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With the recent release of the Final Fantasy VII Remake Demo, and the full game's part 1 release just around the corner, I've been thinking about the game quite a bit. Often rated one of the greatest JRPG's ever made, Final Fantasy VII has a crazy legacy that must be putting some pretty crazy pressure on the current developers of the remake. So far though, with what I've seen from gameplay and cinematic demos, it seems like it will be a fantastically faithful re-imagining of one of my favorite games of all time.

One of the contentions made about video games (although less so nowadays) is whether video games can be considered art. Rather than trying to answer this question, I'd rather address how specific things within video games shows the quality of the art being displayed. Just like we wouldn't say all works of literary fiction, photography, painting, music, and film are art, but a small selection made by a few artists, composers, or producers should definitely be considered such, I would categorize many games under the Final Fantasy umbrella as art. And in this blog, I want to focus on one specific aspect of the 7th installment to show why I consider it a masterwork of art.

And of course, as revealed in the title of this blog, that aspect is the character of Cloud Strife in Final Fantasy VII. In continuing with my “A Study in” series, I want to take a look at this character, the themes he represents, and how his depth illustrates the beauty of the story of Final Fantasy VII.

*WARNING: LOTS of spoilers ahead! If you haven't played Final Fantasy VII or aren't familiar with the story, the following may either not make sense or completely spoil the story for you.

Origins

However, before I get to the meat of the topic, I want to explain a specific lens I'm looking through to analyze Cloud Strife. In any work of art, it's important to understand the background and context by which the artist came to create it. For example, in discussing Pablo Picasso's art, it's important not only to understand the different styles and techniques he used to help develop the Cubist movement in painting and sculpture, but how the subject material he painted was informed by the historical and cultural contexts he lived in. In doing so, we not only walk away with a better impression of who Pablo Picasso is, but also why and how his work was so well-received and enamored both in his time and in the present.

Hironobu Sakaguchi, producer of Final Fantasy VII

While video games are a much more collaborative effort, it's not difficult to argue that Hironobu Sakaguchi, the producer, designer, and story director of Final Fantasy VII, had a pretty heavy hand in the development of the game. It is now well known that it was during the development of the previous Final Fantasy (VI in Japan, III in the States) that Sakaguchi was faced with the death of his own mother. This significant event would then go on to have a pretty great impact on the way the themes and story of Final Fantasy VII flowed.

It is through this lens of grief and loss that I'll be analyzing the character of Cloud and the entirety of the game as whole, as I believe that this is the best way to understand the meaning and purpose behind the character.

Summary of the Character

Cloud has always been one of the psychologically deeper characters of the franchise. Interestingly, a recent poll suggests that the majority of Final Fantasy fans (at least in Japan) like this character the most. But this may be because, rather than being a typical heroic character, Cloud is very much a subversion of any heroic trope-type. He is an anti-hero, but not in the pop culture sense of the word, where he has some amoral compass and a bad attitude. Instead, Cloud is literally not a hero. He is the anti-thesis of how any hero is typically framed.

Let's take a look at how his character progresses through the plot of the game. When we're first introduced to Cloud, he is a mercenary for hire with a cool-guy, nonchalant attitude. It rubs Barret, the leader of an eco-terrorist organization, the wrong way, but because of Cloud's professed skills as a former super-soldier, he puts up with it and is actually humble enough to learn from Cloud as well.

But as the story plods on, Cloud's personality and ability begins to fall apart. First, when Cloud and company are inside of the Mako Reactors, Cloud nearly breaks down on the job. When they find out that a former global superhero turned villain named Sephiroth was alive and kicking, our protagonists try to hunt him down, only to find that Cloud has some holes in his memory regarding his time spent with said former hero, whom he looked up to. Then, as the company chase Sephiroth, Cloud finds himself disturbingly obedient to the villain's commands, including nearly killing one whom he had sworn to protect. When he ultimately refuses, our 'hero' is forced to watch her murdered right in front of him. Desiring vengeance, he chases Sephiroth, only to ultimately give Sephiroth the very weapon which will be used to destroy the world.

Unsurprisingly, it is after this that Cloud's psyche utterly crumbles and is rendered a vegetable. Through a series of cutscenes and gameplay, we find out that Cloud was not, in fact, the super soldier he professed to have become, but a failure who was demoted to being a lowly security guard. Instead, he was gravely injured on a mission when he tried to save his friend, Tifa. Then, he was captured and experimented on, resulting in a physical and psychological meltdown. While nearly comatose, he was rescued by a friend who did manage to become a super soldier, but in their escape, the friend was killed. Unable to cope with his friend's death, his confused and debilitated mind created a false persona molded around the dead friend to deal with the tragedy. And thus (in his mind) he became the super soldier he always dreamed of being, with an enhanced physique to back his story up.

The Perfect Villain

They say a good villain is one whose actions and psychology are a direct counterpart to the main protagonists. This is so that, whatever the hero seeks to do, the villain is the ultimate obstacle in the hero's way. In this way, Sephiroth really is the perfect villain for Cloud in Final Fantasy VII. Because, as I said before, Cloud isn't a hero. But Sephiroth is.

And this, I think, is the brilliance of Final Fantasy VII's subversion of the typical hero's story.

Sephiroth is the bad-ass superhero that every kid wants to be. He's got a cool sword, he's got cool hair. He's got abilities that no one can match, and is powerful enough to end wars. And yet, having been a hero to the citizens of the world of Final Fantasy VII, he is our main antagonist in the game.

Prior to the start of the game's plot, Sephiroth finds out that he is the product of combining a human fetus with the cells of an alien organism, called JENOVA. The specifics of this combination aren't very important (at least not to what I'm talking about), but it's important to understand that when Sephiroth found this out, having not known his parentage, he immediately began to refer to JENOVA as mother. And in an effort to follow the footsteps of JENOVA, he plans to rule the world by merging with (and thus controlling) the life of the planet upon which he lives.

It is easy to see from here how Sephiroth's actions and mindset have similarities with Sakaguchi's personal story. But, more interesting, the progress and culmination of the conflict between Cloud and Sephiroth tells us how the creator of the series thought and dealt with grief and loss.

Putting the Pieces into Place

Cloud's story seems to be a great analog to Sakaguchi's life, and really all of us. Just as Cloud professed as a young child to his friend, Tifa, that he was going to become a great hero, I'm sure Sakaguchi, like many young boys and girls, sought to become a hero in their own life story. However, as we grow older, it becomes clear that the obstacles in the way of our own hero's journey aren't as easy to overcome as the fictions and myths we remember. Not all of us make it to be the best or greatest in the world. Not all of us make it to be Sephiroth.

And there comes a time in life when, as we pursue our goals and dreams, that great tragedy happens. In Sakaguchi's case, it was the death of his mother. And—if we are to take Final Fantasy VII as a metaphor—it often forces us to face our own frailty and emotional baggage with reality. Sephiroth—the hero we desired to be like when we were children—also deals with tragedy like children typically do: through tantrum and brutish conquest.

In this way, it's fascinating how Cloud's persona of a superhero is nonchalant and uncaring. It shows how wrong one's conception of a hero can be. Detached instead of empathetic. Rebellious rather than understanding. In Cloud's case, it was actually the opposite of what his friend was truly like (as revealed in another game called Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core). Zack, who had rescued Cloud, was an extremely upbeat and honor-driven person. But despite his exposure to his friend, Cloud's contempt with his own failures blinded him to what a true hero was really like. Instead, his persona became more like Sephiroth, who displayed coolness in his cruelty.

As a point of reflection, when in state of personal and psychological trauma, we often cut off our own ability to feel so as to avoid pain, rather than confront the loss and deal with the hardship of our emotional state. We would rather feel nothing than feel horrible. And so, Cloud hid his own pain by putting up a false mask.

But Cloud learned that the mask wasn't the solution. Instead, in order to deal with the villain, he had to take off the mask and make peace with his past, so that his actions were no longer controlled by Sephiroth. By analogy, we must take off our own façades to no longer be controlled by our emotions and immature desires.

This is not to say that the desire to be a hero is a bad one. After all, Cloud desired to be a hero out of noble and pure intentions: to protect and save Tifa—from Sephiroth no less. This he did do, even when he didn't have the unnatural augmentation of power to his body. And so from the story we understand heroism doesn't come from some super power, but a purity of will which surpasses even the greatest obstacle.

It is interesting that in the end, the very final battle between Cloud and Sephiroth is actually in Cloud's mind. It tells us the creators of the game recognized that though death and tragedy are realities, yet the ultimate battle is in our internal, not external, world. It is dealing with and processing through the torrents of grief and suffering that we can ultimately become truly healed.

And this, I believe, is the story and journey of Cloud Strife in the game—to process and confront tragedy, and lay down an immature child's idea of what a hero should be like, so that he could prevent tragedy from controlling and taking over the world.

Final Thoughts

There's obviously a lot more that could be written in analyzing this character, not to mention the rest of the game. An average play-through would probably be around 20-30 hours, and each part of the game has plenty of backstory, setting, and other exposition, much of which correlates well with the themes I've talked about so far.

But I think the argument I presented at the beginning is pretty justly made. When we think of works of art, we often talk about how they aren't just beautiful in themselves, but speak about and to the world around it. We want to walk away from them, believing to have learned something beneficial to how the real world works. And I believe, having looked only at a single aspect of the game, that Final Fantasy VII does that in spades with the character of Cloud Strife.

Header Image courtesy of UHD Wallpapers.