aszach01
Pro Adventurer
Cloud Strife (FFVII) - Character Analysis
Many gamers who played FFVII never really understand Cloud's whole characterization in the original game. So let me post a short analysis on Cloud's characterization.
The brilliance of Cloud's character. He starts off the story appearing as another generic idealized golden-boy protagonist, but as you go deeper it all falls apart and shit gets extremely real. Cloud is depressingly human, more so than any other FF character before or since.
The scene in Nibelheim with his mother, though short, says so much about Cloud's character. Laying on the bed, ashamed to show his face to anyone else in town after failing to make SOLDIER, listening as his mom dotes on him and talks about how much he's grown and how successful he must be now, knowing none of it's true. Just staring at the ceiling giving one word answers because he doesn't want to tell her the truth and break the illusion for her.
Cloud's greatest fear is his own mediocrity. I think that his breakdown at Sephiroth's hands wasn't really because he was forced to think he might have been a JENOVA clone rather than the real Cloud; it was that it forced him to remember just who the real Cloud was. He had done such a convincing job of thinking he was like Zack and hiding from himself since arriving in Midgar, but it all caught up with him and he couldn't handle the reality.
It makes it all the more impressive when he can finally move forward out of it and admit who he is, and it also allows him to realize that he can move beyond it. All that time he was acting like Zack in a way merged that personality into his own. He stops letting himself feel shame from his past, puts it behind him, and changes into the kind of person he wanted to be.
Many gamers who played FFVII never really understand Cloud's whole characterization in the original game. So let me post a short analysis on Cloud's characterization.
The brilliance of Cloud's character. He starts off the story appearing as another generic idealized golden-boy protagonist, but as you go deeper it all falls apart and shit gets extremely real. Cloud is depressingly human, more so than any other FF character before or since.
The scene in Nibelheim with his mother, though short, says so much about Cloud's character. Laying on the bed, ashamed to show his face to anyone else in town after failing to make SOLDIER, listening as his mom dotes on him and talks about how much he's grown and how successful he must be now, knowing none of it's true. Just staring at the ceiling giving one word answers because he doesn't want to tell her the truth and break the illusion for her.
Cloud's greatest fear is his own mediocrity. I think that his breakdown at Sephiroth's hands wasn't really because he was forced to think he might have been a JENOVA clone rather than the real Cloud; it was that it forced him to remember just who the real Cloud was. He had done such a convincing job of thinking he was like Zack and hiding from himself since arriving in Midgar, but it all caught up with him and he couldn't handle the reality.
It makes it all the more impressive when he can finally move forward out of it and admit who he is, and it also allows him to realize that he can move beyond it. All that time he was acting like Zack in a way merged that personality into his own. He stops letting himself feel shame from his past, puts it behind him, and changes into the kind of person he wanted to be.