People call Cloud extremely difficult and sometimes even go as far as to say that he just doesn’t like anybody but no that’s not the case. Cloud might come off pretty broodish/cold/stoic you name it but understand that every single person Cloud’s ever gotten close to has either been taken from him, killed, or almost died and been through hell this includes those he travels with in the OG. It’s a fear and active fear of his that prevents him from getting too comfortable and close to anybody. If he holds people at arm’s length, then he won’t have to go through that sort of pain again. Is it selfish of him to want to not suffer through such a thing? To just not want to go through such a painful thing again? Waking up the next day and realizing that someone you’ve come to love/adore/care for so much isn’t going to be there anymore? They’re not going to be smiling at you, laughing with you, you won’t be able to see them anymore? His approaches are anything but something to clap at yes, I agree with that, but I don’t blame him for being scared, for being hesitant and always hesitating. Cloud’s got so many things beyond what’s on his exterior and that beyond the interior ends of himself as well because some people realize it or not caring is something that does come easy for Cloud. There’s so many examples within the game(s) and the film itself that do display this part of him that can get disregarded easily given I guess the fanon stuff that goes around quite a bit.
In Crisis Core the most obvious one is when Cloud loses his hometown and in the process not just loses his family but also has to deal with seeing someone he’s been wanting to be close to have to lose her family and loved ones as well. Not only that but it will rest in his conscious for a while that those he worked for and left home for are the reason for the fall and the demise of the entire place. Before leaving he swore that when he saw Tifa again he would be SOLDIER but that clearly and obviously never turns out to be the case, so he hides himself for the most part in most of his stay there so there’s that bash/shameful end of him keeping himself concealed and keeping his identity to himself. Fast forward to Sephiroth the asshole and what happened in the reactor (to put it short okay I think Seph is cool), and outside you find out that Cloud and Tifa were trying to fend off monsters or well initially it’s Cloud trying to help out Tifa which he manages to an extent but in the process he’s taken down which means Tifa has to pick up the weight of not just dealing with any monster that shows up or any threat whatsoever but having to also deal with an unconscious Cloud and take care of him (even though she doesn’t know it’s Cloud).
Of course Cloud isn’t entirely out cold or out of it because as you go through the game as Zack and head back to their town you can see him actively trying to pull his weight as well as to not hold anybody back anymore at least not as much as he did back near the reactor. When Tifa lets him go he feels shame definitely not just because he knows who she is but because of what he swore? And that in the end instead of him helping her it was the other way around? And this is definitely something that influences the next scene with Zack I believe.
Cloud’s already aware that some extents of hell is about to break loose don’t get me wrong that this line in itself doesn’t just revolve around that moment of inability where he failed to help Tifa but it is influenced from it. He’s waking up after getting out cold and finds a disheartened Zack looking after him and worrying, making sure he’s okay and of course naturally that environment in itself is going to influence Cloud’s mood as well. He’s a character who gets influenced by his surroundings and the people around him, I know wow it’s unbelievable but believe me that he does (it’ll be another post in itself one day I promise). He believes himself as a failure already, he was of no help for Zack who’s currently disheartened and looks beaten, Tifa had to help him out and save him instead of it being the other way around when he swore it would be; that he would always come to help her no matter what it was a promise, and not only that but Tifa doesn’t even know that he’s there, none aware that he is because he’s hidden himself, concealed his identity, from his hometown because he’s yet to accomplish that goal he swore he would get to and that’s to be in SOLDIER and become a hero, someone strong and someone others could definitely depend on. Further on in this scene Zack asks Cloud if he knows Tifa and Cloud just sorta skims the question over by answering with a sort of and from there Cloud makes it obvious that he doesn’t want to talk about it even when Zack says that he senses some stuff going on there.
Now let’s fast forward to when Sephiroth burns everything down which is the most obvious and clear one I want to touch on about his past. I have a post of his past on another one all in itself so I’m just trying to skim by on this one. Everything is gone, everything destroyed, it’s all gone to hell and not just that but he has to see someone he basically quote unquote was crushing on for a bit have to suffer through even more loss (FRIENDLY REMINDER THAT TIFA LOST HER MOM AND ALMOST DIED HERSELF AT A VERY EARLY AGE, I SAY YOUNG AGE WHEN SHE’S STILL YOUNG IN CC AND ALMOST DYING ONCE AGAIN SO TWO (2) TIMES). He has to see for himself that she loses her father who was an important and only actual parental figure for her. In the process she gets hurt so of course he runs to her aid immediately and it isn’t something he appreciates happening to her. The moment he sees her down he runs to her aid and tries to help her, admittedly at that moment in time he’s no longer thinking about the promise he made to her but just not wanting her to get hurt like that again and not something that he’ll allow happen at least not under his watch, of course this gets even more influence when he sees Zack, someone he looks up to as well, getting his butt whopped so he fights not just for Zack and Tifa but for everything that happened in that span of time. He was already in pain getting there, his mother got murdered, he lost someone he still loves so much to this day so this was even more motivation to get him going, though of course it increased his recklessness obviously but that he got the job done he got it done to some extent.
Now let’s fast forward to Zack’s death. After Cloud screams for dear life, because lord someone please give him a hug, after watching his friend die Cloud sees flashes of Zack like so:
If you’re familiar with CC you’ll see that Cloud sees Zack quite a lot and in most of these flashes it’s Zack smiling at him. Why smiling? Zack died with a smile on his face, it was the last time Cloud saw him alive, smiling. These flashbacks of Zack that his brain trigger at the moment of the traumatic event is basically his brain preparing itself to suppress and shut down those memories to protect Cloud from any further damage, to suppress the event and anything that took him there as a whole to prevent the hurt from taking him early and damaging him even further. Locking it all away. Of course I can get even more technical and speak of the JENOVA cells and the mako poisoning he’s also, in fact, trying to recover from which without a doubt is also very influential at the moment but not as influential as it gets later on when he’s basically already embraced the persona he becomes and takes up, the role he picks up. Now I use this as an example of Cloud, more like his brain trying to protect him, trying to look out for him but even as that’s happening he looks at the buster sword that’s shoved into his hands and at Zack saddened meaning that Cloud isn’t allowing his mind from completely locking everything away just yet which only further later shows that it didn’t because Cloud gets up and looks at Zack promising that he isn’t going to forget (he does forget rip) and then begins to walk away. And I personally find that commendable of Cloud? How even though his brain is hitting a very heavy like red alarm/danger zone he still if just for an instant refuses to not at least say a proper goodbye to Zack, which is a pretty impact filled moment to me and shows a lot of strength from Cloud’s character though obviously not on physical terms.
Okay so this is just all CC and since this is dragging a bit I’m going to skim a bit through the OG cause I’m also gonna touch on the other games where he does show up as well. In the OG there’s a lot of fleeting instances where Cloud shows that he’s more than meets the eye, a clear and obvious one is Aeris’ death and the dialogue in it. Not just a well yeah he lost a friend sorta deal to me but because it shows just how much Aeris means to him? How much she stood for him and now she’s gone and he’s never going to get her back? How attached he got to her and how much she meant to him to where he’s not too sure of even how he feels, if he’s angry, if he’s sad, or if he’s a mix of the two?
All Cloud knows is that he’s in a lot of pain and it should be something that should’ve been familiar to him but again he doesn’t remember Zack, that’s currently locked away and not something that begins to take much of a greater peek until later with Tifa. Sephiroth goes as far as to be bold and even asks him in surprise that it’s amazing how he has emotions at all and Cloud gets extremely upset by that comment and question and tells him that of course he has feelings which admittedly in the beginning it wouldn’t be something Cloud would say at all which is nice character development if you ask me personally. Gonna fast forward a bit here again and get to the part where Tifa and Cloud fall in the lifestream which to this day is still an extremely important part in the game because it’s basically Cloud piecing himself back together. With who’s help? Well what do you know! Tifa! She seriously deserves a lot of love okay this woman has gone through some shit. Anyway Tifa journeys with Cloud in the lifestream and tries to help him piece himself together with the real Cloud which in the game is shown as a young version of Cloud. Which after some struggling it’s something that they manage to do. Within that segment the real Cloud tells Tifa of a past and why it is that what happened to her was some influence towards his decision into leaving and wanting to become stronger. I have a whole different post about this as well somewhere so long story short. Cloud felt like he failed her that one day when she almost lost her life and he only scrapped his knees. As a young boy he was blamed by not just Tifa’s father but by people who were aware of the incident and naturally pointed fingers at him.
And of course to all of the finger pointing Cloud would naturally react. Let it be because it got to him? No, it wasn’t just that, but he was self-aware that he was trying to help Tifa and he failed to help her, he failed to go through with it so of course he’s going to care and act negatively towards all the folk pointing fingers at him. He got worse from all of it since, again, Cloud was just a young boy. Not just that but remember that Cloud really would have liked to be one of Tifa’s good friends too but he never knew how to get to her or was unsure of how to approach her basically but the want for that was there and seeing as she was near dying because he couldn’t help her? That definitely didn’t help or aid his case at all and only made it worse, made him more reckless. I’m going to be doing yet another fast forward because again there’s many instances within the games themselves where Cloud does show that there’s more to him than meets the eye so I’m just touching on pieces that really stood out to me the most or that I remember by memory right now because Jesus it is midnight over here and I can feel myself getting sleepy lmao.
Another good example is before doomsday and near conclusion of the game itself. Where Cloud has everybody there with him and they’re all pretty much getting ready for what’s to come. Naturally they all feel very defeated, Cloud’s included in that equation as well but as someone who’s seen as some sort of leader he puts up a strong façade and not because he just wants to look the part but because there’s some dependence on him to do so because during this scene a good number of them bring questions, you see Yuffie tired lying on the ground, exhausted everybody’s pretty defeated and like I said Cloud’s not an exception to that but he still tries to hold up the front for them because it isn’t a very pretty sight and cause they’re about to have the battle of their lives real soon. There’s unsureness lingering around, doubt’s in the air, they also lost a dear friend, there’s some sense of defeat lingering among them and though believe me that he would more than likely could have joined in on this party he refused and instead tried to pump them up somehow, bring them up and try to have them on their toes in some extents. Cloud is anything but perfect and trust me I know and this isn’t about him being this perfect individual not in the least. If anything he’s very often wrong about a lot, my point out of all of this is that Cloud isn’t someone who just doesn’t care about anything, he’s actually dare I say use the word soft person in the inside, he’s just very guarded for all the right reasons, because everything that happened to him and he’s still in the process of recovering from.
He tells them that they did what they could, that everything in their power was done and they did their best, that as much as the want to be able to do more lies within them there really isn’t much else they can do. That they have to trust in the planet and that they should go home proud knowing that they did everything in their power to serve for the best outcome. It’s a very important moment for Cloud especially in his character development at least in my opinion. Here you see someone who didn’t give two cents about the planet in the beginning of the game telling everybody that they did everything they could to save the planet and it’s time that they trust it in helping itself as well. Even after the time skip and into AC instances of Cloud trying to not burden his friends and those he holds dear become even more evident. I don’t argue and will never argue that his approaches could have definitely been better but it was the only thing he knew how to do. He only knew how to run away and isolate himself, and only semi-isolate himself by the way because in some way he still did make himself available to contact by keeping his phone or going to places where he’s needed to go so that his friends knew that he went there when told. His desk filled with books on the studies of medicine for the sake of finding a cure not just for himself against the Geostigma but for Denzel as well, him not telling or letting anybody into knowing that he was suffering of that plague either. When the weight of everything became too much for him again his solution was to run that was his method into keeping himself safe without having anybody else to deal with it in some kind of way. Look there’s a lot of layers to Cloud and as you can probably already surmise by the length of this post is a lot and honestly I haven’t even covered everything and I know I skimmed over some spots and left out things but this is getting so long and I’m really sorry omg but he’s very important to me okay and honestly these are just glimpse of some of his layers and just how deep his character goes as I know many other fictional characters go as well. That there’s always more to them than meets the eye it’s never only this and that or something so simple as there’s always going to be more influence behind it.
Even in other game cameos even if they do essentially change his character a bit he still stays the same. I’ll use Kingdom hearts and dissidia as quick examples.
When Aeris confronts him on whether or not he’s going to come back or not he can’t even look at her in the eyes when he says that he will and of course he’s more often than not an open book if he isn’t careful like shown here and Aeris does have a natural tendency of reading people easily from time to time, ignoring some of her insensitive nature aside so this is one pretty good example. And when she calls him out on it he has to back himself up because of course he isn’t just going to settle with that. He tells her that no matter where he’ll always find his way back to them and though she isn’t entirely convinced she clearly knows better than to argue with a Cloud who’s set his mind on stone on what it is he wants to do. Another little display of him not wanting her to worry too much about him and letting her know a little that he will actively try to find a way back though it might not seem like often does it.
Catch me screaming over the Cloud/Tifa dynamic but no seriously his over protectiveness over his friends and those he gets attached to in general are a tell-tell sign in itself. When Tifa tries to help him out against Sephiroth his first instinct kicks him and that’s to make sure she’s safe so he tries to get her to stay away which much to his relief she does listen for a bit but this is Tifa Cloud c’mon you know better. Cloud exploited the darkness within him to gain certain advantages and get power for his reasons and because of his search for Zack but Tifa tries to make him think otherwise that he just shouldn’t tread on his own and that there’s always going to be light within him no matter what he thinks because that’s who he is. He wasn’t always this way though sometimes for him it’s hard to remember how things were back then with them back when the darkness didn’t hit their home. His reply to her words are a simple I don’t know but then afterwards a light within him awakens and Sephiroth of course doesn’t approve of this so he tries to decline it and in turn Cloud reacts and tries to prevent him from getting any farther than that and in part they both disappear now as far as KH canon goes that’s as far as I’ll go since the rest is up to the fans at this point till we actually get some KH content.
Now on to Dissidia. Say what you say about the game and I know not many played it which is fine but something you do have to know about it is that their memories are a no, there are no memories but there are impulses and like feelings that closely connect them to their canon they just can’t quite put their finger on the why it is they see/react/act towards things how they do. Cosmos screw applicable that is.
In this dissidia Cloud is hounded by self-doubt and uncertainty which is a very good quality for him to have because it’s totally applicable to his character even in his canon. He’s also a lot more blunt in the game which tends to come off as odd to his comrades because of how he approaches certain things and how he speaks about certain stuff. By that I mean when he’s with Firion/Cecil/Tidus. They dismiss his words of warning as him just using common sense and thank him for being with them but in all honesty even Cloud’s aware that it isn’t it. It isn’t common sense at all, it’s him just being scared of what’s to hit them since they’re so basically unprepared regardless of what Cosmos has told them or not because he’s not entirely convinced by her either, so he just wants them to know that they should tread carefully because he’s also going to. Just like in all the others I’ve covered I’m only going to skim through some things as there’s many different dynamics in the game and I do highly recommend you all to check it out! Or at least watch some playthoughs/cut scenes on youtube! I’m just going to touch on the Cloud/Terra dynamic here. As far as Cloud knows she’s just an ally, someone who’s working on the same side as he is and that’s honestly all that takes him to have in mind to even consider helping her. Mind you, fighting her is a very Cloud approach I guess but what matters is that he was able to help her. So, he goes out of the way to help his ally, not just help her but he goes out of the way to get his ass kicked in order for her to go back to her senses because she beats him up and even after the match he does say that maybe he could have approached a way to help her in a different way. Beyond this there’s more. He expresses and makes it pretty clear that he honestly doesn’t have a dream of his own and doesn’t find a reason to fight at all so he carries another, a comrade’s and shows it to Terra and even when still unsure she tells him that it would be good if they shared the dream and they fought for an equal cause.
The dream’s a pretty simple minded dream, to fill the world with roses and even Cloud’s aware of that and points it out but Terra being the optimistic light that she tends to be emphasizes that the dream might be simple but that it’s a nice dream and that they don’t just have to limit the dream to just being roses but with flowers that she likes and he likes and their friends like. Which admittedly Cloud does warm up to the idea, a little rough around the edges but through the path he finds more reason and that’s to fight alongside those who fight alongside him and help even if he isn’t entirely sold 100%, he doesn’t try to bring them down too much. I have yet to touch 012 which furthermore applies more emphasis and under a more different light because on this one Cloud does have memories and Tifa’s involved and one clear goal he has, especially by the end is just wanting his friend to be safe and not wanting her to fall. That’s his wish before he falls to only reenter another cycle later on.
Even if the fear of feeling such a pain again is still vivid and present in him it still doesn’t stop him from caring and trying to help when necessary. He comes off pretty disconnected and again can seem pretty stoic and out of place but that doesn’t mean that he isn’t someone who cares for those who’ve earned that place in him. Because even he, personally, knows he doesn’t like being alone as much as he comes off that way and so many times he’s been called out on it, especially in AC where he tries to tread through a road of recovery. So yeah, my point is Cloud’s a pretty deep character okay? Very deep. And I love him so much. So much.