Oh my, the Ayin slander quotient in the thread is reaching unacceptable levels!
To be more precise and add ro what Kailll is saying, one of her memories shows that she repeated something like five to six thousand days… before she even greeted the manager for the first time, and she only reached this point by deliberately sabotaging the Sephiroth, she was absolutely able to make it so that none of the problems we see in the game even begin, Netzch could have wanted to live, Yesod could've been warm and friendly, Hod could actually have her counseling work and so on and so forth.
The thing is, because Ayin wanted to be the one to save them, she couldn't progress if she did so, everytime she tried, the scenario reset.
The point was to repair the Sephirot's relationships with Ayin specifically, and to revisit their old issues from back when they were still alive. I don't even think the upper-level Sephirot remember their previous lives at the start of the game, and I'm not sure they fully remember even after their core suppressions.
Them hanging out in the facility without Angela's malicious interference like you described would be more like blissful oblivion, I think. Not an unkind fate, but they were brought back for another purpose.
Ayin wanted to crush them in a pit of despair of their own sins and then drag them out of it forcibly through some kind of Light bullshit.
Not that. The reason he recreated their original trauma is to understand how it could have gone better, back then.
Also, he literally didn't know what to do anymore when he was designing the script, and thought he could figure it out if he had them by his side, at their best. The point of the script wasn't that they needed him, it was that he needed them (as he said in a Hokma scene, I believe).
In other words, Ayin remained very cool and big-brained even before the script, in the aftermath of Carmen's death. He had the sanity to realize he was insane, so to speak.
And, well, he seems to be one of the few people willing to do something about the hellhole that is the City, so that automatically makes him a practical saint compared to most everyone in the PMverse.
The
only time Ayin ever fucked up is with Angela, make no mistake.