Cloud's entire issue is that by the time he even just gets to Shinra he's been mentally beaten down so much due to his childhood in Nibelheim that his self-worth was shit and even his sense of self all but non-existent. You have to wonder about a younger Cloud who got like, friendly and supportive attention from people other than his Mom who then ended up at Shinra and how that could have gone.
yes anon you are 100% right cloud is an extremely unreliable narrator he could be dueling sephiroth to the death and he’d still be like “well... im not the most important contributor here, all of my friends did just as much as or even more than me, theyre the real reason why im even here” like pls... sonboy pls
a cloud who actually grew up with support would be very different tbh, a big thing abt his character is that he’s very lonely when he’s young and that’s his whole motivation for joining soldier bc he wants to be famous and loved and accepted like sephiroth is except soon he learns that being famous doesn’t always earn you love and true acceptance
imo he wouldn’t be nearly as susceptible to mako poisoning + his delusion of being a soldier first if his sense of identity was stronger. if he wasn’t so desperate to be someone, anyone but himself, because being just cloud in his opinion is the worst person to be :’)
(which is what makes his character arc so good though, because at the end of the compilation he may not be sure about some of his past or what the experiments did to him, but he knows he’s just cloud-- not a hero, not a soldier, not a failed experiment, but just cloud)
