Somewhere, between all the articles I’ve read about Final Fantasy 7 (the original game, Remake, and a few non-spoilery ones about Rebirth), I read a bit of commentary from one of the developers of Remake talking about Cloud’s romance/personal connection scene from Remake. He described Cloud as being five years younger than he appeared, and five years younger than every other protagonist in the game on account of his lost memories, which meant that his interactions with the other adults around him often came off as weirdly stifled or uncertain in a way that mapped better to a 16-year-old teen than a fully grown (if still somewhat young) adult. As I’ve been playing through Final Fantasy VII: Remake, I’ve been thinking about that interview and how it changes the way I read Cloud’s dialogue and body language. At the very base of all this is the image Cloud is trying to project to other people, of being a tough but cool SOLDIER (“ex-SOLDIER”) guy who is untouched by what is going on around him. On top of that, you have this imposed emotional distance that, in the original game at least, was part of maintaining that image of himself. That so far seems to be the case here, though I’ll admit I’m curious to see how that might be changed by the events of Rebirth and whatever the third installment in this series is called. Still, I can’t help but feel that the two Clouds, from the original game and from the Remake/Rebirth/Re-something (my money is on “Renewal,” currently) series, are very different characters.

The first note in this comparison is the fact that the original Final Fantasy 7 game is almost twenty-seven years old as I’m writing this. It is an ancient game built of polygons, dreams, and the softening fuzz of a CRT television. It was also most people’s first introduction to the idea that a console game might require multiple disks like some computer games did. It is a massive sprawling thing by the standards of its time and a tiny little game by modern ones. Regardless, like many such older games, there was a limit on the number of things the developers could get out of a game before it became painfully clunky or they just ran out of space completely. That’s why a lot of characters in a game like that will have a very limited pool of animations that will be trotted out to convey a wide range of emotions while the player is working through the dialogue. Without finding a way to go back to when and where the decisions were made, it is impossible to say if the characterization of the protagonists was shifted to reflect their limited animation pool, if their animation pool was built to reflect their specific characterizations, or if they were largely independent. It is just as possible that Cloud tends to shrug at things because of a limited pool of animations they could give to his overworld model as it is possible that they spent one of his limited selection of animations on a shrug because they felt that it would be the truest way to convey his somewhat noncommittal nature.

Regardless of the reason, in the original FF7, we get a Cloud who shrugs at the events around him but is nevertheless down to participate in whatever is going on. He reads not as clueless or uncaring, but as noncommittal and not interested in the details. He’ll do pretty much whatever is asked of him without much resistance, but he won’t exactly form much of an opinion about it. He also won’t actively disrespect or shit talk it either, which is an important distinction because the Cloud of FF7:Remake starts the game telling people that their stuff doesn’t matter. He isn’t aggressive about it, but he is absolutely hostile to any kind of commitment or even the genuine and earnest emotions of others. Sure, eventually he gets swept up in what is going on around him and anyone with a particularly strong and non-abrasive personality (which is mostly women from what I’ve seen so far) can just sweep him along in what they’re doing. He also attempts to be more stand-offish when it comes to people requesting things of him–something we see much more in the Remake given how much the contents of the game have been expanded to include numerous side quests–but he usually can be won over even if he is grouchy and crabby about it the entire time (see literally any time a child asks him to do something). To be honest, the second Cloud, of the Remake games, seems so much more exhausting to be around. I do not think I’d have the patience to constantly cajole him along like Tifa, Aerith, and Jessie do. Barret seems largely tired of his shit, which is fair, but Cloud’s still a pretty decent guy beneath it all, even if he has to be convinced to do anything decent by someone willing to do the work to break through his Cynical Tough Guy “this doesn’t matter” exterior.

One of the other things that I’ve only really noticed this time around is that the original FF7 Cloud loves to pose and does not seem shy about owning it. From the very first battle screen through every single flashback and cutscene, Cloud is seen striking a pose. He has a combat victory pose, he has a “waiting to fight” pose, he has a “standing around like a cool guy from SOLDIER” pose, a “standing around like a disaffected guy” pose, and even an “I’m going to kick your ass” pose. He is all about striking a cool pose in what is a genuinely silly way and seems less concerned about whether or not other people think it is cool and more about whether or not he feels cool. It’s an interesting look into his character, especially considering the thing we learn towards the end of the original game about Cloud’s history with the SOLDIER program. On the other hand, FF7: Remake Cloud seems much less secure in his own coolness. He berates anyone striking a pose, cynically dismisses Barret when he suggests they all prepare victory poses, and seems largely content to just be there. Until, of course, you noticed the way he stands whenever he talks to people and the way his body shifts when he stops moving in a cutscene. He is constantly posing, just in a less obvious way. Instead of trying to look cool by striking a noticeable, heroic pose, he is trying to appear unattached and distant, like he is untouchable by the world around him (as first explicitly shown in the elevator following him and Barret fleeing the impending explosion of Mako Reactor 1). He poses just as much as the original Cloud did, but he’s trying to appear like he isn’t.

Part of me wonders how much this change between the two Clouds is a reflection of what seems like Teen Behavior to the people making the game. I won’t really know until I get more of a glimpse into the Remake Cloud’s life as I wrap up the latter half of Remake and start diving into Rebirth, but it really seems like an interesting tweak to the behavior that defines our initial understanding of the central hero of the game, especially since the difference between the two versions of Cloud are more of a nudge in one direction or another than a complete and drastic alteration to the character. The heart of who Cloud is still seems to be the same, so far as I’ve seen–which is a tricky assessment to make seeing as I covered the contents of the entire Remake game in, like, five or six hours in the original game and didn’t really get to know Original-Flavor Cloud until well into the contents covered by Rebirth and yet I’ll have spent some thirty-ish hours with Remake Cloud by the time we leave Midgard. We’re going to get a much closer look at Cloud via the Remake series by dint of it being a much longer sequence of game that the original could ever be.

It will probably take a while for me to get through Remake and then Rebirth, given that I’m maybe eleven hours into Remake now (about a third of which was played before I swapped over to the original FF7 and the rest of which took place over a drawn-out weekend of playing since I’m writing this less than my usual week-ahead). I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts to share as I play, but maybe I won’t! It’s hard to tell since I played Remake in the early days of the Pandemic and that was so long enough that I barely remember it (also the trauma. Can’t forget the mental distance created by all the trauma of living through the early and unknown days of the pandemic) beyond the major plot beats and story elements. Most of the comparison stuff I’m interested in here comes in the specifics, so who knows what might come up. That said, this is all I’m really doing these days, so I expect it’ll be done sooner than it might be if I was spending my time in a more varied way. Maybe I’ll be writing my closing throughs about Remake on the day this goes up [haha, nope]. Or the Monday after it [also not gonna happen, not even close], more likely, since I’ve got a lot of tabletop games this week.