Cloud and Angst

Although... I just realized that in the OG, I remember angst!Cloud having a lot more dialogue then sane!Cloud does (and more memorable dialog at that). Cloud finally gets his mind put back together right before the climax at the Huge Materia back, Midgar and then Northern Crater for the last time, and by that time, the only reason why it feels long is that that's when all the late-game grinding takes place. As far as story pacing goes, all the major plot development of the game is mostly over and all that's left for sane!Cloud to do is go beat Sephrioth.

While I do agree that sane!Cloud is the Cloud the OG ends with, that's not the personality Cloud has for the majority of the game... TBH, I can't say that Cloud isn't angsty for the majority of the OG. He was, and if the games not finished, then that's probably how people are going to remember him. Especially since so much of Cloud's plot-line rides on him being angsty for at least 3/4 of the game. He's not like Zidane where he's not angsty most of the time.

ForceStealer said:

The movie should have done a better job of showing this progression, and not made OTWTS required reading, yes (and ACC made an attempt, I think). It's unfortunate that the way he is in AC/C have now dominated the public perception of him as a Squall-type character when he is not. And it's also perfectly fine if you simply would have preferred to have confident/put-together Cloud in the movie. But how people suggest that it undoes Cloud's development in VII is strange to me. Especially considering, again, how easy it is to backslide into depression (I'm told, never having suffered from it) WITHOUT contracting an incurable, terminal disease as thanks for saving the world.

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I'll put it this way: the central conflicts and resolutions of both FF7 and AC can be phrased with the same sentence. Cloud falls apart, he recovers with the help of Tifa and his friends, and he resolves his demons in a final showdown with Sephiroth. When the plots have that much in common, it's hard to avoid questioning whether Cloud's already been down this road before. The particulars vary - revenge and absolution are very different motivations - but weakness, insecurity, and guilt were at the bottom of his problems the first time around. If the Lifestream events and the final battle "to the settling of everything" didn't resolve those issues, Cloud still carries unconscious feelings of responsibility, and he ends up having to journey the same arc all over again, then his original progression wasn't as meaningful as it originally seemed.

It's plausible that he was suffering from PTSD or depression and wasn't thinking clearly, but realism introduces its own problems. Depression is something that is endured and managed, not overcome with willpower and positive thinking just in time to save the day.

The Engineer said:

To be honest though, how many people actually complained about the way Cloud was developed in ACC? 'Cause if the majority of fans don't complain, then it'll appear to whoever decided to go that route that they were right to develop his character like that.

Time is also a factor too. ACC wasn't developed right after the OG; it was developed years later which is plenty long enough for fans to vocalize how they are most accustomed to seeing Cloud's character and for the devs to latch on to that.

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It seemed like every was screaming bloody murder at the time, but that's just the fandom echo chamber. None of my friends seemed to care. They probably don't even remember anything before Bahamut showed up.

Also, I'm sure Cloud's behavior was designed at least in part to enable a bigger role for Aerith, who otherwise had no business showing up in the film.

the central conflicts and resolutions of both FF7 and AC can be phrased with the same sentence.

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IIRC, ACC was deliberately designed to be a recreation of Cloud's original story-arc, rather than a story of him moving forward from where we left him at the end of the OG, so in that respect it was successful in what it set out to do.

The more I play the OG (I am replaying it now) the more I am struck by the fundamental differences between OG Cloud and ACC Cloud. I guess it all depends on what you mean by "angtsy", but OG Cloud never seems angtsy to me until after he beats up on Aerith at the Temple of the Ancients and begins to suspect that there's something profoundly wrong with him. Any normal person would blame themselves for Aerith subsequently running off and then for her death; you don't have to be angsty or emo to take that guilt on yourself. Sephiroth makes him doubt his identity and his very existence; then he goes into a coma; then Tifa pulls him out of it and he is once again the confident, decisive leader.

The OG had a subtleness and psychological acuity to it that the other Compilation entries have failed to live up to, and that the fans themselves often seem to reject. Take, for example, the notion that Cloud was bullied as a child. In the OG he acknowledges that he was jealous, aggressive, belligerent and didn't give the other kids much reason to like him. At least the Compilation has never retconned this aspect of his story. But look at how they have sanitized and sanctified Aerith. Look how Zack was transformed from a womanizer to a "puppy". And look at all the fanfic in which poor baby!Cloud is the innocent victim of bullying when he joins the infantry. I guess fans like to mould their favourite characters into a shape they can relate to.

I find AC setting out to make a lesser version of the original's plot to be lazy on their part.

Sometimes fanfic writers confess to having never actually played any of the games and imply they're relying on a single secondary source of information to get the facts right regarding canon. Those fics tend to be the ones that have annoying mistakes like Cloud having 7 swords, character names being misspelled repeatedly (especially Lucrecia) and materia being misspelled as material for some reason.

While I accept Zack's shift in characterization since the only guarantee we have about him being a womanizer based on what we see in the OG are Cloud's jerkish behavior which may or may not be one of Zack's contributions to the fake persona and Aerith's claims that he probably found another girlfriend after 5 years, even though I wouldn't fault her for lying about that.

I do, however, find that Aerith being watered down to some saintly martyr to only really serve the purpose of contrasting what they did to Sephiroth. If I were to go about depicting Cloud as bullied, I'd try to go about it in a way where it doesn't really matter who started it anymore and that both sides have faults on that matter, as is usually the case. From what I can tell, those fics mostly do it either to try to depict how much they think Cloud's childhood sucked or as part of the Cloud trying to get into SOLDIER to generate conflict other than the conflict from canon such as CC or the OG.

I can't understand why anyone would want to write fanfic about a bunch of games they have never played and characters they only know second hand.

I'm not sure either and really my problem isn't that they haven't played the game so much as they didn't do any damn research. Even if you did play the game you're still going to look stuff up to refresh your memory or go over a specific part without having to replay the whole thing up to that point.

Y'know, I actually had relatively few problems with the Compilation. I occasionally said 'that's kinda dumb, but okay', but was pretty much at peace with most things.

Cloud's original conflict was 'Does Cloud Strife exist?' or was he a memory created by Jenova for the sole purpose of being her puppet. That's all Tifa solved in the lifestream, but he'd still have a lot of things to work out over time afterwards.

Sorry if I spam this thread but I gotta say my thoughts on Cloud being depressed in AC.

A large portion of the world is suffering from Geostigma as a direct result of Mako exposure (Including Cloud). So Cloud thinks "I am still a screw up. I can't even save the world right." That mindset, along with the fear of hurting people again caused him to distance himself to find a cure.

Now I want to point out what Square did here: they brought back a Cloud very similar to what he was throughout most of the game, how you would remember him (and one there can still be a story around), but the allowed him to continue to develop without backtracking (like most people accuse them/him of).

So Cloud leaves. Pseudo-Sephiroths are running around (there's another thing he didn't do right. -10 points to self confidence) He doesn't answer his phone, but he still cares about the gang, and takes their advice in messages. He helps ShinRa when he knows it's what he needs to do.

And you gotta love Tifa, dilly dally shilly shally and all. While Aerith is definitely Cloud's comfort, Tifa's the kick in the rear he needs to tell him "Hey, we're all in this together. You may have your own agenda and quarrels, but this whole shablam is all of our struggle (symbolized by the Bahamut fight, and later the solo-Sephiroth fight).

Speaking of which, during the battle with Kadaj/Sephy, Tifa talks about how much weaker they've all gotten, except Cloud. That's because he's continued to struggle. They've all moved on, but Cloud just can't, it's not in his nature or personality. He may never, completely. He'll get better, but no one changes completely.

End Advent Children and all of it's glorious Cloud character development.

Cloud's entire characterization even in in the OG is far more human than any FF characters ive seen to say the least (along with Kuja).

P.S: Also I forgot to mentioned that Cloud spent a lot of time trying to find a cure for Geostigma for Denzel and never could. Add to the fact that he contracted Geostigma himself and you've got a really depressed Cloud at the start of AC. Geostigma was a death sentence. Cloud was faced with his own mortality and the thought that he can't do anything because he's going to die soon and he can't help his family (Denzel) or even himself.

Cloud's kinda a quiet guy as well, and his English VA in the Compilation makes him sound uber serious and a touch miserable at all times but he definitely cracks a few jokes in ACC.

I think it's a tough one because obviously in the OG, with the limited graphics meaning you can't see many facial expressions and all the dialogue being text-based the tone of the character's personalities can be interpreted quite differently by different people, whereas they're more completely displayed in the Compilation, in my opinion.

I find Cloud's protrayal to be reasonably consistent across the franchise, he makes me laugh in ACC, but he's obviously got a lot to deal with in it as well.

The Engineer said:

Although... I just realized that in the OG, I remember angst!Cloud having a lot more dialogue then sane!Cloud does (and more memorable dialog at that). Cloud finally gets his mind put back together right before the climax at the Huge Materia back, Midgar and then Northern Crater for the last time, and by that time, the only reason why it feels long is that that's when all the late-game grinding takes place. As far as story pacing goes, all the major plot development of the game is mostly over and all that's left for sane!Cloud to do is go beat Sephrioth.

While I do agree that sane!Cloud is the Cloud the OG ends with, that's not the personality Cloud has for the majority of the game... TBH, I can't say that Cloud isn't angsty for the majority of the OG. He was, and if the games not finished, then that's probably how people are going to remember him. Especially since so much of Cloud's plot-line rides on him being angsty for at least 3/4 of the game. He's not like Zidane where he's not angsty most of the time.

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It's a wonder we played the same game.

Pre-memory-fix Cloud is anything but angsty. He's a cocky, "ex-SOLDIER" who talks down to most of the people he comes across.
The only "angsty" lines Cloud ever uttered in prior to having his memory fixed was the couple of lines at the death of Aerith, and during the peak of his identity crisis.

Literally the entire trip through Midgar, and all the way up to the death of Aerith, Cloud churns out quips at other character's expenses, and is pretty much your standard "squad-leader" stereotype.

What exactly is angsty about -"give me a hard one", "You look like a bear trapped in a marshmallow" - Cloud?

And that's not going into the amount of impact the player has on Cloud's characterization through dialogue choices.

Really, I think "angsty" Cloud is largely a result of the Aerith death scene, because of how well-remembered and iconic that scene is, and how cheesy Cloud's lines happen to be in that exact scene. The result is that those lines get burned into people's memories and that's how they remember him. Now add to the damage, that AC piles on the point of the trauma caused by her death, and it only makes things even worse, despite the fact that Cloud, by the end of the original, seemed pretty resolved and well-adjusted to what happened.