like he's raising his hands more than in this one, the arms/hands look angled more upward than to the side.)

That early version of the cutscene actually reminds me of this render of Weltall-Id that we can see in PW, where the blue wings are less-so simply the "clean" shapes and have more light particles flaring outward in all directions.