![]() ![]() His personal acceptance is rewarded when his friends accept him. He acknowledges his flaws and overcomes them. However he’s still accepted back, and they don’t hesitate to forgive him. Cloud accepts his failures, he apologizes ad nauseum for being weak, for failing himself and the rest of the party. Cloud’s only self is the fantasized version that he has created.Īs Final Fantasy VII comes to a conclusion, a whole and real Cloud finally emerges. ![]() When his illusion is stripped away entirely, Cloud is paralyzed and catatonic. Cloud’s self is so dependent on the virile masculine warrior illusion that there is nothing beneath it. The more of his false identity that is peeled away, the less there is that remains. He’s as likely to curl into a ball and pout as he is to charge into battle. At this point Cloud is no longer the cocky, dispassionate warrior. He lacks the will to resist Sephiroth, his father figure, and turns on Aeris. When Cloud takes on Zack’s identity, he takes his sword (which in battle he holds upright between his legs) and buries his preteen self beneath this other man’s identity.Īt the game’s halfway mark, after the party acquires the black materia in the Temple of the Ancients, Cloud’s mind betrays him. Both men are appropriately armed with signature phallic swords. Similarly, Zack is a young wunderkind rocketing through the ranks of Soldier, a talented and respected man with the bright future that Cloud wants but is incapable of achieving. Cloud adopts Sephiroth as a fatherly paragon of manhood. The 14-year old Cloud boasts proudly to a young Tifa that he’s leaving for the big city to join Soldier and be like Sephiroth. Sephiroth is set up as a militaristic ubermensch, a famed war hero. His entire background is mired with so much failure and disappointment that he represses it totally and adopts a new identity.Ĭloud’s personality is based off two templates: that of Sephiroth and that of Zack. In truth, Cloud was raised by a single mother, he had a lonely childhood, he failed to live up to his dreams. He was never a member of the elite military group Soldier, he did not become personal friends with the war hero Sephiroth, and he never made a living as a mercenary. ![]() The major reveal of Final Fantasy VII is that Cloud falsified his own memories. After all, Cloud is not hunting down Sephiroth, he is being led by him.Ĭloud is not only less capable than he lets on, but his entire identity is false. When he demands that Aeris or Tifa stay out of danger, he’s incapable of holding them back - and indeed both women prove well suited to dealing with danger and are even necessary to the quest. But halfway through the game, layers of Cloud’s facade are peeled away. They are outlets of the same male power fantasy. Most video game heroes resemble Cloud after the opening credits. For the first half of Final Fantasy VII, the player takes the role of this capable, slightly arrogant warrior figure. He reacts to crisis with an aloof swish of his hair and a cocky slouch. He’s an elite military specialist gone rogue against an oppressive “corporatocracy”, who is motivated not just by rugged individualism but also to protect the women that he encounters. Cloud is set up as a masculine power fantasy. He’s detached and impersonal, a sword for hire whose only priority is completing his job and getting paid. The first time that the player sees Cloud, he’s vaulting out of a train and single-handedly dispatching a group of armed guards. Of course, there is no one true measure of quality of characters (in games or otherwise) but at the very least, Cloud is one of the rare characters in games with depth, complexity, and a smooth, believable arc of character development. Nevertheless, even accounting for the nostalgia bias and the changing trends since Final Fantasy VII’s release in 1997, Cloud Strife is still an exceptionally multifaceted character. And only half the reason was a controversial reader-grab. ![]()
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