I am actually kind of starting to shake a little imagining how the ending would have been without the speech, and, ugh, oh my god, I would still be crying.

Popping up on an entry that's almost four years old to flap in distress at you, because no. Zack just lying there already dead when Cloud crawled over to him would have been incredibly effective, but it would also have destroyed me.

(I'm incredibly late to Crisis Core, but at least I got there in the end.)