Cloud Strife, music appreciator
For most of the game we don’t actually see Cloud as fully himself. (Yeah, sorry, spoilers for the original game and the plot twist of the 3rd part of the Remake series, which is also heavily hinted at in the first two parts of the Remakes.)
With the Remakes being intended for both the new players and the fans of the original game, (and with Crisis Core being recommended by the devs for playing before we get to Re3), the first two parts of the Remake heavily hint clearly show that there’s something wrong with Cloud’s memory and his sense of self.
So along with Aerith who’s searching for the real Cloud, it’s very interesting to look at all the character moments and see which is a part of the Real Cloud, which is his memory of Zack, and which is his fake persona of a Cool Soldier that he probably made up back when he was 14 and he left Nibelheim to apply to Shinra.
There’s a lot of details that are clearly very intentionally shown, like real Cloud being shy and awkward, and him always helping out everyone, and his love for motorcycles (we’ll get more on that in On the Way to a Smile book too).
And then there are some details that are probably only there for the gameplay, but their presence ends up actually characterising Cloud as well.
And my favourite example of the latter is music. The OG Cloud could play the piano in Tifa’s room (and also the grand piano on Nibelheim Mansion, which was missing two notes, so not fully playable), but there were no other pianos in the original game. Re2 has upped the playable pianos by a lot. And yeah, it all depends on the player, you can ignore them all or you can spend hours playing each, but the fact is that the option is there. When Cloud sees a piano in the room, he can go and play it, and he will immediately take new sheet music with him if you only click on that piano.
And then there’s the music CD collection in Re1. Yeah, this is also an achievement, a collectable item for the player to find, and yes, you can ignore those and never buy a single disc. But it’s still there. The CDs are not just for sale at the vendors and vending machines, Cloud can talk to random people and get CDs from them. By nature of video games, we don’t hear his lines when he initiates a conversation with an NPC, but they obviously read him as interested enough to give him a CD.
So what I get from this is that Cloud really likes music and he wants to learn piano and collect all the discs. Yeah, these are both gameplay details, one is a collection, another one is a rhythm game, but well, the whole thing is a game, and it’s also a story. So what I’m getting from this, is that Cloud, who’s still in his “I’m a cool Soldier who’s super cool and strong and doesn’t give a damn about anything” persona, really gives a lot of damns about helping people, and riding motorcycles, and also collecting music, listening to it and learning to play it.
