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.