This was alluded to in the GOG AMA on reddit recently, but here it is. It might explain why FF7 on Steam only recently got its atrocious DRM removed. There was a set of four Final Fantasy games about a month ago, and this one seems to be releasing on GOG by itself. And yes, before anyone mentions it in the comments, this company uses AI in some capacity, if that matters to you. I tested this release of FF7 for about 15 minutes via Heroic/Proton, and it seems to work great, though it does have a config launcher that we may want to disable via launch params.
Hmm, seems like sticking with emulating my copy might be good enough for now. I might jump into the other entries instead since I neither have nor played them. Thanks for the reply!