>>725198402
From a writing perspective it really doesn't invalidate it at all. Eternal Sonata (another Namco game) has cutscenes that "happen in the protagonist's subconscious" that the protagonist is completely unaware of. There's literally nothing that prevents an author from writing it as shorthand for some emotional or mental event. That's just using symbolic shorthand in your presentation.
Shorthand like the Terminator seeing the world through a red filter with MOS 6502 CPU commands in his FOV for example. That isn't literally what's happening in universe though because that'd be absolutely stupid, but it's kind of necessary when making movies.
Your argument hinges on that it would be a completely invalid way to portray a subconscious resolution that way. Which you're completely free to demonstrate if you want. It's a bit hard when there's at least one other Namco game that have done things in the way I say it's being used in this epilogue. Which demonstrates to me that it's a valid way to tell a story at the very least.
